Neopatrimonialism, interest groups and patronage networks: The impasses of the governance system in Uzbekistan

Central Asian Survey

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 65-84

  Ilkhamov, Alisher ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

POLITICAL SYSTEM; STATE-LOCAL RELATIONS;

ASIA; EURASIA; UZBEKISTAN; WEST ASIA;

EID: 34547896314     PISSN: 02634937     EISSN: 14653354     Source Type: Trade Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02634930701423491     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (87)

1. The author is grateful to Deniz Kandiyoti and Matteo Fumagalli for their consultation and help in refining this paper.
2. On 13 may 2005 a mass protest meeting in Andijan was violently suppressed by the government troops. For more on these events, see 'Preliminary findings on the events in Andijan, Uzbekistan, 13 May 2005' (with information as of 13 June 2005), OSCE-ODIHR, 20 June 2005, www.osce.org/item/15234.html
3. 'Bullets were falling like rain, the Andijan massacre, May 13, 2005', Human Rights Watch Vol l 17, No 5(D), 2005, http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uzbekistan0605/
4. 'Uzbek refugees recount harrowing tales three months after Andijan violence', UNHCR News Stories, 15 August 2005
5. 'Uzbekistan: The Andijon uprising', Asia Briefing, International Crisis Group, No 38, 25 May 2005.
6. See, for instance on this subject: Tom Lodge, 'Political corruption in South Africa', African Affairs, Vol 97, No 387, 1998, pp 157-187
7. Crawford Young, 'Zaire: Is there a state?', Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol 18, No 1, 1984, pp 80-82
8. David Fashole Luke and Stephen P. Riley, 'The politics of economic decline in Sierra Leone', The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol 27, No 1, 1989, pp 133-141
9. Patric Chabal, Power in Africa: An Essay in Political Interpretation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).
10. As an expression of these concern the discourse of 'good' and 'bad' government has been articulated by ideologists of the so called neo-liberal post-Washington consensus, that shifted focus of attention of the World Bank, UN and other development agencies from the apology of market economy to institutional changes. One of the first expressions of this new approach was the World Bank 1997 Development Report 'The state in changing world'. See also Nicole Winfield, 'UN says bad governance, not lack of cash, hurting poverty reduction', Associated Press, 4 April 2000 (posted at Global Policy Forum, http://www.globalpolicy.org/ socecon/ffd/povreduc.htm (accessed 4 June 2007).
11. Shmuel N. Eisenstad, Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism (London: Sage, 1973).
12. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization/Max Weber trans. by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons; edited with an introduction by Talcott Parsons (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp 341-349.
13. Ibid, p 347.
14. H. E. Chehabi and J.J. Linz further elaborated on the Weberian concept of sultanism [H. E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz, eds, Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)]. The authors and editors of Sultanistic Regimes recognised themselves that this concept is very narrow in its reference to reality and dealt with already gone, that is not already existing at the current moment, regimes. At least, the ruling regime of Uzbekistan can be hardly qualified as sultanistic in a full extent of its meaning. Most important, the concept of sultanism does not explain clearly enough what makes authoritarianism so long lasting and persistent in many parts of the world, and in Central Asia particularly.
15. Ibid, pp 328-336.
16. Yoram Gorlizki, 'Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet neopatrimonial state, 1946-1953', The Journal of Modern History, No 74, 2002, p 701.
17. Ibid, p 720.
18. Such a distinction is drawn in: Richard Snyder, 'Explaining transitions from neopatrimonial dictatorships', Comparative Politics, Vol 24 No 4, 1992, p 396.
19. Rex Brynen, 'The neopatrimonial dimension of Palestinian politics', Journals of Palestine Studies, Vol 25, No 1, 1995, p 25.
20. See, for instance, Richard Sandbrook, 'Patrons, clients and factions: new dimension of conflict analysis in tropical Africa', Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol 5, No 1, 1972, pp 104-119
21. Jean-Claude Willame, Patrimonialism and Political Change in Congo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972)
22. James A. Bill and Carl Leiden, The Middle East: Politics and Power (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1974)
23. Brynen, op cit, Ref 12
24. James C. Scott, 'Patron-client politics and political change in Southeast Asia', The American Political Science Review, Vol 66, No 1, 1972, pp 91-113.
25. John Ishiyama, 'Neopatrimonialism and the prospects for democratization in the Central Asian republics', in Sally N. Cummings, ed., Power and Change in Central Asia (London: Routledge, 2002).
26. Ibid, p 43.
27. On this subject, see Alisher Ilkhamov, 'Post-Soviet Central Asia: From nationhood mythologies to regional cold wars?', in Irina Morozova, ed., Towards Social Stability and Democratic Governance in Central Eurasia: Challenges to regional security (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2005).
28. As a case study of hyper-centralisation in the agro-sector of Uzbekistan, see Alisher Ilkhamov, 'Divided economy: Kolkhozes vs. peasant subsistence farms in Uzbekistan', Central Asian Monitor, No 4, 2000
29. Alisher Ilkhamov, 'Shirkats, Dekhqon farmers and others: Farm restructuring in Uzbekistan', Central Asian Survey, Vol 17, No 4, 1998, pp 539-560.
