Tolkun Umaraliev says,
In Central Asia, where people stay closely attached to their culture and traditions, which are different than western, and who have an experience of being ruled in totalitarian regime for more than seven decades, it is impossible to introduce western “ready-made” democracy. There will be little or no results. The western democracy that is now being introduced in CA countries should be trimmed or shaped, however you call it, so that it can suit local standards marked by peoples culture, traditions and mentality. Otherwise, there will always be a clash between the notion of democracy and local views.
I think the point is generally a good one, but it is one that demands much more discussion. I am curious what thoughts readers have one this. A few come quickly to my mind.
First, I think it is important to be very precise about what is actually going on in Central Asia’s political transitions. I see very little Western democracy being introduced in Central Asia. There are, however, plenty of policies that leaders and intelligentsia in Central Asia like to call Western democracy to make democracy a scary concept.
Second, the whole idea of culturally appropriate democracy when espoused by authoritarian leaders is usually just another way of saying “authoritarian paternalism.” It is kind of like how democratic centralism is not all that democratic. Who decides what is and is not culturally appropriate when power is concentrated in so few hands? The reason I bring this up is because Tolkun is agreeing with President Berdymuhammedov. The concept of culturally appropriate democracy is fine, but trusting that an authoritarian president is really interested in building such a thing (not that Tolkun necessarily does) is a bit more suspect.
Third, at the end of the day, certain things are democratic and certain things are not. I have heard some say that Central Asia simply cannot have the kind of freedom of speech and conscience that exists in Western countries because of its more traditional values, lack of experience, fill in the blank with your own excuse. Fine, but that counts against a country’s democratic bona fides. In fact, it probably counts more than elections. The point is that there are some concepts that are simply democratic and some that are not. This relates back to my first thought because I have seen little evidence that Western governments want little copies of themselves running every country in the world. I have seen the promotion of particular democratic concepts. It relates to the second thought because in places like Uzbekistan, the government defines democracy such that certain cornerstones concepts are missing. It then says that this is a democracy more suited to the Uzbek character. It could be the greatest thing since sliced bread and making everyone happy and prosperous, but without the basic foundations of democracy (and there is disagreement on exactly what the basics are), it simply is not democracy.
Fourth, have any nonregime intelligentsia or politicians proposed a model or perhaps a sketch of what culturally appropriate democracy might look like? It seems to almost be a mythical concept. But I don’t think it is an invalid concept. Central Asian cultures have traditional concepts and institutions that are democratic, even if they are somewhat different than Western democratic institutions. It would be interesting to hear nonregime voices promoting the concept of culturally appropriate democracy.
I am quite sure others have thoughts on this.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.
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{ 13 comments }
I have a few points:
In many cases, you can’t see the benefit of creating democratic but more fragile governmental structures whilst both Western interests and Islamic groups still seem a threat to Central Asian leaders.
Democracy in the UK and US is very limited anyway. We can only change things over decades, which is how long the parties take to work out which of the hundreds of things they stand for we want. My cynicism is over-egged, but Schumpeter essentially makes the same point that people’s control is limited to throwing out one set of leaders for perhaps an equally bad alternative.
It isn’t as though culture is an obstacle to democracy: look how successfully Germany, Portugal, Japan, Spain etc. transitioned to democracy after totalitarian rule. But our present zeitgeist commands an occupation before a liberation, and I can’t see the Central Asians agreeing with it.
You know… I’m sick to the teeth of the “that won’t work here” line.
To my way of thinking, there is no such thing as “Western style democracy”. There is only democracy.
Democracy means everybody gets to vote, and everyone’s vote counts only once. It means everyone’s vote is counted, and the one with the most votes wins.
It means if you want to run for office, you can. It means that incumbents should not be allowed to abuse their power to prevent challengers from running.
It means individuals as well as institutions should be able to comment freely on incumbents and challengers without fear of legal or physical reprisals.
I consider those elements the sine qua non of “democracy”. Sure, the devil is in the details, and the specifics of how those ideas can be implemented, as well as the legal and legislative structures that surround them, are sure to be different in each country.
Traditional values? Have you walked the streets of Almaty lately, Nathan? The press of Kazakhstan are plenty free when it comes to subjects that would seem offensive to traditional values. However, that freedom does not extend to impugning the dignity of (or detailing the actions and property of) the ruling elite.
Not a single country in Central Asia today even comes close to achieving any of the above. Furthermore, it does not appear as if any of them are even making any significant motion towards them.
