Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan’s trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change

Abstract

After three decades of post-Soviet agrarian change, farming structures in Tajikistan remain dynamic. Despite a centralised reform agenda pushed forward by international donors, the local implementation of reforms has resulted in striking differences in agrarian structures across the country. This paper investigates Tajikistan’s geography and agrarian political economy. We show that the unevenness of the Tajik state’s power and autonomy vis-à-vis societal actors has been important in bringing about stark differences (1) spatially, between regions, and (2) between policy design and selected statistical indicators on agrarian reform on the one hand, and the policies’ sluggish implementation on the other.