How Central Asia understands democracy

Photo: Yakov Fedorov (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Post-Soviet nation-building

Nation and statehood are relatively new phenomena to the peoples and governments of Central Asian states. While some of the polities that preceded the 20th century republics had features of statehood (e.g. khanates) they did not exist as modern, sovereign states. Soviet nationality policies established the modern-day republics as distinct national and territorial units, but they also planted the seeds of an exclusionary approach to nationality and circumscribed their sovereignty. In comparison with nation-building experiences around the world, the nationhood of the newly independent Central Asian republics was neither the result of mobilisation by the local elite and intelligentsia, nor the expression of nationalist sentiment by Central Asian residents. Despite the popularisation of discourses and symbols of resistance to foreign occupation and struggle for independence in the new republics’ historiographies, there have been few nationalist movements in the region. The most prominent ones engaged in anti-colonial revolts against the Tsarist regime and opposition to the Soviet government in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution.

While the processes and accomplishments of nation-building have been diverse and varied across the region, there are several common threads unique to Central Asia. First, all of the republics had to deal with the complex Soviet legacy of creating and maintaining artificial nations. The new governments inherited ethnically diverse territorial units whose borders zig-zagged the boundaries of the ethnic groups populating them. The Fergana Valley, the most densely populated part of Central Asia, for example, has been split among Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, although it had existed under a unified political entity for most of its pre-Soviet history. Each of the three republics in the Fergana Valley contains a significant level of ethnic and religious minorities, and the situation is further complicated by the existence of several ethnic exclaves in the valley. The diverse and intermingled populations, complex borders and dwindling natural resources have turned the valley into the most unstable region of Central Asia. The new leadership of the Central Asian republics had to strike a delicate balance between ethnic-based ideas (in a bid for support) and unity in the titular nationality with appeals to inclusive civic identities to assuage the concerns of the minority populations.

Second, similarly to the Soviet authorities, who took it upon themselves to create a Soviet nation, the authorities in Central Asia have become the chief “nation-makers” in their states (not that their conceptions of the nation have been uniform or accepted by everyone in the population). Third, attempts by the elite to forge a shared national identity, amidst the presence of ethnic and cultural diversity, were central to their maintenance of power and stability of the governing regimes. As a consequence, nation-building became a process of conjoining the nation with the state, personalised by the ruling elite.

Inevitably, official ideas about the nation and nationhood have been contested, renegotiated, and rejected at different levels. These disagreements over national identity transcend the conflictual dynamics of relations between nominal majorities and ethnic minorities. At the sub-national level, for example, identities have been constructed through intermingling and amalgamation of different non-national elements, such as clan, tribe and religion. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, the identification with the Kyrgyz nation has been tempered by the regional (north vs. south), kin-based and a variety of local identities. The youth, in particular, has identified with the varied, changing and eclectic identity drawing on a range of cultural repertoires, including Islam and Christianity, Russian music and western capitalism. At the national level, the Central Asian republics have deployed alternative discourses of national identity to reap the greatest benefits in their foreign relations with various international players. Kazakhstan has successfully presented several identities: one linking the state with the titular nationality, another one appealing to its multi-ethnic character and the third one portraying it as a transnational country integrated with global trends.

The top-down nation-building processes have become intertwined with efforts at regime legitimation; and some of the regime legitimation strategies have been turned into important tools for state- and nation-building. The rhetorical commitment to democracy and the façade of democratic institutions have been central to internal and external legitimacy of the administrations and instrumental to enacting the modern nation in their states.

Building “democracies”

The governments of Central Asia have introduced an entire set of formal democratic institutions and have allowed citizens (within limits) to form associations and mass media outlets. These regimes have held regular multi-party elections, albeit without real competition, and combined the rhetorical acceptance of democracy with other authoritarian elements. Because of the global appeal of democracy, no government can reject it without the risk of international isolation, and even the most authoritarian regimes have embraced democratic ideas fearing domestic and international de-legitimation. Democracy, however, has been important for legitimising not only governing regimes but also modern nations. In the contemporary discourse of nationhood in Central Asia and beyond, the notion of being a modern nation has become inextricably linked to being a democratic one.

The discourse on democracy in Central Asia has been different from that in western states. The authorities in the region have dismissed the notion of a universal model of democracy and rejected the suitability of western democracy in Central Asia. While there are important differences in the imaginations of democracy presented by the leaders of the republics, they have been discursively connected to historical narratives of their nations and linked by the goals of national unity. The late president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, had linked his beliefs, policies and programmes to representatives of the Uzbek cultural heritage (e.g., Amir Timur, Avicenna, and Al-Farabi) to lend support to the model of development chosen by his government. Tajikistan’s president, Emomali Rahmon, has justified restrictions on religious rights and economic freedom by arguing that the banned practices were inconsistent with the “true culture of Tajiks.” Several authoritarian governments – most notably Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (under President Kurmanbek Bakiyev) – have presented competitive elections as divisive and threatening to equal representation of diverse constituents. They have advocated for alternative procedures of decision-making that are supposed to unite the electorate and ensure the best representation of their interest. The institute of presidential appointments to the legislative body and national assemblies of representatives of ethnic diaspora, called for by the government for consultation, have been put in place in parallel to elections.

