Central Asian protest movements: Social forces or state resources?

Abstract

State capacity and political protest are two variables which are seen as closely if not directly linked. Variations in state capacity, particularly coercive capacity, are thought to be inversely related to variations in the degree of political protest. For example, Theda Skocpol writes in her influential study of revolutions, as Tsarist Russia saw its coercive powers eroded by “massive defeat in total war,” so too did it suffer a rise in political protest and, ultimately, political revolution (Skocpol 1979: 94).1 Conversely, states which maintain or deepen their coercive capacities, Skocpol instructs, are “insulated from, and supreme against, the forces of society” (Skocpol 1979: 94). This causal relationship between institutional strength and social opposi-tion, though intuitive and, in many cases, empirically grounded, nevertheless does not always hold. Social movements in seemingly strong states often catch us by surprise. In Communist Eastern Europe, one author writes, for example, the mass opposition movements of 1989 appeared “out of nowhere” (Kuran 1991). Two years later the superpower USSR itself imploded, much to the shock of Soviet citizens and Western political scientists. With the benefit of hindsight, some scholars have attributed mass demonstrations and Moscow’s resulting collapse of authority to a “loosening of controls” (Dallin 1992, 284-85). Elsewhere in the former Soviet world, though, opposition movements continue to puzzle. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, for example, variations in political protest appear to have little relation to what institutional theories of political capacity would predict. Thus, while the Kazakh and Kyrgyz governments share similar coercive powers, political opposition remains largely nonexistent in Kazakhstan whereas opposition has become increasingly pronounced in Kyrgyzstan. And in Uzbekistan, the Central Asian state with perhaps the greatest ability to repress, both Islamist groups and human rights defenders continue to challenge authoritarian rule. These three cases are even more puzzling given that political protestthroughout Central Asia was rare during the Soviet period. In short, not only are variations in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek political opposition puzzling in that they do not follow what institutional theories of state capacity predict, these differences are also surprising given that, despite these countries’ shared political and, indeed, cultural histories, protest has assumed such divergingoutcomes. In this chapter I address these unexpected outcomes. More specifically, I highlight where existing institutional explanations of state capacity fail to explain variations in Central Asian political opposition and offer, in their place, an alternative explanation which sees political protest as shaped as much by an independent, society-based logic as it is by state coercive capacities. My study of political opposition proceeds in three steps. I begin by out-lining variations in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek political protest from the late 1980s to the present. I begin in the 1980s rather than with the Soviet collapse because protest in all three polities first emerged during Gorbachev’s perestroika years, well before independence in 1991. As this first section demonstrates, however, while all three polities experienced turbulence during the final years of the Soviet empire, instability has largely subsided in Kazakhstan whereas it continues to define the Kyrgyz and Uzbek political landscapes. In the section “Institutional and society: centered explanations of authoritarian instability” I turn to potential explanations for these variations in political opposition. More specifically, I find that institutional explanations fail to explain differences in Central Asian protest movements. Rather, I argue, variation in Central Asian political opposition is a product of socially produced norms of cooperation. Thus, I demonstrate how opposition groups in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan learned to unite in political protest while those in Kazakhstan remained fragmented and ineffective. In short, in contrast to both those who argue political culture is slow to change and to those who contend institutions and coercive capacity alone determine political opposition, I argue that strategies of protest are learned and though they may develop in one institutional environment they persist even when the coercive capacity of authoritarian regimes increases or decreases. Lastly, in conclusion, I explore the insights my Central Asian comparisonmay hold for broader theories of protest and political stability. In particular, I suggest that the existing literature, perhaps understandably given its focus on institutional weakness, overemphasizes state variables while underemphasizing the causal role of social opposition movements. Institutional capacity, of course, has a pronounced influence on regime stability. And while it remains crucial that we continue to research what makes some institutions strong and others weak, so too must we address that which makes some social opposition movements more coherent and capable of effecting political change than others.