Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia

Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia
Author: Viktoria Akchurina
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2022-10-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3031141822

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
Author: Janice Giffen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2005
Genre: Asia, Central
ISBN: 9781897748756

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.

Theorizing Central Asian Politics

Theorizing Central Asian Politics
Author: Rico Isaacs
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 331997355X

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.

Slavery and Empire in Central Asia

Slavery and Empire in Central Asia
Author: Jeff Eden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108470513

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
Author: Lottholz, Philipp
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2022-05-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1529220017

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Drawing on decolonial perspectives on peace, statehood and development, this illuminating book examines post-liberal statebuilding in Central Asia. It argues that, despite its emancipatory appearance, post-liberal statebuilding is best understood as a set of social ordering mechanisms that lead to new forms of exclusion, marginalization and violence. Using ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Kyrgyzstan, the volume offers a detailed examination of community security and peacebuilding discourses and practices. 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, which is widespread and rarely reflected upon.

Soviet Nation-Building in Central Asia

Soviet Nation-Building in Central Asia
Author: Grigol Ubiria
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2015-09-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317504356

The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in new state-led nation-building projects in Central Asia. The emergence of independent republics spawned a renewed Western scholarly interest in the region’s nationality issues. Presenting a detailed study, this book examines the state-led nation-building projects in the Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Exploring the degree, forms and ways of the Soviet state involvement in creating Kazakh and Uzbek nations, this book places the discussion within the theoretical literature on nationalism. The author argues that both Kazakh and Uzbek nations are artificial constructs of Moscow-based Soviet policy-makers of the 1920s and 1930s. This book challenges existing arguments in current scholarship by bringing some new and alternative insights into the role of indigenous Central Asian and Soviet officials in these nation-building projects. It goes on to critically examine post-Soviet official Kazakh and Uzbek historiographies, according to which Kazakh and Uzbek peoples had developed national collective identities and loyalties long before the Soviet era. This book will be a useful contribution to Central Asian History and Politics, as well as studies of Nationalism and Soviet Politics.

The European Union, Russia and the Post-Soviet Space

The European Union, Russia and the Post-Soviet Space
Author: Viktoria Akchurina
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2022-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000630234

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
Author: Outi Keränen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2017-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351802704

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.

The Post-Soviet as Post-Colonial

The Post-Soviet as Post-Colonial
Author: Partlett, William
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-05-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1802209441

Working to demystify the enigmatic process behind enacting public policies, The Politics of Meaning Struggles uses the case of the 2011 prohibition of hydraulic fracturing by the French government to address the wider phenomenon of governmental shifts in policy decisions.

China’s Eurasian Dilemmas

China’s Eurasian Dilemmas
Author: R. James Ferguson
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2018-08-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786433826

Providing a timely analysis of China’s engagement with Eurasia, R. James Ferguson focuses on the challenges obstructing China’s path to becoming a sustainable global power. Engagement across Eurasia presents China, its leaders and policymakers with intensified contact with regional and national conflicts, posing environmental, developmental and strategic dilemmas.