The discourses of democracy in Central Asia have prioritised the goals of development over political liberalisation, and security and order over democratisation. This has allowed the governments to divorce democracy from the idea of political equality achieved through the procedural mechanism of electoral contestation and connect it instead to the goal of socio-economic equality achieved through the governments’ economic policies. This has also allowed these governments to defend the state’s interference in economic relations.

Some authorities in Central Asia, most notably those in Uzbekistan, have subtly denied the principle of political equality as an a priori standard for a just and fair rule. They put forth alternative normative foundations (most commonly, order and security) for evaluating the “goodness” of their political rule. While not openly portraying voters as lacking the requisite abilities for making good political judgments, the elite have ascribed the leadership of the republics with superior decision-making and moral qualities – in this way, buttressing the belief in the presence of a strong leader – the “father of the nation” – as compatible with the national version of “democracy.”

There are several ways in which these discourses of legitimacy have contributed to the nation-building processes in Central Asia. First, they provided the republics’ leadership with a platform for invoking their ideas of the nation in parliament and to the people. The narrative of national spirit, “father of the nation” and defence of the nation against foreign and domestic threats have provided leaders with an opportunity to strengthen the connections between their leadership, the regime and the nation. The orchestration of regular elections has become another way of enacting the nation. The very fact that large numbers of people come out to cast their votes, even if the outcome is predetermined, contributes to the creation and maintenance of an “imagined community” which is the nation. These efforts to create and popularise the idea of the nation through the discursive connections to images of democracy, have resonated with the Central Asian populations.

Popular conceptions of democracy

Surveys on public attitudes around the world have consistently showed that a considerable majority in nearly every country favour democracy. Central Asia is no exception. The majority of people in every Central Asian republic sees democracy as a desirable system of government and express a strong preference for living in a democratic state. Upon closer inspection, however, commitment to liberal democracy is not as strong as it may appear. There is, for example, widespread support for certain limitations on electoral accountability and individual rights among nominally pro-democratic citizens. Large subsets of the electorate from the Central Asian republics seem to be unbothered by the deficit of democracy in their countries and support the idea of having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections. Across the region, presidents receive more votes of confidence from the people than other branches of power and political institutions.

Citizens do not view various communal restrictions on their rights as a violation of individual liberty. My own research in Central Asia has shown that a significant majority of people in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan do not regard requirements to follow local, communal and family traditions, cultural mores and ethical norms as infringements on their rights. They may dislike practices of honouring seniority and giving priority to the opinion of older people, but they do not consider those as constraints on their freedom. Individuals often express willingness to accept considerable limitations on democratic procedures and norms for the sake of political order, security and economic necessity. Political ideals associated with liberal democracy often give way to the considerations of welfare, economic growth and social order.

While supporting democracy as an ideal, inhabitants of Central Asia often underscore that it is a culturally specific model of democracy that is more appropriate for their national circumstances. The economic components, including some guarantees against unemployment, income equality and other forms of welfare support from the state, are featured prominently in these context-specific imaginations of democracy. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the states which are better off economically, such as Kazakhstan, are also ranked as more democratic by their people. Economic growth, well-being and the popularity of the president correlate stronger with the public’s assessment of the state of democracy in their state, than the quality of elections. This mixture of individual attitudes that combine belief in democracy with non-democratic orientations is reinforced by the discourse on democracy by Central Asian governments.

The popular acceptance of economic and security-related limitations to the liberal democratic order serves the interests of the governing elite. It provides an important source of legitimacy and an additional tool for constructing a nation superimposed on the state identified with the ruling elite. It offers, however, a shaky foundation for erecting legitimacy and building a nation. Strategies that are based on a government’s performance in the economic and security realms are intrinsically unstable because they carry concrete promises. Once these promises are not fulfilled, the strategies may backfire. The current economic crisis triggered by the fall in global oil prices and the sanctions on Russia has handicapped Central Asian governments’ ability to deliver on socio-economic promises. The worsening of the economic situation has already planted seeds of dissent and augmenting fears of political destabilisation. This context weakens governments’ calls for national unity and exacerbates the overt and latent divisions in Central Asian societies.

Mariya Y. Omelicheva is an associate professor of political science at the University of Kansas and author of Democracy in Central Asia: Competing Perspectives and Alternative Strategies (2015) and Counterterrorism Policies in Central Asia (2011).

Central Asia, democracy