ABSTRACT
Under Ilham Aliyev's rule, Azerbaijan came face to face with a multitude of challenges likely to become only more pressing with each year of continued economic development. First among these was the conflict in Mountainous Karabakh. A second challenge was that the political system of independent Azerbaijan continued to be governed by informal networks, codes, structures, and rules. Third, Azerbaijan's remarkable oil-driven economic progress actualized the question of how the oil wealth could be used to generate long-term stability and prosperity. Finally as the initial decade of the twenty-first century drew to a close, Azerbaijan was undergoing an extremely rapid social transformation. Stuck between its Soviet past and Islamic heritage and the overwhelming Western popular culture, the nation displayed enormous generation gaps and an ideological and indeed ideational vacuum that would only grow as the national economy and culture, energized by petrodollars, became increasingly globalized.
