Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia

Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia PDF Author: Viktoria Akchurina
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031141822
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This book is about transformation of the state and an incomplete state-building. It defies the transitology assumption of continuity, linearity and dichotomy of formal and informal in the transformation of the state. Contrary to the conventional approaches, it claims that any social order or its political scaffolding, the state, is always incomplete and we need to develop cognitive maps to better understand that incompleteness. It reflects on the social practices, processes and patterns that evolve as a non-linear result of three sets of factors: those that are historical, external, and elite-driven. Three Central Asian states - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan - are examined here comparatively as case studies, as Central Asia represents an interesting terrain to challenge conventional understanding of the state. Specifically, the book captures a paradox at hand: how come three states, which made different political, economic, cultural, and social choices at the outset of their independence in the 1990s, have ended up as so-called “weak states” in the 2000s and onwards? This puzzle can be better understood through looking at the relationship among three main sets of factors that shape state-building processes, such as history, external actors, and local elites. This book applies an interdisciplinary approach, combining political anthropology, political economy, sociology, and political science. It helps conceptualize and understand social and political order beyond the “failed state” paradigm

Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia

Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia PDF Author: Viktoria Akchurina
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031141822
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is about transformation of the state and an incomplete state-building. It defies the transitology assumption of continuity, linearity and dichotomy of formal and informal in the transformation of the state. Contrary to the conventional approaches, it claims that any social order or its political scaffolding, the state, is always incomplete and we need to develop cognitive maps to better understand that incompleteness. It reflects on the social practices, processes and patterns that evolve as a non-linear result of three sets of factors: those that are historical, external, and elite-driven. Three Central Asian states - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan - are examined here comparatively as case studies, as Central Asia represents an interesting terrain to challenge conventional understanding of the state. Specifically, the book captures a paradox at hand: how come three states, which made different political, economic, cultural, and social choices at the outset of their independence in the 1990s, have ended up as so-called “weak states” in the 2000s and onwards? This puzzle can be better understood through looking at the relationship among three main sets of factors that shape state-building processes, such as history, external actors, and local elites. This book applies an interdisciplinary approach, combining political anthropology, political economy, sociology, and political science. It helps conceptualize and understand social and political order beyond the “failed state” paradigm

The Development of Civil Society in Central Asia

The Development of Civil Society in Central Asia PDF Author: Janice Giffen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781897748756
Category : Asia, Central
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
This book considers the applicability and use of civil society, both as a concept and in practice, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The volume examines whether civil society organisations (CSOs) are a progressive force for change, or a safety net. Various forms of CSOs are investigated: NGOs and community based organisations, trade unions, political parties and religious groups, as well as more long-standing soviet and traditional institutions and practices. The book contains lessons and perspectives about civil society growth across time, and considers future directions.

European Union Governance in Central Asia

European Union Governance in Central Asia PDF Author: Agha Bayramov
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040154956
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The edited volume attempts to critically approach EU-Central Asian relations, asking whether – when adopting a more sectoral governance approach – the EU’s transformative power vis-à-vis the region is greater than initially argued and if so, under what conditions it flourishes most. It assesses whether, through adopting a sectoral approach to the area of, development, infrastructure, water management, security, climate change, energy, trade, health, education, or any other element defining EU-Central Asian relations, the European Union is able to (co-)shape this geopolitically strategic region. If so, what drives the EU’s ability to do so; if not, what mitigates its (potential) influence? This book contributes to the scholarship on the EU’s external governance both empirically and theoretically.

Political Regimes and Neopatrimonialism in Central Asia

Political Regimes and Neopatrimonialism in Central Asia PDF Author: Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811590931
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This book is aimed both at researchers and advanced students of Central Asia, the space of the former USSR, and the foreign policy of Russia and China. The authors adopt a sociological approach in understanding how power structures emerged in the wake of the Soviet collapse. The independencies in Central Asia did not happen as a consequence of a nationalist struggle, but because the USSR imploded. Thus, instead of the elites being replaced, the same Soviet elites who had competed for power in the previous system continued to do so in the new one, which they had to build, adapting themselves and the system to their needs. Additionally, unlike in the immense majority of the independent states that emerged from decolonization, the social movements and capacity to mobilize the people were very weak in the new Central Asian states. For this reason, the configuration of the new systems was the product of a competition for power between a very small number of elites who did not have to answer to the people and their demands. Thus, the new power regimes acquired a strong neopatrimonial component. Analyzing the structure of societies, economies and polities of post-socialist states, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Central Asia, to sociologists, and to scholars of China's rise.