You are right– it’s not any kind of democracy, it’s paternalism. It’s feudalism, practically. There is no government, only nepotism and corruption; and there is no business, only patronage.
Those who use the word “democracy” either do not know its meaning or simply want nothing to do with the concept it embodies. They only know it is the topic of discussion and the phrase that certain foreign powers most want to hear– that is, after “contract stability”.
We need to be very careful about terms when discussing a nebulous concept like “democracy.” Even among western countries there are significant differences over democratic governments—from republican structures to parliamentarian systems, traditional plurality voting to preferential voting, and so on. Many Americans find many European political structures, like the EU Commission, inherently undemocratic, while Europeans tend to see it as simply another layer of republicanism (or outright technocracy, depending on which party they’re from).
Making things more complex is the clichéd, “America is not a democracy!” A true statement, in a technical sense of the word (the U.S. is a federal republic), but not very true to a more commonly-accepted common definition of “democracy.”
What we in this space seem to mean is actually liberal democracy, in which a representative government is limited by the rule of law written in a constitutional framework. Seen in that way, at its vaguest possible conception, such a state of affairs would seem to be the most ideal government for any country on earth. It allows for maximum flexibility.
Of course, practical considerations make such an idealistic view naïve. Many countries are quite literally not ready to govern themselves in such a manner—look at how quickly the drug lords infiltrated the modern, quasi-liberal Afghani government. Transitioning a society to a degree of openness is a painful, destructive process. Hell, it took the U.S. well over a century to really get its bearings, and many other countries have to take slow, halting steps toward that gold standard of the liberal democracy.
What I see in Central Asia are societies in desperate need of more openness, transparency, and rules. Corrupt leaders need to be exposed and carted off to prison. Citizens need to hold their governments accountable for their failings. That is when you eventually see the elections everyone thinks is such a great idea. But those elections needs to come once society is ready for it.
Faust makes a good point there: rule of law is a prerequisite for a liberal democracy. Central Asia doesn’t have that, either– only the appearance of it.
Lots of time and effort are spent hand-wringing and modernizing various aspects of the legal code. When it comes time to enforcement, however, not every individual is equal under the law. Some are more equal than others. There are individuals to whom no laws apply, and individuals to whom only a few apply.
In that kind of environment, there is no possibility for a liberal democracy to function properly.
A lot of good points have been made in this discussion. Anyone who has spent any significant time engaged in Central Asian affairs has heard terms like the need to respect the \”culture and tradition\” and the \”mentality\” of Central Asian peoples in trying to bring about democracy, which, of course, must be done \”step by step.\”
The issue is who is defining culture and tradition? Who writes the history? Shouldn\’t the steps be forward rather than backward? Most of the Central Asian countries have a very long \”tradition\” of oppression. Is this the tradition that must be respected in constructing democracy? The leadership of these countries for the most part have a \”culture\” of authoritarianism. Is it their culture that is to be respected?
Nathan quite correctly pointed out that – using Uzbekistan as an example – you have a place where the rulers define democracy in such a way that the cornerstones are missing. And then they unstintingly try and convince the citizenry that they live in a democracy. It isn\’t hard to understand why a lot of people in Uzbekistan are thinking, \”if this is democracy I don\’t want any more of it.\”
Both in concept and in practice, democracy isn\’t really all that difficult to define. It can take many forms as long as the basic precepts (the cornerstones) are in place and respected. However, allowing despots to define democracy to their own ends is unacceptable. Just as unacceptable is those same despots defining culture and tradition.
Note: Sorry for the weird symbols in my postings. I have to post through a proxy server now and that\’s somehow disrupting the keyboard strokes.
I think you Registan guys do a great job of pulling together a Central Asian news service.
But really guys, c’mon. All this earnest talk about democracy in Central Asia sounds like an undergraduate prayer group discussion about angels dancing on pins.
Outside of donor funded talkfests, I have never heard anyone anywhere in Central Asia take your version of democracy so seriously.
Indeed, the whole democracy question is fundamentally irrelevant to any local person who is not paid to mouth the words. There was a similarly fine tradition of mouthing Marxist -Leninist platitudes at talkfests pre-1991.This is one of the traditions about which you speak. Everyone across Central Asia understands the rules. At least the central funding agency staff in Moscow were also in on the joke pre-1991. You’ve gotta lighten up. Read some constructivist international relations texts. “What you see is what you get”, you’ve got a shiny democratic solution looking for problems in Central Asia etc.
