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165 We began with the following questions: Why do Central Asian states with similar pasts exhibit dissimilar post-Soviet outcomes? Why is Uzbek politics violent ? Why is Kyrgyz politics chaotic? Why, in contrast, is the only real threat to enduring Kazakh stability the question of elite succession and the Nazarbaev dynasty? The answers to these questions lie as much in Moscow as they do in Astana, Bishkek, or Tashkent. In the second half of the 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev and the Central Communist Party leadership intervened in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to restore political order in the wake of violent mass protests. Gorbachev intervened in Kazakhstan to restore order after the December 1986 mass uprising against the appointment of an ethnic Russian to the republic’s top administrative post. Moscow intervened again in June 1989, when ethnic riots in Uzbekistan ’s Fergana Valley undermined First Secretary Rafik Nishanov’s authority. Gorbachev did not intervene in June 1990, however, when deadly ethnic riots on the Kyrgyz side of the Fergana Valley eroded First Secretary Absamat Masaliev’s legitimacy and led to the fragmentation of the Kyrgyz political elite. In February 1990, in an effort to sideline establishment elites opposing perestroika reforms, Gorbachev decreed an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly hold on power. His goal was to revitalize the party and eliminate dead wood through political competition. In the Kyrgyz case competition eliminated Masaliev and with him the elite unity that once characterized the Kyrgyz polity. Whereas Islam Karimov and Nursultan Nazarbaev carried their united parties— Conclusion McGlinch_pages.indd 165 8/2/11 3:45 PM 166 Conclusion albeit under new names—into the post-Soviet period, the new and narrowly elected Kyrgyz executive, Askar Akaev, struggled to solidify authority while balancing the competing interests of Kyrgyzstan’s now fragmented political elite. Through the use of formal modeling, I demonstrated how we could have anticipated even in 1991 that these diverging perestroika-era legacies of elite rule would lead to the chaos, violence, and dynasty we now see throughout Central Asia. My airplane analogy serves as shorthand for this formal model. The Kyrgyz executive, flying a small Cessna, must remain attentive to the demands of the few influential elite riding in the passenger cabin. Should the Kyrgyz executive expropriate rather than share state wealth, this narrow elite can readily coordinate a mutiny. Coordinated collective action is a considerably more risky proposition in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Those who are lucky enough to find themselves in Karimov’s and Nazarbaev’s ruling coalition are unlikely to revolt because these elites understand that the likelihood they will find themselves back in the inner circle of the next leader is low. A small number of Karimov’s or Nazarbaev’s ruling coalition members may occasionally defect. Given the hundreds of party members in both executives’ 747 passenger cabins, however, the ability of elites to coordinate a cascade of defection is limited. Karimov and Nazarbaev in turn, because they know ruling-coalition elites are unlikely to defect, are considerably more free than their Kyrgyz counterpart to use state wealth as they desire—for personal enrichment, for building coercive capacity, for investing in public goods, or for bids to advance their international prestige. Diverging perestroika legacies and formal modeling, although they help us understand why Kyrgyz politics is chaotic and Uzbek and Kazakh politics is stable, do not explain variation in the degrees of repression we see in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Nor can diverging perestroika legacies and formal modeling alone tell us why Kyrgyzstan’s first president, Askar Akaev, was able to hold power for fifteen years while his successor, Kurmanbek Bakiev, held power for only five years. The answer to the first question can be found in Uzbekistan’s and Kazakhstan’s differing economies and diverging abilities to provide public goods. Kazakhstan’s oil wealth and the stunning amount of foreign direct investment this wealth attracts generates real economic growth, which allows Nazarbaev to maintain the social contract that long enabled his Soviet predecessors to secure autocratic rule with little risk of social dissent. Uzbekistan’s wealth is considerably more constrained. Although Karimov has sufficient resources to fund effective institutions of repression and to support his daughter’s increasingly lavish lifestyle, the Uzbek president has little left over to meet even the most basic social welfare needs of the population. Other institutions, most notably local Muslim charities and businesses, have stepped in to provide social services that the Uzbek state McGlinch_pages.indd 166 8/2/11 3...

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