Clans & Democracy in Kyrgyzstan

Those who followed last month’s protests in Bishkek surely noticed in some of the coverage that the opposition’s protesters did not seem too terribly inspired by ideology. For example, see this post at neweurasia.

It was also my impression that the protesters were hardly aware what the goals of the opposition leaders, who brought them on the streets, were. I asked one of the women-protesters from Naryn district why she was unhappy about the Constitution and which changes should be implemented. “I don’t want our lands to be sold to foreigners,”-all she was able to answer. The same question I addressed to several young people from Batken, who standing near the stage and cheering every speech of the leaders of the opposition. The reply was : “We don’t know and don’t bother us with that.”

While this does not mean that none of the protesters care about democracy, it is a clue to something strange going on. So what gives? Why do these crowds show up?

Alisher Khamidov recently wrote an article for EurasiaNet about the role of kinship and patronage networks* in last month’s protests in Bishkek. Just as some have noticed that voting in Kyrgyzstan — particularly rural areas — is done by community leaders on behalf of all the members, strong personal ties between opposition leaders and protesters allowed for easy mobilization against the government.

As Scott Radnitz, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put it: “Among those conditions that proved critical were local vertical networks through which various [opposition] elites could ‘reach down’ in order to mobilize certain segments of the population; and horizontal networks by means of which elites could ‘reach out’ in order to agree with one another at least temporarily on a common political agenda.”
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The protest participants represented all generations and most social groups, although unemployed men in their thirties and forties were most conspicuous. There were certainly genuine supporters of democratic reform found in the protester ranks, but the majority of demonstrators were tied to influential opposition leaders through extensive kinship and/or regional networks, known in Russian by the term zemlyachestvo.

Khamidov gives specific examples of this mobilization. Azimbek Beknazarov bused in supporters, while former Parliament Speaker Tekebaev mobilized supporters from his constituency and used his close ties to politicians to mobilize additional support. Wealthy oligarchs provided financial support and mobilized their own networks as well.

The president tried to mobilize his networks as well, but Khamidov says that the opposition was simply far better organized. His supporters who rallied in Bishkek reportedly mostly came from his home town, and his efforts to mobilize those beholden to the state did not work.

Khamidov sees good and bad in this. On the side of the good, he says that this proves that mass mobilization for peaceful protest can occur and result in change in Central Asia. This success, he says, may prompt elites elsewhere to build similar networks to challenge authoritarian leaders. (I would point out that these networks do exist elsewhere, but they simply are not challenging presidents — at least not outright and in the form of protest — in their countries for various reasons specific to each state.) On the bad side, he says that this may prompt those heading such networks to mobilize supporters to pursue narrow self-interest.

Cynic that I am, I think the latter is more likely, and in fact what went on in Kyrgyzstan, even if the outcome spreads benefits around so that no one group is on top.

But anyhow, what does this mean for democracy in Kyrgyzstan and democratization in Central Asia?

I am cautiously optimistic about the new political arrangements in Kyrgyzstan, and there is some hope that what will unfold will show that an undemocratic society can create a democratic government. But even if everything is nice and democratic on paper and even in state practice, there is still room for kin- and region-based networks to act in concert not just through protest, but also through voting. To some extent that happens in healthy democracies as well. Some folks are content with voting how their party, church, or circle of friends tell them. However, the difference is that those networks to which we belong in the West are very rarely based on region or kinship, are easily moved into and out of, rarely involve us being part of a patronage network, and usually command only weak loyalty from us.

Thankfully, the new Kyrgyz system contains the seeds of change. The new composition of parliament will create pressures for parties to form and compete for votes. Over time, this may weaken the ties between membership in kin and patronage networks and one’s political action. And because there is not much reason to believe Kyrgyzstan will run into other ways of disrupting the clan system, thereby removing its anti-democratic influences, as has been in the case in Kazakhstan where rapid economic growth appears to have thrown the system in flux by, to some extent, removing the shortage economy, this is probably the best way for the country to move forward.

Elsewhere though, and particularly in Uzbekistan, where clans arguably have the deepest and most destructive roots in the region, democratization is held back not only by authoritarian presidents, but also by clan systems, which may be even more destructive from an institutional perspective. What looks superficially to be democracy will often not genuinely be it, and any policy promoting democratization will crash upon the rocks if it does not give attention to undermining the power and relevance of clans.**

*The terminology here is sometimes confusing. Different authors use different terms to describe what looks like the same thing. Clan, kinship network, regional network, and patronage network are all approximately the same thing. Usually…
**Which, interestingly, in the case of Uzbekistan means that there is to an extent a shared goal between those seeking democratization and Islam Karimov. While he is by no means a democrat and his idea of political party politics involves having multiple parties subordinate to him, he does want to substitute loyalty to the nation-state for loyalty to the clan. While neither is particularly palatable in Uzbekistan, the former opens the door for economic reforms and creates a foundation for future democratization.

P.S. – This is all semi-related to my thesis, which examines how the different foreign policies of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have led to the latter becoming the region’s leader and how the clan systems in each state has shaped their foreign policy choices.