Decentralization, legitimacy, and democracy in post-Soviet Central Asia

Abstract

During the 1990s, a conventional wisdom emerged, based on literature going back decades, that political decentralization might be among the most effective forces for democratization. If ordinary people could participate in autonomous local governments, democracy would be built from the ground up, ultimately shaping the entire political system. Once decentralization reforms were implemented across the world, however, the results were disappointing. Authoritarianism not only thrived at the local level, it could also undermine democratization at the national level. Thus, local-national transference still held, but sometimes as a poison. In this context, the case of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is an anomaly. Here, the relative success of political decentralization—rather than its failure—nevertheless failed to spur democratization at the national level. I argue that this is because decentralization allowed national authorities to appease international donors while they consolidated their own power. Moreover, while decentralization empowered local communities, it did so in ways that personalized local authority and pitted local and national authorities against one another, resulting in intense localism and antagonistic center-local relations that undermined any democratic transference. The case study findings are based on ten months of field research, which includes interviews with local and national officials, ordinary villagers, and representatives of NGOs and international organizations.

An Exploration of Vertical and Social Accountability in the Elected Tier of Local Government: Evidence from Kazakhstan

“…Scholars who have comparatively investigated Central Asian countries have highlighted the impact of international donors on decentralisation. Kyrgyzstan is far more reliant on international aid than is Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan has provided more autonomy to local governments in order to obtain the confidence of donors (McGlinchey, 2011, as cited in Siegel, 2021). In contrast, Urinboyev (2015) claimed that decentralisation can exacerbate regional disparities in Central Asia because local elites are more concerned with controlling resources than with regional development.…”