Preface
Abstract
The following articles are the result of a research project initiated by the editor as part of her International Scholar affiliation under the Academic Fellowship Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI) to the Department of International and Comparative Politics (ICP) at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA). ICP Faculty jointly selected the analysis of the Tulip Revolution as their preferred research focus. It was considered as fundamental to the nature of this project that those personally connected to and with academic experience of Kyrgyzstan have the opportunity to develop their professional insights of the events of March 2005, and to share those findings with the wider scholarly community. These local political scientists (Emir Kulov, Shairbek Juraev, Azamat Temirkulov and Bermet Tursunkulova) at the time of writing were all members of ICP. In addition, the contribution includes scholars then affiliated to AUCA (Sally N. Cummings as editor, Alexander Kupatadze, Stefanie Ortmann and Maxim Ryabkov) as well as well-known internationally established scholars of Kyrgyzstan (David Lewis, Erica Marat). Enormous thanks are due to both the OSI and AUCA for their financial, administrative and general support, without which the undertaking and completion of this work would not have been