30. Corporatism is supposed to secure some formal mechanisms for accommodation of group interests, but in the case of Uzbekistan, instead of institutionalised channels of state-civil society negotiations, the state fosters a set of quasi-non-governmental bodies fully co-opted and controlled by the state apparatus. See Deniz Kandiyoti, 'Post-Soviet institutional design and the paradoxes of the 'Uzbek path', Central Asian Survey, Vol 26, No 1, 2007, pp 31-48.
31. The term 'clan' is not used here to denote kinship-based entities, or relations based on lineage and descent, actual or fictive, but networks based on a much broader range of affiliations including region of origin or formed around sectoral interests.
32. According to one informant who is used to work in the government, each top official has an adviser who accumulates knowledge about the informal hierarchy and ranking within the government and makes recommendations to his boss how to act in some of other situation in accordance to this ranking.
33. Donald S. Carlisle, 'Power and politics in Soviet Uzbekistan', in William Fierman, ed., Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991)
34. Donald S. Carlisle, 'Islam Karimov and Uzbekistan: Back to the future?', in Timothy Colton, ed., Patterns in Post-Communist Leadership (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995)
35. Jim Critchlow, 'Corruption, nationalism, and the native elites in Soviet Central Asia', Journal of Communist Studies, Vol 4, No 2, 1988, pp 142-161
36. Jim Critchlow, 'Prelude to "independence": How the Uzbek party apparatus broke Moscow's grip on elite recruitment', in William Fierman, ed., Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991).
37. Kathleen Collins, 'The logic of clan politics: Evidence from the Central Asian trajectories', World Politics, Vol 56, No 2, 2004
38. Kathleen Collins, The Logic of Clan Politics in Central Asia: Regime Transformation from the Soviet to the Post-Soviet Era (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
39. Sally N. Cummings, Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005)
40. Alisher Ilkhamov, 'The limits of centralization: Regional challenges in Uzbekistan', in Pauline Jones Luong, ed., The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004)
41. Alisher Ilkhamov, 'Nation-state formation: Features of social stratification in the late Soviet era', International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 34, No 2, 2002, pp 317-335.
42. Barnett R. 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: Routledge, 1998), pp 143-148
43. Oliver Roy, 'Is the conflict in Tajikistan a model for conflicts throughout Central Asia?', in Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Frédéric Grare and Shirin Akiner, eds, Tajikistan: The Trials of Independence (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1998), pp 136-140.
44. In Tajikistan the 'clan' and regional groupings division was considered as one of the causes for the civil war in 1993. See, for instance, Shahram Akbarzadeh, 'Why did nationalism fail in Tajikistan?', Europe-Asia Studies, Vol 48, No 7, 1996, pp 1116-1118
45. Muriel Atkin, 'Thwarted democratization in Tajikistan', Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, ed., Conflict, Cleavage and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
46. Muriel Atkin, 'Tajikistan: Reform, reaction, and civil war', in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds, New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
47. Oliver Roy, Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Frederic Grare and Shirin Akiner, Tajikistan: The Trails to Independence (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997).
48. Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of 'Blood' in Kazakhstan (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2005), p 26.
49. See on losing by Uzbeks social memory about their tribal origins: Alisher Ilkhamov, 'Archaeology of Uzbek identity', Central Asian Survey, Vol 23, No 3-4, 2004, pp 289-326.
50. Atkin, op cit, Ref 24, p 292.
51. Kathleen Collins, 'Clans, pacts and politics: Understanding regime transition in Central Asia', PhD dissertation, UMI, 2000, p vi.
52. Ibid, pp 38-43.
53. Nicholas Abercrombie and Stephen Hill, 'Paternalism and patronage', The British Journal of Sociology, Vol 27, No 4, p 414.
54. Ibid, p 386.
55. See, for instance, a substantial recount of the practice of blat in the Soviet period: Alena V. Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
56. For more on this aspect, see Alex Weingrod, 'Patrons, patronage, and political parties', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol 10, No 4, 1968, p 383.
57. Eric Wolf, 'Kinship, friendship and patron-client relations', in Michael Banton, ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London: Tavistock Publications), 1966, pp 1-22.
58. Weingrod, op cit, Ref 33, p 377.
59. Tommaso Campanella, La città del sole: Dialogo poetico [The City of the Sun: A poetical dialogue] translated with introduction and notes by Daniel J. Donno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Mario Caciagli and Frank P. Belloni, 'The "new" clientelism in Southern Italy: The Christian Democratic Party in Catania', in S. N. Eisenstadt and R. Lemarchand, eds, Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), p 35.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid, p 37.
65. As an indicator of the type of society, the considered countries belong to one can refer to the ratio of rural-urban population. For instance, in Kyrgyzstan, this ratio has remained stable since 1960s (66% in 1960 and 65% in 1999). See Demoscope Weekly, No 191-192, 21 February-6 March, 2005, http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2005/0191/analit01.php (accessed 4 June 2007). In other Central Asian countries the ratio of rural population is comparatively high: In Uzbekistan, it increased from 59% in 1989 to 63% in 2001, in Tajikistan, from 68% in 1989 to 74% in 2002, and in Turkmenistan it is 56% (2003). Only in Kazakhstan the ratio of rural population is comparatively lower, at 43% in 2004.
