The establishment of electoral systems in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan presents both a complex set of empirical puzzles and a theoretical challenge. Why did three states with similar cultural, historical, and structural legacies establish such different electoral systems? How did these distinct outcomes result from such strikingly similar institutional design processes? What accounts for the similarities in the process by which they each designed new electoral rules – in particular, the common salience of regionalism – and yet, the divergent forms that electoral systems took as a result of this process? Explaining these puzzles requires understanding not only the outcome of institutional design but also the intricacies of the process that lead to this outcome. Moreover, the transitional context in which these three states designed new electoral rules necessitates an approach that explicitly links the institutional design process and its outcome in a dynamic setting.

This chapter provides such an approach. In short, I depict institutional design as a transitional bargaining game (TBG) in which the dynamic interaction between the structural-historical context and the immediate-strategic context directly shapes actors' perceptions of shifts in their relative power as the game proceeds, and hence, their bargaining strategies. I thus offer an approach that builds on the key insights of the dominant approaches to explaining institutional origin and change, and yet, also transcends these approaches by moving beyond the structure versus agency debate that forms the basis for the intellectual divide between them.