Sally N. Cummings

Conceptualising State Capacity: Comparing Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Strengthening the state is central to the post-communist reform agenda. Here, state capacity combines organisational, material and social resources and is conceptualised along four dimensions: ideational, political, technical and implementational. This conceptualisation is applied to a comparative, survey-based analysis in 2002 of 125 medium-ranking officials in two post-communist Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The findings reveal that although Kazakhstans controlled economic reform programme and natural resources have placed it in a stronger position to develop its state capacity, important ideational, political and implementational problems pose long-term obstacles for reform. In turn, Kyrgyzstans early liberalisation in the absence of economic and social resources may be serving to undermine its state capacity.

Legitimation and Identification in Kazakhstan

This article analyzes Kazakhstans contested process of nation- and state-building through a closer examination of the links between legitimation and identity. A wider Weberian emphasis on how the elite relates itself to the broader relationship between rulers and ruled illuminates the difficulties Kazakhstans elite has encountered in providing both a collective identity and one of self. This complex symbiotic relationship between self-legitimation, legitimation and identification is explained in terms of the economy, polity and perceptions of the Soviet order.

Leaving Lenin: elites, official ideology and monuments in the Kyrgyz Republic

Many Lenin monuments remain in cities around the former Soviet republics and a few national or regional authorities have decreed it against the law to deface or remove them. The Lenin monument in Bishkek, capital city of the Kyrgyz Republic, is an example of both policies. On two main counts, however, the fate of this particular bronze statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been unusual. Only in the Kyrgyz case was the countrys central Lenin monument left untouched for over a decade after the collapse of communism, a decree for its preservation as a national treasure being put in force as late as 2000. And, when, in 2003, the government after all decided to remove the monument, it was then relocated only some 100 yards from its original location. These twin issues of timing and new spatial framing offer a window on the relationship between state ideology and politics in the Kyrgyz Republic. I propose to use an official ideology approach to understand the Kyrgyz ruling elites ideological relationship to the Lenin monument after the collapse of communism.

Inscapes, Landscapes and Greyscapes: The Politics of Signification in Central Asia

Almost 30 years earlier Harold D. Laswell (1971, p. 545) had encouraged ‘political science to examine in detail the process of . . . symbolization’. This work echoes these concerns; while it does not reject the importance of more traditional political studies, it encourages a broadening of its field to incorporate a study of symbolism in political life. Symbolism is largely about producing, conveying and interpreting meaning. Language, discourse and image all produce such meaning. Specifically, this collection asks how, why and with what effects politics interacts with aural, visual and linguistic symbols in Central Asia. It reflects how political science can usefully collaborate with other disciplines, particularly cultural, psychological, anthropological and geographical studies, to incorporate the symbolic in its political analysis (Halas 2002). Victor Turner (1966, p. 19) points out how the Concise Oxford Dictionary refers to a ‘symbol’ as a thing ‘regarded by general consent as naturally typifying or representing or recalling something by possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought’. The symbolic observed by various contributors here ranges hugely from objects, activities, relationships, events, to gestures and spatial units. Post-Soviet Central Asia is an intriguing field to examine this process of signification. A region which did not see an organised independence movement develop prior to Soviet implosion at the centre, it provokes questions about how symbolisation begins in the absence of a national will to do so. An externally imposed collapse of certainty led to a scramble for internally invented signs of certainty. The power container overnight had become a national one. This provokes questions about

Situating the ‘Tulip Revolution’

The authors assess various writings on the ‘coloured revolutions’ more generally and the ‘Tulip Revolution’ specifically. They place this scholarship into three broad categories: an assessment of the Akaev years from a democratization and state-building perspective; the nature of and relationship between formal and informal institutions prior to and after March 2005; and, finally, the domestic and international factors behind mobilization. These correspond broadly to the three areas of enquiry by the contributors to this collection.

