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93 Conclusion T he reform paths of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan must be analyzed within the historical, political, and economic framework of their status as former Soviet republics. Their different legacies best explain their divergent processes of reform. This book differs from previous studies because it details how each country’s legacy influenced its economic policies, combining these historical indicators with economic data on each country’s progress on reform in order to analyze its transition process. Earlier studies (Åslund, Boone, and Johnson 1996; Fish 1998) that relied on categorization of the regime type (democratic or non-Communist) were not able to predict adequately the continuation of economic reform in Kazakhstan. Even though Nazarbayev was part of the Communist-era elite, he followed through on reform. Additionally, decisions made about economic policies in both countries depend in part on their level of integration with Soviet-era Russia. Jeromin Zettlemeyer’s paper “The Uzbek Growth Puzzle” (1998) explains much about why Uzbekistan’s output fell less than any other former Soviet republic even though it did not proceed with rapid economic reforms. However, Zettlemeyer does not point out that Uzbekistan was less integrated than was Kazakhstan with Soviet-era Russia in key economic sectors. Consequently, Uzbekistan’s lack of structural dependence provided the Uzbek government with flexibility on reform policy because at independence the country could continue to function at the same economic level. Admittedly, this structural component only provides part of the explanation for the decision-making processes of these two states because it leaves the leaders 94 CONCLUSION and the elite in the proverbial “black box.” Therefore, I have incorporated both of these key components of the decision-making process: the elite and the Soviet structural system. One way to do so is to use a variant of the agent-structure concept.1 The agent-structure theory accounts for the “powers of agents” and the “structural factors” or conditions that necessarily shape an action carried out by a decision maker (Dessler 1989; Wendt 1987). In other words, the conditions under which decision makers operate are also necessary to explain the actions of those agents or decision makers. When Marx said, “People make history but not in conditions of their own choosing,” he could not have known how true this would be for the future of the fieen republics that comprised the Soviet structure. In fact, it was the longer legacies of democratic governments and market economies that partly explain why the CEE and Baltic states proceeded much more quickly with reform than the former Soviet states. As Amanda Wooden and Christoph Stefes (2009, 249) comment: “Post-Soviet societies did not start from scratch. Instead, their transitions from communism were embedded in numerous social, economic and political legacies. The legacies of the Soviet and pre-Soviet past have continued to shape developments of the post-Soviet present.” Indeed, the first survey of business leaders conducted by the EBRD and the World Bank in 1999 measured the extent to which the legacy of central planning was still dominant in the post-Communist countries. As discussed in the previous chapter, some of the responses from the business community were surprising. Notably, the slowest reformers and the most advanced reformers both ranked high on issues of governance, leaving the partial reformers ranked lower. While the survey’s authors explained that this result by means of the similar capabilities of both the advanced and the slowest reformers to provide services that private firms need, they suggest that a different type of analysis is required: “While this interpretation is consistent with the facts, it does not provide an explanation as to why states differ in their willingness and capacity to undertake the institutional and behavioural reforms necessary to enhance market-oriented governance” (EBRD 1999, 117). Some two decades aer the end of the command economic system followed by the countries of the Soviet Union, we have a general understanding of the types of policies that these states have pursued. At this point, perhaps at least some the gradualists and the shock therapists are ready to concede that what is required is a mix of both policies. Mitchell Orenstein’s (2001) finding that Poland and the Czech Republic successfully followed a blend of policies, what he calls “democratic policy alternation,” certainly adds support to that proposal. CONCLUSION 95 Now, however, it is more important to understand why some of the transition states continued with reform policies and why some did not...

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