This book is a study of the role of clan networks in Central Asia from the early twentieth century through 2004. Exploring the social, economic, and historical roots of clans, and their political role and political transformation in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, it argues that clans are informal political actors that are critical to understanding politics in this region. The book demonstrates that the Soviet system was far less successful in transforming and controlling Central Asian society, and in its policy of eradicating clan identities, than has often been assumed. In order to understand Central Asian politics and their economies, scholars and policy makers must take into account the powerful role of these informal groups, how they adapt and change over time, and how they may constrain or undermine democratization in this strategic region.

Presenting a study of regime transition, political transformation, and the challenges that faced the post-Communist republics of Central Asia on independence, this book focuses on the process of transition in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the obstacles that these newly-independent states are facing in the post-Communist period. The book analyses how in the early stages of their independence, the governments of Central Asia declared that they would build democratic states, but that in practice, they demonstrated that they are more inclined towards authoritarianism. With the declaration of independence, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, like many other former Soviet national republics, were faced with the issues of nationalism, ethnicity, identity and territorial delimitation. This book looks at how the discourse of patrimonial nationalism in post-Communist Tajikistan and Uzbekistan has been the elites’ strategy to address all these issues: to maintain the stateness of their respective countries; to preserve the unity of their nation; to fill the ideological void of post-Communism; to prevent the rise of Islam; and to legitimize their authoritarian practice. Arguing against the claim that the Central Asian states have undergone divergent paths of transition, the book discusses how they are in fact all authoritarian, although exhibiting different degrees of authoritarianism. This book provides a useful contribution to studies on Central Asian Politics and International Relations.

A sweeping history of Islamism in Central Asia from the Russian Revolution to the present through Soviet-era archival documents, oral histories, and a trove of interviews and focus groups. Few observers anticipated a surge of Islamism in Central Asia, after seventy years of forced communist atheism. Muslims do not inevitably support Islamism, a modern political ideology of Islam. Yet, Islamism became the dominant form of political opposition in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In Politicizing Islam in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins explores the causes, dynamics, and variation in Islamist movements-first within the USSR, and then in the post-Soviet states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic and historical research on Islamist mobilization, she explains the strategies and relative success of each Central Asian Islamist movement. Collins argues that in each case, state repression of Islam, by Soviet and post-Soviet regimes, together with the diffusion of religious ideologies, motivated Islamist mobilization. Sweeping in scope, this book traces the dynamics of Central Asian Islamist movements from the Soviet era through the Tajik civil war, the Afghan jihad against the US, and the foreign fighter movement joining the Syrian jihad.

"In July 2007, the European Union initiated a fundamentally new approach to the countries of Central Asia. The launch of the EU Strategy for Central Asia signals a qualitative shift in the Union's relations with a region of the world that is of growing importance as a supplier of energy, is geographically situated in a politically sensitive area - between China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and the south Caucasus - and contains some of the most authoritarian political regimes in the world. In this volume, leading specialists from Europe, the United States and Central Asia explore the key challenges facing the European Union as it seeks to balance its policies between enhancing the Union's energy, business and security interests in the region while strengthening social justice, democratisation efforts and the protection of human rights. With chapters devoted to the Union's bilateral relations with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and to the vital issues of security and democratisation, 'Engaging Central Asia' provides the first comprehensive analysis of the EU's strategic initiative in a part of the world that is fast emerging as one of the key regions of the 21st century."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume offers the first systematic comparison of political change, leadership style and stability in Central Asia. The contributors, all leading international specialists on the region, offer focused case-studies of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, comparing how the regimes have further consolidated their power and resisted change.

Edward Schatz explores the politics of kin-based clan divisions in the post-Soviet state of Kazakhstan. Drawing from extensive ethnographic and archival research, interviews, and wide-ranging secondary sources, he highlights a politics that poses a two-tiered challenge to current thinking about modernity and Central Asia. First, asking why kinship divisions do not fade from political life with modernization, he shows that the state actually constructs clan relationships by infusing them with practical political and social meaning. By activating the most important quality of clans - their "concealability" - the state is itself responsible for the vibrant politics of these subethnic divisions which has emerged and flourished in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Subethnic divisions are crucial to understanding how group solidarities and power relations coexist and where they intersect. But, in a second challenge to current thinking, Schatz argues that clan politics should not be understood simply as competition among primordial groups. Rather, the meanings attributed to clan relationships - both the public stigmas and the publicly proclaimed pride in clans - are part and parcel of this contest. Drawing parallels with relevant cases from the Middle East, East and North Africa, and other parts of the former USSR, Schatz concludes that a more appropriate policy may be achieved by making clans a legitimate part of political and social life, rendering them less powerful or corrupt by increasing their transparency. Political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, policy makers, and others who study state power and identity groups will find a wealth of empirical material and conceptual innovation for discussion and debate.