66. See Demoscope Weekly, No 185-186, 10-23 January 2005, http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2005/0197/barom01.php (accessed 4 June 2007).
67. Michael Bratton and Nicolas Van de Walle, 'Neopatrimonial regimes and political transitions in Africa', World Politics, Vol 46, No 4, 1994, p 454.
68. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
69. S. P. Tolstov, T. A. Abramzon, N. A. Kislyakov (eds), Narody Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana, Vol 1 (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1962), p 175.
70. Centrasia.Ru data-base of persons, http://www.centrasia.ru/person.php4 (accessed 3 October 2006).
71. Ken Jowitt, The New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), pp 127, 131.
72. John P. Willerton, Jr, 'Patronage networks and coalition building in the Brezhnev era', Soviet Studies, Vol 39, No 2, 1987, p 176.
73. In the Karimov administration they had occupied positions of First Deputy Prime Minister, President Advisor and Minister of Foreign Affairs respectively; under Rashidov rule they also were holding positions of respectively the Minister of Water Management, Chair of Tashkent Oblast Executive Committee (oblast governor), and senior official in republican KGB (Kamilov is also linked with Rashidov by relative ties). Source The database of personalities, Centrasia.Ru, http://www.centrasia.ru/person.php4 (accessed 16 October 2006).
74. Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1997).
75. Ibid, p 59. Interestingly, one statement in his book is markedly eloquent and can be referred to his own biography, at least to the time of his ascendance to presidency: 'A personal recommendation by acquaintance of an official or closely related person to him - a relative, a friend, a countryman - was the magic world that opened the doors of his office. In his turn, such an administrator needed a reliable and loyal environment to maintain and herein force his position in power. The principle of personal loyalty became one of criteria of his selection policy'.
76. Ibid, p 62.
77. In 1983, Moscow launched an anti-corruption campaign targeting the cadre network nurtured by Sharaf Rashidov. In the same year Rashidov, in anticipation of his denunciation, died from heart attack. Afterwards, his legacy named 'rashidovshina' was publicly condemned. Since 1983 thousands of party and state officials in Uzbekistan were either arrested or ousted from their positions. Only after 1991 was his name rehabilitated and even became a venerated symbol for victims of Moscow's anti-Uzbek politics.
78. Carlisle, op cit, Ref 21.
79. See the account of centre-periphery 'clan' struggle in Ilkhamov, op cit, Ref 22.
80. Calculated for the period from 1993 to 2002. See Ilkhamov, op cit, Ref 22, p 170.
81. These two terms are used as Weberian 'ideal types', not as empirical categories. In reality, a particular regime can combine features of both types.
82. Michel Foucault distinguishes between the ruling over 'subjects', or 'sovereignty', and the governing 'things', or 'government'. If the end of 'sovereignty' is 'internal to itself' (meaning, that the preservation of sovereignty is its ultimate end) then the ends of 'government' are plural and concerns the management of 'territories' and related welfare issues and needs by a range of multiform tactics. Foucault believes that historically the regime of power dominated by structures of sovereignty tend to transform into one secured by techniques of government. See Michel Foucault, 'Governmentality', in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P Miller, eds, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp 92-101. The concept of 'government' corresponds to Max Weber's point of modern rational bureaucracy. Another author, Michael Mann, similarly distinguishes between 'despotic' power and 'infrastructural' power, referring the latter 'to the institutional capacity of a central state', or 'collective power, 'power through' society, coordinating social life through state infrastructures' and presuming, among other things, negotiation with civil society.
83. See Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol II (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p 59.
84. The blurring borders between state and society as an essential feature of Soviet legacy is also highlighted by Pauline Jones. She writes that post-Soviet states in the regions 'were already imbued with a well-developed set of formal and informal institutions'. See Pauline Jones, 'Introduction', in Pauline Jones, ed., The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), p 2.
85. The neo-institutional school (Samuel Huntington, Theda Skocpol and others), inspired by the Weberian theory of power, emphasizes states' institutional autonomy. See Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968))
86. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
87. For instance, according to sources close to the government the President rejected all proposals of government's experts to consider and implement the administrative reform. The proposals, among other things, included the radical rise of salaries for public office holders, in order to discourage them from generating personal income by engaging in corrupt deals. This fact allows to make conclusion that the President is rather interested in keeping corrupt, and therefore, dismissible, officials than those honest. The latter would be considered less controllable than corrupt officials.