Divided by the Aras River for about 200 years: different states, different institutions, divergent trajectories and identity articulations among Azerbaijanis, North and South

Azerbaijan constitutes a historically unified ethnolinguistic region divided since the early nineteenth century and governed under contrasting state systems. Despite shared language and cultural foundations, Azerbaijani populations north and south of the Aras (Araz) River have followed markedly divergent social and identity trajectories. Drawing on historical institutionalism and path dependence theory, this article argues that divergence is a cumulative outcome of long-term exposure to contrasting governance regimes rather than cultural difference. The analysis traces how distinct state projects – Soviet statehood in the north, integration into a centralized Iranian framework in the south – structured education, media, economy and state-society relations over nearly two centuries, shaping how identity is articulated or constrained in everyday life. Where institutions affirm identity, expression becomes routine; where they restrict it, expression becomes selective and politicized. The Azerbaijani case offers a transferable framework for understanding identity divergence in other partitioned ethnolinguistic groups.