Democratization, legitimacy and political change in Central Asia

International Affairs

Volumn 75, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 23-44

  Matveeva, Anna ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039521470     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.00058     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Shirin Akiner, 'Conflict, stability and development in Central Asia', in Luc van de Goor, Kumar Rupesinghe and Paul Sciarone, eds, Between development and destruction (Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's, 1996), pp. 257-97.
2. For a discussion on clan and kinship groups see Barnett Rubin, 'Russian hegemony and state breakdown in the periphery: causes and consequences of the civil war in Tajikistan', in Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, eds, Post-Soviet political order: conflict and state building (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 147.
3. Rubin, 'Russian hegemony and state breakdown in the periphery', p. 156.
4. Lena Jonson, Russia and Central Asia: the new web of relations, CACP Key Paper (London: RIIA, 1998).
5. Interview with Rafik Saifullin, Director of Institute of Regional and International Studies, Republic of Uzbekistan, June 1998.
6. Juan J. Linz warns that the presidential model can easily lead to zero-sum outcomes: 'Transitions to democracy', Washington Quarterly 13, Summer 1990, pp. 143-64 at p. 153. The same argument was made for Russia's case by a number of researchers; see e.g. Maurizio Mazari, 'Russia: the stability factor', World Today 50: 8-9, 1994, pp. 172-4.
7. Juan J. Linz warns that the presidential model can easily lead to zero-sum outcomes: 'Transitions to democracy', Washington Quarterly 13, Summer 1990, pp. 143-64 at p. 153. The same argument was made for Russia's case by a number of researchers; see e.g. Maurizio Mazari, 'Russia: the stability factor', World Today 50: 8-9, 1994, pp. 172-4.
8. The Kyrgyz president attempted to follow his comrades. His rapid retreat to the practice of presidential elections (held in December 1995) demonstrates his different style of governance rather than the nature of his rule. Akaev is likely to run for a third term in 2000, although according to the constitution of Kyrgystan a president can be elected for only two terms. In Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev, in an unexpected reversal of his earlier intentions, declared pre-term presidential elections (which he is most certainly going to win) to be held in January 1999.
9. Neil Melvin, 'The consolidation of the regional elite in Pavlodar (Kazakhstan): the end of transition?', paper presented at the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies conference, 4-6 April 1998.
10. Martha Brill Olcott, Presentation at the RIIA-Moscow Carnegie Center conference, 'Borderlands in transition', Moscow, January 1998.
11. For analysis of a highly complicated process of a search for national orientation see e.g. Shirin Akiner, Formation of Kazakh identity: from tribe to nation-state, FSS Key Paper (London: RIIA, 1995).
12. Nezavisimaya gazeta, 12 September 1998.
13. Russian activists in Kazakhstan, however, claim that even this situation has begun to change. According to Victor Mikhailov, the chairman of the Lad Slavic movement, more than 2 million people have left the republic during the past seven years, prompted mainly by the lack of Russian-language courses: Inside Central Asia, BBC Monitoring Service, 31 Angust-6 September 1998, p. 4.
14. Eduard Limonov, in Anatomiya geroya (Smolensk: Rusich, 1998), pp. 305-16, provides a bitter account of his failure to find any Russian group capable of direct action against the Kazakhstani authorities.
15. In Kazakhstan, according to a demographic study published in the country, Kazakhs, who emerged as a minority in their own country, now outnumber Russians by 7.6 million to 5.8 million. For the year 2015 the study projected a ratio of 10 million Kazakhs to 3.6 million Russians: James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 4, 8 January 1998. In Uzbekistan the proportion of Russians changed from 8.3 per cent (1989) to 4.1 per cent (1996): Human Development Report: Uzbekistan 1997 (Tashkent: United Nations Development Programme, 1997).
16. In Kazakhstan, according to a demographic study published in the country, Kazakhs, who emerged as a minority in their own country, now outnumber Russians by 7.6 million to 5.8 million. For the year 2015 the study projected a ratio of 10 million Kazakhs to 3.6 million Russians: James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 4, 8 January 1998. In Uzbekistan the proportion of Russians changed from 8.3 per cent (1989) to 4.1 per cent (1996): Human Development Report: Uzbekistan 1997 (Tashkent: United Nations Development Programme, 1997).
17. Samuel Huntington, The third wave: democratization in the late twentieth century (Norman, OK and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
18. To overcome this ambiguity gap, various attempts have been made to measure democracy in tangible ways; see e.g. Ted R. Gurr, Comparative studies of political conflict and change: cross-national data sets (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1978). Such an event-based approach to democracy has been developed by the authors of Polity databases which code the changes in political structures: see Sara McLaughlin, Scott Gates, Havard Hegre, Ranveig Gissinger and Nils Petter Gleditsch, 'Timing the changes in political structures: a new polity database', Journal of Conflict Resolution 42: 2, April 1998, pp. 23 1-42. This article, by contrast, takes a less tangible, process-oriented approach.
