Chaos, Violence, Dynasty: Politics and Islam in Central Asia

Chapter 1. A Post-transitions Research Agenda for the Study of Authoritarianism

17 I left an October 2009 U.S. government conference on democracy assistance in Central Asia with two thoughts: policy makers and academics have developed a sophisticated conceptualization of democratization processes, and this conceptualization of democratization is largely divorced from Central Asian reality . Our conversations at the conference focused on enhancing civic engagement, promoting freedom of the press, and empowering women and youth—policies Western governments and aid organization partners have promoted in Central Asia since the Soviet collapse. These policies have had little effect. Two decades after the Soviet collapse, governments throughout Central Asia are no closer to democratization than they were in 1991. Yet the academic literature and policy conferences continue to emphasize democratization and transition, rather than variations within authoritarian rule. One reason for our collective deficit in conceptualizing and explaining authoritarian variation, as I learned from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) colleagues at the conference, is domestic U.S. politics. Democracy assistance, civil society promotion, freedom of the press, youth and women empowerment —these policies “sell on the Hill.” The problem, though, is these policies have no buyers among Central Asia’s autocratic leaders. One would think academics would rush to point this out to lawmakers. Academics too are shaped by political pressures. U.S. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, for example, forwarded Amendment 2631 to “prohibit the National Science Foundation [NSF] 1 A Post-transitions Research Agenda for the Study of Authoritarianism McGlinch_pages.indd 17 8/2/11 3:44 PM 18 A Post-transitions Research Agenda for the Study of Authoritarianism from wasting federal research funding on political science projects.”1 Coburn would prefer the NSF concentrate resources on “real fields” that “can yield real improvements in the lives of everyone.” The NSF political science program, if it is to withstand these criticisms, must itself demonstrate its transformative potential. Hence, following USAID’s strategy, the NSF targets funding on “campaigns and elections, electoral choice, and electoral systems; and citizen support in emerging and established democracies.”2 The NSF, as with many other funding organizations , promotes the study of democratization; as such, it is understandable that this is where political scientists have placed their greatest emphasis. Our discipline offers several respected journals devoted to the study of democracy—the Journal of Democracy, Democratization, and Demokratizatsiya. We have no periodicals, however, devoted to the study of authoritarianism. Similarly, although graduate seminars on democratization can be found on most university campuses, courses on authoritarianism are few. Another reason why there are so few seminars on authoritarianism is that there are so few instructors who could lead them. Whereas political science departments have excellent Europeanists and Latin Americanists well trained in democratic transition, the ranks of academics who focus on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—that is, those areas where autocracies predominate—are thin. Some attribute this limited supply to the incentives political scientists face. The historian Stephen Kotkin, for one, rankled his social science colleagues when he observed in the New York Times: “The absence of regional experts in political science departments of many elite universities goes back to a long-running, rancorous debate over the best method for understanding the way the world works: is it using statistics and econometrics to identify universal patterns that underlie all economic and political systems, or zeroing in on a particular area, and mastering its languages, cultures and institutions?”3 Not lost on Kotkin is a second potential causal explanation for our inattention to authoritarianism: working in autocratic environments is not fun. A career navigating armed conflict, corrupt officials, repeated intimidation by state and nonstate actors, poor sanitation, and repeated food poisonings is one most people would avoid. “Quantitative and American studies counterparts,” Kotkin points out in contrast, “can explore new material in front of their computers and still pick up the kids at 5.”4 Fortunately, tolerant families and strong stomachs have enabled several social scientists to begin exploring questions of autocratic continuity and variation. Good-natured chiding has also encouraged comparative political scientists who study the former Soviet Union to rethink their transitions models. Barbara Geddes, a Latin Americanist, ribs her transitology colleagues: “One of the reasons regime transitions have proved theoretically intractable is that McGlinch_pages.indd 18 8/2/11 3:44 PM A Post-transitions Research Agenda for the Study of Authoritarianism 19 different kinds of authoritarianism differ from each other as much as they differ from democracy . . . [and] comparativists have...