Theorizing Central Asian Politics

Theorizing Central Asian Politics PDF Author: Rico Isaacs
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331997355X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This book brings together a series of innovative contributions which provide an eclectic view of how theorizing politics plays out in Central Asia. How are the concepts of governance, legitimacy, ideology, power, order, and the state framed in the region? How can we use the experiences of the Central Asian states to renovate political theorizing? In addressing these questions, the volume relies on the contributions of many young and local researchers, whose chapters are primed to address three key themes: exploring models of governance, revealing ideological justifications, and reframing state and order. Utilizing a range of single and comparative case studies from across the Central Asian space, this illuminating and original volume opens up a new space for political theorists, regional specialists and students of politics to begin reconsidering how we approach the theorization of regions of the world assumed to be on the periphery.

Kyrgyzstan and the Legacies of Collectivisation

Kyrgyzstan and the Legacies of Collectivisation PDF Author: Christopher McDowell
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527546470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book argues that the early twentieth century Soviet Russian occupation and rule of the Central Asian territory that became Kyrgyzstan was made possible by collectivisation and forcible population displacement. The rural transformation brought about by the seizure of private and community owned assets, the ending of pastoralism as a livelihood system, and the corralling of people on to collective and state farms were pivotal strategies of colonisation. Evictions, involuntary resettlement and immigration reconfigured the population and enabled largely non-Kyrgyz rule. As the book describes, the dramatic changes wrought by Sovietisation required force and coercion, which were met with resistance and non-compliance. More than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, independent Kyrgyzstan continues to struggle with the legacies of Soviet rule. The book explores how the dismantling of collectivisation and the command economy failed to resist the rise of authoritarian, populist and nationalist politics, combined with economic stagnation and ethnic conflict.

Slavery and Empire in Central Asia

Slavery and Empire in Central Asia PDF Author: Jeff Eden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108470513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Using newly-uncovered archival evidence, Jeff Eden sheds unprecedented light on the lives of slaves ensnared by the Central Asian slave trade.

Post-Liberal Statebuilding in Central Asia

Post-Liberal Statebuilding in Central Asia PDF Author: Philipp Lottholz
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529220009
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Drawing on decolonial perspectives on peace, statehood and development, this illuminating book examines post-liberal statebuilding in Central Asia. Through its analysis, the book highlights the problem with assumptions about liberal democracy, modern statehood and capitalist development as the standard template for post-conflict countries.

The European Union, Russia and the Post-Soviet Space

The European Union, Russia and the Post-Soviet Space PDF Author: Viktoria Akchurina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000630234
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
This book is an exploration of how the European Union (EU) and other regional actors construct, understand and use different forms of power in a political space that is increasingly referred to as "Greater Eurasia". The contributors examine the extent that the understanding of power shapes how states and the EU act on a range of questions from energy to the balance of power in Eurasia. They explore how the EU’s and other regional actors’, primarily Russia’s, understanding of power determines whether the post-Soviet space is a neighbourhood, a battleground or an arena for geopolitical and geostrategic confrontation. The chapters deal with a range of issues from negotiations between the EU and Azerbaijan, to how the EU and Russia are trying to shape relations in Central Asia. The volume represents an innovative way of understanding the changing dynamics of the relationship between Russia and the EU, with some original empirical data, and presents these dynamics within a broader conceptual and geographic framework. It also contributes to emerging debates about how the ideational construction of political space may provide insight into how actors behave. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Europe-Asia Studies.

The Contentious Politics of Statebuilding

The Contentious Politics of Statebuilding PDF Author: Outi Keränen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351802704
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The book examines the dynamics between domestic and international statebuilding actors. While the dynamics between "local" and "international" statebuilding actors have been previously theorised through concepts such as hybridity and friction, there have been few attempts to develop conceptual tools for the empirical study of statebuilding dynamics. By drawing on a set of concepts and mechanisms developed in the Contentious Politics literature, this book fills this gap. It deploys concepts such as political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures and framing to trace the interactions between domestic and international statebuilding actors in the case of post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis identifies a set of practices operating at various domains of Bosnia’s society—institutional, symbolic and discursive—through which domestic statebuilding actors seek to influence the internationally-driven statebuilding process. Responses by the international statebuilding actors to such activities have often resulted in further contention. The book argues that the dynamics between the different statebuilding actors and agendas in the Bosnian case are characterised not only by conflict and contention but also symbiosis whereby the presence of non-conforming local actors justifies the extension of international mandates while the continued international presence generates further contestation. These observations and the conceptual tools introduced in the book add to our understanding of the often slow and arduous statebuilding processes in post-conflict societies. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, European politics and international relations in general.