A Singapore-style smoothly running authoritarian state, (sorry..democracy) with poryadok, where the trains run on time, public medicine, public housing, public education comes a whole lot closer to what most people in Central Asia want.
The culture and tradition that you might consider respecting is Soviet as much as it is Islamic, or ethnospecific. But then again, none of these are respected in the Huntington, Putnam, Rostow, or Linz & Stepan recipe books, are they?
I think when the sticking points in the debate start to be about what ‘western style’ democracy is and how these mesh with local ‘traditional values’ we need to step back a bit. I’ve said this before (but I think it’s a valid point): I think democracy as a political system is mainly a means to consistently get a government that’s accountable for its actions… and accountability comes in many forms.
Whatever form of government takes in Central Asia, I think most people there would simply like to have is a government that is at least somewhat accountable to its people. The concept of ‘democracy’ is hazy, especially to people who’ve never known it, but the concept of accountability is pretty clear.
For instance, I think you can have some accountability in government without even having one-person-one-vote elections. Respected village elders are often given power without a formal election but are still held somewhat accountable. Some countries (Vietnam comes to mind) don’t always have free elections, but have a large and growing middle-class that politicians cannot ignore.
These aren’t prefect forms of government to be sure, but right now some central Asian governments have zero accountability. The word ‘democracy’ it too loaded these days and is associated with disastrous attempts at nation-building. We should promote accountable government as a step in the right direction, and whether that government takes a western or traditional form is details.
Brian,
Great point.
I agree. Across Central Asia, existing “mahallah” frameworks , when fused with blood -based/Soviet era clans and various tiers of government seem to have real potential as effective accountability structures. Further, they are widely viewed as legitimate by local people, with accountability networks that extend from biological families at the bottom, to “elected” politicians at the top.
However these accountability structures seem to widely viewed as the “wrong” type of civil society in much Western, and especially US based polsci literature devoted to Transition and democracy promotion.
Further, these structures don’t really have much to do with the debate around “free” media, agenda setting, courts, governance, elections, parties etc.
Perhaps talking about strengthening actual existing accountability structures is a much more fruitful discussion than trying to imagine yet another Bright and Shining Future? (Or “Svetloe Budushchee” in Stalinist parlance).
Sterling,
Depending upon what you mean by \”your version of democracy,\” the fact that you claim to have never heard anyone in Central Asia take it so seriously (excepting what you label \”talkfests\”, of course), leads me to think you haven\’t spent much time here or certainly haven\’t been exposed to the great many people who do take such things sincerely.
Brian does make an excellent point regarding accountability, whether one wishes to call the mechanism for accountability democracy or not doesn\’t much matter, if the accountability truly exists.
I find the notion that mahallas, \”fused with blood-based Soviet era clans (huh?) and various tiers of government,\” have \”real potential\” for accountability to be
incredibly naive. In Uzbekistan, for example, each mahalla has state security officials attached and the mahalla structure is as often used as a tool of repression than for the originally-intended purposes. If you find yourself trapped inside your house, which is surrounded by people yelling that you are a criminal, all organized by the mahalla under orders from the security structures, you may not – as a local person – find them all that \”legitimate.\” This happens all the time here.
The whole characterization of \”accountability networks\” that extend from biological families at the bottom to \”elected\” politicians at the stop just leaves me breathless and strikes me as an assessment that could come only from someone who doesn\’t have to actually live within that system.
A smoothly running system where the trains run on time and there is adequate health care, enough to eat, decent education, etc., is something a lot of people in this region would like to see. For the most part, however, it simply doesn\’t exist here. What does exist is a system that can get you harassed, beaten, imprisoned and tortured for saying the wrong thing – all merrily helped along by what you somewhat oddly view as \”accountability structures.\”
You may want to spend a little more time \”boots on the ground\” here, travelling the regions, going to relocation camps, collective farms, criminal trials, etc. You may end up with a different view of things.
All of which doesn\’t have much to do with structural realism, by the way.
Bertrand,
If you read my post, I didn’t specifically refer to Uzbekistan.
But that said, I agree that Uzbekistan is probably increasingly moving towards the same end of the spectrum as Turkmenistan. But it is not a phenomenon unique to these two countries. As far as i can tell, across Central Asia most people seem to think they are now far less free than they were in Soviet times.
