Post Liberal Statebuilding In Central Asia

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, marginalisation 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.

This cutting edge collection focuses on the nature of civil society and its role in facilitating governance in Central Asia, considering local implications related to the concept of social capital and civil society in the Uzbek context. It discusses the complexity of the notion of social capital in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, detailing the challenges and pressures facing the Uzbek people.Challenging prevailing views on post-Soviet political transitions, the book demonstrates that successful transition to democracy and rule of law cannot be accomplished unless the concerns, fears, frustrations and local understandings of the desired political system are heard, registered and carefully interpreted. Offering a comparative study of civil society and social capital in Asia, this collection is a key read not only for scholars and students in civil governance and post-soviet transitions, but also aid agencies, foreign governments, and international organisations working with civil society groups.

Focusing on the areas of politics, identity and education, this book looks at some of the most pressing and challenging issues that Kyrgyzstan faces in the post-Soviet era. It argues that Kyrgyzstan is challenged with oscillations between the old and the new on the one hand, and domestic and international on the other. The book analyses the process of post-Soviet transition in today’s Kyrgyzstan by focusing on the political elites, some of the major identity problems and educational issues. It discusses how Kyrgyzstan’s first president in the post-Soviet era had already been an exceptional leader even prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in terms of his democratic and liberal tendencies. The book goes on to look at how identity is a major factor in the country, shaped to a large extent by genealogical factors and patron-client mechanisms on the one hand, and religious considerations on the other. Finally, it highlights how education has been perceived as a very influential agent of socialization that develops not only literacy and other skills, but also common attitudes and values that are considered essential to any society. By evaluating these three areas, the book argues that Kyrgyzstan cannot isolate itself from the demands, priorities and pressures of international actors, which sometimes are in conflict with the country’s domestic conditions. It is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Politics and International Relations.

Talks about States and societies from Soviet rule to independence. This volume compares State building and State society interactions in the five post Soviet central Asian States. It offers insights about national, religious identities.

In the wake of Soviet disintegration, Central Asia became an idiom for the ensuing confusion in the post-Cold War climate of international affairs, characterized by inter-state order and intra-state anarchy. Dynamic changes associated with the end of communism, the 'revival' of ethnic, religious and clan mobilization and the gradual involvement of various international actors, have inspired extensive scholarly and policy engagement with the region. Yet most analyses fail to bring Central Asia into the mainstream of systematic interrogation. This timely volume analyzes the quality of statehood in the region by assessing the complex dynamics of Central Asian state-making and focusing on the simultaneous patterns of socialization and internalization in the region. It straddles four different bodies of literature and addresses the systematic lacunae in all of them to investigate the localization effects of Russia, China, the EU and NATO on forms of post-Soviet statehood in Central Asia - placing Central Asia in the study and practice of world politics.

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.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the independent republics of central Asia enjoy a greater degree of autonomy, but are faced with a range of complex social, political and economic problems. This book addresses these problems.

Tajikistan is a key state in Central Asia, and will become crucial to the rHélène Thibault is assistant professor in Political Science at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan since 2016. Prior to that, she had been a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for the Study of Religious Pluralism and the Center for International Studies at the Université de Montréal. Apart from research activities, she also took part in multiple election observation missions with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine.egional power balance as it transitions away from Soviet government systems and responds to the rise of Chinese financial power alongside the continuing presence of Russian military might. This book demonstrates how Soviet structures in Tajikistan have been transformed into state structures, and how national identities are formed. Helene Thibault focuses on the differences between secular nationhood in Tajikistan, and an increasingly popular and influential 'born-again' Muslim identity. Featuring extensive and original primary-source material, including 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, Thibault demonstrates the profound and lasting influence of Soviet power structures and attitudes, and how secular and religious identities clash when building a new state in the region.