Abstract
This article engages critically with recent literature on political settlements through a case study of inter-ethnic conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan. The case study traces how a new political settlement emerged in the aftermath of conflict, despite a rejection of international proposals on conflict resolution. Instead, local elites constructed an exclusionary form of social order, forged through dispossession and violence, maintained by informal institutions of patronage and clientage. The article explains why this new political settlement appeared remarkably resilient, despite its failure to address traditional liberal concerns regarding transitional justice and minority grievances. The case study highlights two major problems with the political settlements literature. First, it contests a widespread conceptualisation of political settlements as indicating a cessation of conflict, instead pointing to how a political settlement can be initiated and maintained through different forms of violence. Second, it questions notions of inclusivity in political settlements, noting that many political settlements combine logics of both inclusion and exclusion. In many cases, they are marked by exclusionary, authoritarian practices that together constitute a form of ‘illiberal peace’. These findings caution against a simplistic use of political settlements theory to inform policies aimed at resolving internal conflicts.
Highlights
In contrast to the expectations of liberal peacebuilders, most post-conflict political orders in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have been marked by a pattern of clientelistic order-building, in which the coercive redistribution of property has played a prominent role.1 These outcomes pose a significant challenge to theories of liberal peacebuilding, which assumed that political and economic liberalisation, combined with ‘good governance’, would prove successful in achieving sustainable peace after conflict
Economic structures to produce relatively stable forms of political order.2. We apply these theoretical approaches in a detailed case study of inter-ethnic conflict in the post-Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan to explain how political settlements may be renegotiated through violence and exclusion
As we demonstrate in our case study, the redistribution of property and business between different communities is central to understanding why violence breaks out and why it eventually abates
Summary
This well-constructed image – achieved with the help of journalists and media advisers – contributed to a narrative of Myrzakmatov as a strong Kyrgyz leader who could properly represent the interests of the ethnic Kyrgyz population in the south, even at the expense of minority groups Despite these underlying shifts in power at the local level, a peaceful transition to a new political settlement might have been managed were it not for the collapse of central political authority in April 2010, when President Bakiev was ousted from power by opposition protests in the capital, Bishkek. One local Uzbek businessman explained: ‘Melis always had difficult relations with ordinary Uzbeks [...] They [Uzbeks] will follow anybody rather than Melis!’76 Yet during 2012–2013, Myrzakmatov began attempts to win over Uzbek leaders and entrepreneurs including – according to interviews with Uzbek businesspeople and Kyrgyz officials – providing them with new informal protection mechanisms for their businesses.. It was a renegotiated political settlement and reconfigured informal institutions of clientage that underpinned a fragile stability in the city
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