Referring to your earlier post, I have never heard once anyone in Uzbekistan even suggest they might live in a democracy. In Uzbekistan, most everyone seems to think they live in a kleptocracy headed by the Big K and the Kops. The references are never to democracy – they are always a direct comparison between the USSR and the present.
And, while we’re at it, people in both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan also complain they are far poorer. While generally less nasty, poverty has has pretty much produced an analogous level of misery for most people in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
As for mahalallas, from which perspective are we to judge their “originally intended purpose”? Surveillance, from the Soviet perspective, was one of their purposes. It was another traditional institution recruited to the machinery of the Soviet state, who’s interest and desire in surveillance itself ebbed and flowed over the course of 70 odd years.
Along with surveillance, we should mention the main function of mahallahs- social welfare of the community. For every Uzbek mahallah horror story about security services, there are another 10 across the region focused on providing grass roots social welfare. And, like it or not, it is only your clan ties, or svyazi, znakomstva, call it what you will, are one of the few things that will get you out of trouble. For all their conservatism, there is also at least some real accountability within these structures.Again, granted, perhaps less so in Uzbekistan, than in the other republics.
But to put these terrible mahallah structures into a proper perspective, you may want to spend some more time talking to the beneficiaries of democracy , say in New Orleans, Comptom, or Gitmo. Which one of these is a reflection of the democratic accountability of which you speak? Mahallas, clans etc are far from perfect. However they are also a structure that has managed to twist and adapt and support Central Asian families for a whole lot longer, and whole lot more effectively than did the brief zephyr of post-91 democracy promoting carpet baggers.
Sterling,
I don’t disagree with you completely, but I think you fall into certain traps.
You’re correct in that in your earlier posts you didn’t specifically address Uzbekistan. However, you addressed the mahalla system, as well as clans, families, etc., across the board in Central Asia. One simply can’t do that as a generalization. They actually vary quite a bit from country to country, and even within each country.
While I don’t hold myself out to be the absolute expert on Central Asia, I have spent quite a bit of time living and working in the region, and am still here. I’ve also spent a lot of time, as I said, “boots on the ground,” travelling and getting to know people and seeing how they actually live.
In your latest post, you write that you haven’t heard anyone in the region suggesting they live in a democracy. For the most part, I agree with that, but that is not what I took from your earlier post when you wrote:
“All this earnest talk about democracy in Central Asia sounds like an undergraduate prayer group discussion about angels dancing on pins. Outside of donor funded talkfests, I have never heard anyone anywhere in Central Asia take your version of democracy so seriously. Indeed, the whole democracy question is fundamentally irrelevant to any local person who is not paid to mouth the words.”
To me, that’s nowhere near the same thing as what you later wrote. Not hearing people say they believe they live in a democracy, as opposed to them believing in the concepts of a democracy, and then judging that these people (whomever you talked with) were saying that democracy is fundamentally irrelevant, is an exceedingly poor evaluation. Which did you mean?
Finally, I frankly think it’s outright silly to compare the failings of the U.S. -and other democracies- in terms of such things as New Orleans, Compton (I assume you mean Compton), and Gitmo, with what’s going on in extremely autocratic countries -as if it’s some sort of excuse for what the despots are doing. At least the current American administration is taking a beating in the press (that you somehow seem to be also irrelevant in Central Asia, as long as the trains run on time), and now the Congress, over these issues.
At least the American voters were able to change the political balance of the Congress is one election because they were unhappy. Do you see that happening in Central Asia? Or, for that matter, Zimbabwe?
I hear this stuff all the time and I think it’s a totally specious argument. I don’t support a lot of U.S. foreign policy, and think Gitmo, for instance, is a shameful mistake, but on balance simply don’t think you can make a valid comparison. You can go to the U.S. – and other democratic countries – right now and publicly and openly harshly criticize the governments, call for their defeat, and nothing will happen to you. Try that anywhere in Central Asia. Do you think the mahalla committee will help?
I separate New Orleans because I think it’s apples and oranges, and I’m ever more tired of hearing the argument. How was democracy supposed to instantly rebuild a city built below sea level in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in American history? There clearly have been huge bureaucratic failings, but no one can legitimately question the desire of the American people to help, and no one can dispute that billions of dollars of American taxpayer money have been dedicated to the effort.
If you have a viable plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast (not just New Orleans), I’m sure there are people who would like to see it.
