Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Map of Central Asia
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- 1 An Introduction to Political Development and Transition in Central Asia
- 2 Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia: A Framework for Understanding Politics in Clan-Based Societies
- 3 Colonialism to Stalinism: The Dynamic between Clans and the State
- 4 The Informal Politics of Central Asia: From Brezhnev through Gorbachev
- 5 Transition from Above or Below? (1990–1991)
- 6 Central Asia's Transition (1991–1995)
- 7 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part I
- 8 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part II
- 9 Positive and Negative Political Trajectories in Clan-Based Societies
- 10 Conclusions
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Index
10 - Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Map of Central Asia
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- 1 An Introduction to Political Development and Transition in Central Asia
- 2 Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia: A Framework for Understanding Politics in Clan-Based Societies
- 3 Colonialism to Stalinism: The Dynamic between Clans and the State
- 4 The Informal Politics of Central Asia: From Brezhnev through Gorbachev
- 5 Transition from Above or Below? (1990–1991)
- 6 Central Asia's Transition (1991–1995)
- 7 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part I
- 8 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part II
- 9 Positive and Negative Political Trajectories in Clan-Based Societies
- 10 Conclusions
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Index
Summary
All the road cannot be smooth.
Kyrgyz proverbThis book has explored the social and political meaning of clans, and the logic and dynamics of clan politics over the course of the past century in Central Asia. More broadly, this book has sought to contribute to an understanding and explanation of the rise and fall of clans, and of the impact of clan politics on political regimes and political order. In the preceding pages, I have shed light on an informal level of social organization and politics that is seldom studied, and on a poorly understood but politically important region of the world. The findings of this work suggest that we rethink and broaden our theoretical approaches to studying democratization, regime transition, and institutions, both in Central Asia and in other societies – in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia – where kin, clan, and other informal identity networks are historically strong. This work has further contributed some insight to our understanding of identity and modernity. We need to understand the informal organizations and networks that can powerfully affect regimes, even in the modern era. Clans are not pre-modern phenomena, but socially embedded identity networks that exist in many societies and states, even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What role they play in politics, and whether they survive, is historically contingent. In the Central Asian cases, these networks have changed gradually over time; they have adapted to and continue to adapt to the modern state, Soviet and post-Soviet.
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- Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia , pp. 331 - 344Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006