Cultural Determinism versus Administrative Logic: Asian Values and Administrative Reform in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

Abstract

Cultural explanations of development claim that the choices a nation makes are dependent upon the country's deeply held norms and values. When this argument is extended to the realm of administrative science, it suggests that values rather than formal institutions under certain circumstances exert a determining influence in administrative development. The truth of this general proposition implies that societies that have similar cultural foundations and which undergo similar external pressures can be expected to follow similar paths of administrative change. Is this general tendency borne out by empirical observation? The present article examines this expectation using empirical evidence from the experience of administrative reform in two Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The article argues that these two countries, while having similar culture values and norms as well as a common administrative legacy, followed very different paths of administrative reform during the first decade of post-communist reorganization. The descriptive analysis of the two cases provides evidence for the conclusion that policy choice rather than cultural values played a determining role in administrative change in the countries reviewed. This argument rejects the assumption of cultural determinism, but does provide a nuanced interpretation of the continuing influence of cultural values on the process of policy.