Introduction: ‘Revolution’ not revolution

Temir Birnazarov’s 100-minute film Route of Hope (2008) captures the story of Kyrgyzstan’s uncertain and unexpected journey from Soviet communism since 1991. The film tells the story of 19 passengers on a bus travelling from the capital Bishkek to their home village, named ‘Future’. The two drivers who attempt to steer the bus through dense fog to its destination represent the two presidents of independent Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akaev (1990–2005) and Kurmanbek Bakiev (2005–). Although the first driver is unanimously voted off the bus for incompetence (he drove round in a circle) and corruption (he overcharged the passengers) and runs away, the second also quickly loses the trust of his passengers by driving headlong into a ditch. This second driver had dishonestly earned the support of passengers by pretending to retrieve a fellow passenger’s wallet when he had himself stolen it. Ultimately, the fate of the Kyrgyz bus (people) lies in the hands of a passenger who, although from the same village, is unknown to his co-travellers and who gets off the bus, brandishing a torch to help steer the passengers to safety. On 24 March 2005, the then first and only president of independent Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akaev, fled the country after brief street demonstrations. Opposition leaders, headed by Kurmanbek Bakiev, came to power. The event quickly earned the epithat Tulip Revolution and succeeded Ukraine’s Orange and Georgia’s Rose Revolutions some two years previously, suggesting, at least initially, that a cascade of revolutions were sweeping aside the longer-standing political leaderships across the former Soviet Union. Birnazarov’s film portrays the ambivalent feelings the Kyrgyz people continue to hold toward the March 2005 end to the Akaev regime and the ushering in of a new leader. On the one hand, this watershed in Kyrgyz politics, in which the leader fled the country, emboldened a people unaccustomed to effective collective action. After all, while other republics, especially in the Baltic and the Caucasus had seen large-scale popular mobilization against Soviet rule, Kyrgyzstan, like much of Central Asia, gained national independence essentially by default. In addition, in the few cases where smaller-scale social mobilization had occurred in post-independence Kyrgyzstan, such as in the southern city of Aksy in 2002 (Radnitz 2005), it was met by state-sanctioned violence, and resulted in civilian casualties. Therefore, the prospects of significant societal challenge to Kyrgyz authority before March 2005 were very limited, and thus these events marked a significant disjuncture in Kyrgyzstani political life. On the other hand, despite that significance, much of the population also regards 2005 negatively. The night of 24/25 March is often remembered less for popular empowerment than for the widespread looting and wanton destruction that accompanied that night of leadership vacuum. Three years on, the events of 2005 are also assessed in terms of what they have achieved practically for society, both in terms of economic well-being and good governance: on both counts, instead, the widespread pessimism indicated in opinion polls demonstrates

State, regime, and government in the Kyrgyz Republic (1991–2010): disaggregating a relationship

This article explores how differentiating between the concepts of state, regime, and government adds analytical purchase to our understanding of post-independent politics in the ex-Soviet Kyrgyz Republic. By looking at the ways in which the government, regime, and state interact, it aims to strengthen existing understandings of why early liberalisation was thwarted in this republic, presidential rule proved twice difficult to maintain, and why the republic continues to face an unaltered fragile balance between how power is divided and how it is infrastructurally and coercively exercised.

Author–critic forum: popular protest and regime change in Central Asia

The ‘Author–Critic Forum’ consists of a standard review of a new book plus a number of shorter appraisals of it, and finally a response by the author to all these contributions. The choice of book is agreed upon by the editorship of the journal, the Editorial Board and the International Advisory Board. Books are selected because they engage pressing and contested theoretical and/or empirical issues within the broad field of Central Asian Studies. Explanations of regime formation and change in Central Asia are one of the most debated areas of political-science research into the region, and we thus considered it timely to bring an experienced and varied group of scholars together to consider Scott Radnitz’s important contribution to this discussion. The purpose of the format is to provide a lively forum that will acquaint the readership of the journal with the range of arguments, debates and issues within a particular field. The Book Review Editor invites rejoinders to the debate begun by this forum.