["Nations and Nationalism, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper takes a historically grounded institutional analysis approach to explain how Azerbaijan developed its institutional framework for national minorities, with an empirical focus on the case of Lezgins. The study draws from archival, interview and secondary sources to map and analyse the institutional changes that defined state–minority relations in Azerbaijan from the Soviet to post‐Soviet period. It shows that beyond the transformational periods of the 1920s and 1990s, Azerbaijan effectively lacked a specialised institutional framework for national minorities. The study argues that the real challenge for national minorities in present‐day Azerbaijan is the agency and access to resources within the country's broader institutional framework, which is dominated by a top‐down institutional hierarchy and informal institutions.\n"]