The fact is the clans in Uzbekistan – and in some other parts of Central Asia (this isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq) are not for the most part blood-based, and are in fact for the most part political/economic/geographical alignments and exist generally to suck the wealth from the country. I disagree with you regarding the mahallas. It is true they are not completely monolithic, and their form and function varies by country, but I would like to see some emperative evidence of your 10-1 ratio. I’ve been in the region for years -continuously – and that’s not what I’ve seen across the board. There is no question that some good comes out of the mahalla structure, but the notion of “accountability” is mostly non-existent. Even in the areas where the governments don’t interfere through the security structures, there is much that is not good. Perhaps you don’t personally know many women who have been forced to return to their husbands that have severely beaten them by the mahalla committees. I do. Some call this “accountability,” do you?
Finally, all the transliterations you wish to come up with don’t change the situation here and are, for the most part, not even relative to the current situation in most of Central Asia. Most of them are reflective of Soviet thinking and are not only not current, but were never respected, in this region.
Honestly – perhaps I’m wrong – but I sense that much of your view of this region is based on your having conducted (or are conducting) academic research. Regardless, I wonder how many times a father has come to you with pictures of his son who has been beaten. And then disappeared. I have them. I wonder how many times you have seen people living on the ground because they have no houses. Not read about, not been told about it, but seen it. I wonder how many times you’ve seen all this happen with either the support or the ignorance of the mahalla commitees, and the other of what you seem to believe are “accountability” structures.
For those of us working in Central Asia on these issues every day, these are not academic exercises and our thinking (and actions) must be based on reality on the ground – not platitudes, not academic studies, not PhD research, but reality.
In many cases, people’s lives actually depend upon it.
Hi again Bertrand,
Well we seem to be converging – I agree with many of the points you make.
And FYI – my experience includes but is not limited to academia. I actually have spent a lot of time in the region, including large slabs when it was still the pre-perestroika USSR. And yes, I have seen and spoken with the people living in sub-Third world conditions, and to the local mafiosi who run these districts.
And I do stick by my guns about the democracy issue.
I believe people in CA, as everywhere, have a acute sense of what is fair and unfair. And a great deal of what happens around them is patently unfair.
But I believe the word “democracy” is more than a little soiled. This is in a region where there was already Soviet era antipathy towards democracy, or at least the US. These sentiments didn’t really need much stoking post-9/11 for many to curl their noses at the mention of the word “democracy” or “dermo-kradiya”.
Unfortunately it is the US who has been most active in promoting democracy. I noticed in a post on Registan about a week or two ago that someone referred to the backlash against democracy, and end of transition idea put about by Carnegie a couple of years ago. Call it sensationalist, but it is a pretty good tagline for what seems to be happening across the region.
That is, there was a moment, post1991, when just maybe it might have been possible to change something. For whatever reasons, the moment has passed, and there remain a series of fairly filthy and fairly empty feed troughs. (you’ve no doubt heard individuals describe how the split of the USSR produced a series of feed troughs -kormushki- for which local party swine could feast, without any central control from Moscow).
But onwards. The feed troughs are empty.
So what are we left with?
In this, the Post-Transition era, in each country people are stuck with crappy formal institutions, and slightly less crappy informal ones. There is a general stability of sorts,(yes, including the Kyrgz “revolution”) which I don’t really believe anyone other hire-a-crowd types and serious extremists are much keen to disrupt.
So. dare I say, What is to be done?
Democracy is a dirty word. And crappy “virtual” post-Transition institutions are pretty much rusted in now. My argument for mahallas is based around these assumptions. Given these constraints, at least something is possible using the influence of families and networks. Using these networks, I’ve seen Kyrgyz and Tajik communities actually achieve quite admirable things locally. Much of this success of course depending on the good sense and personality of individuals in charge.
Which brings me back to accountability. People often live in those groups over generations. It is in no ones interest to support psychopaths. Further, mahallahs are not static, and have also continued to evolve eg in Tajikistan (well…may be less so in Uz.) If we find ourselves in a post-Transition period, mahallas may well be the of the few channels available that offer both a measure of protection and welfare to most. Far from perfect, but what else is there?
But please, don’t pull the emotion line about fathers and pictures etc. My Gitmo cheap shot was a direct response to that style of argument. Of all people, you should know that this is a feature not only of CA, but of the entire former USSR. Tragedy hangs heavily over way too many conversations. I would never suggest that a lot of people really have had, and are continuing to have a very bad time.
Hence our debate, I suppose.