19. To overcome this ambiguity gap, various attempts have been made to measure democracy in tangible ways; see e.g. Ted R. Gurr, Comparative studies of political conflict and change: cross-national data sets (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1978). Such an event-based approach to democracy has been developed by the authors of Polity databases which code the changes in political structures: see Sara McLaughlin, Scott Gates, Havard Hegre, Ranveig Gissinger and Nils Petter Gleditsch, 'Timing the changes in political structures: a new polity database', Journal of Conflict Resolution 42: 2, April 1998, pp. 23 1-42. This article, by contrast, takes a less tangible, process-oriented approach.
20. See e.g. Linz, 'Transitions to democracy '; also Samuel Huntington, 'How countries democratize', Political Science Quarterly 106: 4, 1991-2.
21. See e.g. Linz, 'Transitions to democracy '; also Samuel Huntington, 'How countries democratize', Political Science Quarterly 106: 4, 1991-2.
22. Michael Ochs, 'Turkmenistan: the quest for stability and control', in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds, Conflict, deavage, and change in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 318.
23. In theory, consociational democracy, based on moderating elites' behaviour as the missing link between a plural society and political stability (Arend Lijphart, 'Consociational democracy', World Politics 21: 2, pp. 207-25) might have provided a solution; however, given the virtually complete absence of any tradition of elite accommodation, it seems hardly viable in Central Asia.
24. John Anderson suggests adoption of a broader focus on 'actually existing civil society' rather than on a narrow Western notion rooted in the experience of developed democracies: see John Anderson, Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia's island of democracy (Reading: Harwood Academic, forthcoming 1999). See also Steven M. Fish, 'Russia's fourth transition', Journal of Democracy 5: 3, 1994.
25. John Anderson suggests adoption of a broader focus on 'actually existing civil society' rather than on a narrow Western notion rooted in the experience of developed democracies: see John Anderson, Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia's island of democracy (Reading: Harwood Academic, forthcoming 1999). See also Steven M. Fish, 'Russia's fourth transition', Journal of Democracy 5: 3, 1994.
26. Some endorsement of an open media in Uzbekistan began in autumn 1997, and the newspapers began to be used as sounding boards for internal debates on policy, such as agricultural privatization. Alternative views, although more acceptable in the press, do not extend as far as criticism of the regime.
27. Scholars have noted the significance of political culture and education; for instance, Helmut Dubiel writes that 'civility reaches its summit when a democratic public sphere develops from the quotidian experience of a shared legal order': H. Dubiel, 'Cultivated conflicts', Political Theory 26: 2, April 1998, pp. 209-20 at p. 218. There is, however, far less understanding of how this new public sphere develops.
28. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross, 11 per cent of children in Kazakhstan were not attending school in 1997 because they lacked adequate shoes and winter clothes: James Town Foundation Monitor 3: 217, 19 November 1997. Other reports put this figure even higher, at 19 per cent: James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 9, 15 January 1998. The UN Human Development Report of 1997 put school non-attendance at 14 per cent. Sharp regional differences in education cause concern, and rural economic poverty makes the outlook very grave.
29. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross, 11 per cent of children in Kazakhstan were not attending school in 1997 because they lacked adequate shoes and winter clothes: James Town Foundation Monitor 3: 217, 19 November 1997. Other reports put this figure even higher, at 19 per cent: James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 9, 15 January 1998. The UN Human Development Report of 1997 put school non-attendance at 14 per cent. Sharp regional differences in education cause concern, and rural economic poverty makes the outlook very grave.
30. For instance, the head of Issyk-Kul' akim regional administration Jumagul Saadanbekov (Kyrgyzstan) questioned the appropriateness of universal suffrage for his country in Slovo Kyrgzstana, 15 July 1995: cited by Eugene Huskey in 'Kyrgyzstan: the fate of political liberalisation', in Dawisha and Parrott, eds. Conflict, cleavage, and change, p. 268.
31. For instance, the head of Issyk-Kul' akim regional administration Jumagul Saadanbekov (Kyrgyzstan) questioned the appropriateness of universal suffrage for his country in Slovo Kyrgzstana, 15 July 1995: cited by Eugene Huskey in 'Kyrgyzstan: the fate of political liberalisation', in Dawisha and Parrott, eds. Conflict, cleavage, and change, p. 268.
32. Mahallah, translated as 'local community' in English, can also mean a neighbourhood in a city or town where the population is traditionally linked to the norms of a common and collective life. See Guissou Jahangiri-Jeannot, Local and regional power networks: the mahallah, UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Field Coordination Unit, Tajikistan, December 1997, Background Paper.
33. Barrington Moore Jr, Social origins of democracy and dictatorship: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).This argument has been developed by Huntington in The third wave.
