I. Introduction This master’s thesis represents study of female newspaper and magazine editors in Azerbaijan based on Western and Soviet definitions of journalism with explanation of local national features of this p

I.1 Hybrid regime and media in Azerbaijan
The last two decades of turmoil caused by the disintegration of the USSR and territorial conflicts brought significant changes to societies of the CIS³ countries. One of them, Azerbaijan had to face the emergence of separatist sentiments in its Armenian community that resulted in demand for reunification of enclave Karabakh region with Armenian SSR and subsequent war with neighboring Armenia.
The war shaped many of the political developments in Azerbaijan by causing humiliation and a heavy financial burden due to the loss of territory (agricultural land), refugees, war wounded, in creased defense spending, etc. (Zinin/ Maleshenko 1994: 104–105; Gulaliyev 2005: 161; Kamrava 2001: 220). However, despite the initial loss and bad economic situation Azerbaijan by the end of 2000 managed to recover and make a gain of its natural resources and strategic position in the region. However, the recovery came at a cost: currently Azerbaijan stagnates in its political development unable to make progress toward either a democracy or a clear-cut authoritarianism.
The question of classifying political regime in Azerbaijan produced an enormous amount of literature where political scientists tried to tackle the issue. Out of the proposed classifications in our opinion the “hybrid regime” fits the most to describe reality of modern Azerbaijan. Finding the typology of authoritarian states provided by Juan Linz lacking transitional states, political scientist Larry Diamond expanded it adding the category of "hybrid regimes".⁴ Diamond’s “hybrid regimes” are authoritarian regimes that can be found in pseudo democratic states that are neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian.
Yet, examining political regime in Azerbaijan with a closer look gives less auspicious results. Diamond’s hybrid regimes serve just a transitional stage to the process of transformation on axis authoritarian – democratic, while Azerbaijan even though broadly matching the classification shows stable resistance to farther advancement in either direction. Major factor in the stability formula plays clientelism and more importantly nepotism that corrupt almost every institution of Azerbaijani society.

Political opposition is denied access to state or private media that are capable to reach masses. Such inequality is most visible in the case of access to television or radio channels that even though are not state owned [except AzTv] belong exclusively to persons close to the government or can be easily silenced through license revocation⁵. In terms of printed press political regime allows greater pluralism and diversity than in case of electronic media. In 1995 Azerbaijan abolished the state controlled censorship institution and later democratized registration of new titles, resulting in more than 3500 media outlets being registered in Azerbaijan by 2012.⁶

However, existence of independent newspapers and magazines in Azerbaijan is doubtful since private media are in the cobweb of patronage deals, proxy arrangements or management cronyism making them quasi or semi-independent media outlets at best. More elaborate description of the process offers Karol Jakubowicz pointing that media in post-Soviet Russia lack ‘external independence’ the feature that is also evident in Azerbaijan. The external independence is the existence of a political, economic, legal and regulatory framework that allows a publisher or a broadcaster to operate without outside interference (Jakubowicz 2009).
In case of Russia the best illustration would be the case of the independent NTV television network that was taken over by the quasi-state company Gasprom after airing critical materials about Putin in 2000-2001 (Lipman and McFaul 2001). Similar case in Azerbaijan happened on 18^th of February 2009 when popular Caucasian internet resource Day.Az published an anti-Putin interview with Boris Berezovsky and was closed the same day with subsequent transfer of ownership to pro-government chief of Trend news agency⁷.
Yet, the mere ownership information according to Jakubowicz does not tell us much about professional autonomy or its subordination because it, and here he quotes Gurevitch, is “the overall cultural mix . . . that will tend to fix the position of the media on [the subordination - autonomy] continuum.”⁸