34. Graeme Gill argues the same case for Russia, where 'a quasi-corporate outcome in which the formalities of democracy are present, but the substance absent, may be more likely than a democratic one': Graeme Gill, 'Democratization, the bourgeoisie and Russia', in Government and Opposition 33: 3, Summer 1998, pp. 307-30 at p. 329.
35. Bruce Parrott, 'Perspectives on postcommunist democratization', in Dawisha and Parrott, eds, Conflict, cleavage, and change, p. 7.
36. Huntington, 'How countries democratize', p. 581; Linz, 'Transitions to democracy', pp. 145-6.
37. Huntington, 'How countries democratize', p. 581; Linz, 'Transitions to democracy', pp. 145-6.
38. Linz, 'Transitions to democracy', p. 146.
39. Morris Zelditch, Jr and Henry A. Walker, 'Legitimacy and the stability of authority', in J. Berger and M. Zelditch Jr, eds, Status, power and legitimacy (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction, 1998), pp. 315-38 at p. 322.
40. Linz, 'Transitions to democracy', p. 147.
41. William Fierman, 'Political development in Uzbekistan: democratization?', in Dawisha and Parrott, eds, Conflict, cleavage, and change, pp. 360-408.
42. In the sense used by Shirin Akiner in Formation of Kazakli identity, pp. 80-1.
43. Samuel Huntington notes in The third wave that what in the end undermines the legitimacy of the democratic exercise is its failure to operate efficiently and its continuing inability to provide welfare, prosperity, equity, justice, domestic order and external security.
44. In Kazakhstan, for instance, according to recent surveys, people are more likely to blame local authorities for their social problems rather than central government: James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 17, 27 January 1998.
45. Martha Brill Olcott, 'The Caspian false promise', Foreign Policy 11, Summer 1998, pp. 95-113.
46. Nazarbayev, speaking at the Kazakhstan State University: James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 10, 16 January 1998.
47. Kazakhstan Economic Trends, April-June 1998, European Commission, DG1A, Technical Assistance to Commonwealth of Independent States, p. 80.
48. UN Human Development Report: Kazakhstan (Almaty: UNDP). Other Central Asian countries in 1997 ranked in the Human Development Index as follows: Turkmenistan: 103; Uzbekistan: 104; Kyrgyzstan: 109 and Tajikistan: 118. UNDP, United Nations Development Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
49. UN Human Development Report: Kazakhstan (Almaty: UNDP). Other Central Asian countries in 1997 ranked in the Human Development Index as follows: Turkmenistan: 103; Uzbekistan: 104; Kyrgyzstan: 109 and Tajikistan: 118. UNDP, United Nations Development Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
50. James Town Foundation Monitor 3: 217, 19 November 1997.
51. Kyrgyz News, 17 March 1998.
52. Kazakhstan has the highest rate of TB per capita among the CIS countries, In 1997 alone, TB deaths numbered 7,000, double the number three years earlier. It is estimated that 53,000 people are infected. See James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 23, 4 February 1998.
53. It should be noted that strikes are unusual in Kazakhstan where tough penalties are enforced for political protests.
54. James Town Foundation Monitor 3: 212, 12 November 1997.
55. Many local and Western observers disagree on the exact significance of these channels, and on the ways they operate. One view, expressed by Nurbulat Masanov, is that 'it is the clan factor that largely defines the extent of an official's authority, his power, how high he is likely to move in government service, the bounds of his social space, and the length of time he stays in power': 'The clan factor in contemporary political life in Kazakhstan', Prism 4: 3, part 3. Other observers put nepotism inherited from the Soviet period and the art of political manipulation by the leaders above the clan factor.
56. Inside Central Asia, BBC Monitoring Service, 14-20 September 1998.
57. As many observers believe, when the anti-corruption measures began to look threatening Alnur Musayev, the chairman of the National Security Committee, was removed from his post after making a public statement to the effect that 'I shall make public every instance of theft, bribe-taking and abuse of office designed to hinder the progress of investigations': Inside Central Asia, BBC Monitoring Service, 31 August-6 September 1998.
58. Annette Bohr, Uzbekistan: politics and foreign policy (London: RIIA, 1998), p. 30.
59. In his view, 'groups of people who are guilty of fanaticism are capable of generating the greatest destabilization in society because, by painting such movements as "people's actions", they enable the population to relinquish feelings of personal responsibility for individual actions': Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan on the threshold of the twenty-first century (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997), p. 21.
60. Paul Goble, 'Leaders fail to read fundamentalism right', RFE/RL Newsline, 6 May 1998.
61. Petr Svoik, 'Presidential elections are approaching in Kazakhstan and this time, there will be an alternative', Prism 3: 21, part 3, 19 December 1997.
62. At the same time, as the Turkmen opposition notes, many households in the countryside cannot benefit from this, as they do not have access to the gas mains: interview with a member ol Turkmen opposition in Moscow, November 1996.
63. James Town Foundation Monitor 4: 10, 16 January 1998.