Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (review)

The content of this work justifies its ambitious title. Collins analyzes both clan politics and regime transition in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, asserting that clans have become significant political forces in these newly independent states. A "clan pact" provided initial legitimacy and stability in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan after independence (1991), and the absence of such a pact led to instability and civil war in Tajikistan. In detailing the political changes of the 1990s, Collins argues that multiple factors led to authoritarian regimes, rather than democratization. But due to clan activities, such as domination of sectors of the economy and asset stripping, none of these regimes is strongly consolidated. Collins situates her argument that clan politics can be empirically analyzed, and must be evaluated as causal elements in regime trajectories, within broader literature on democratization. The chapters discussing the post-1990 period should be welcomed by all scholars of contemporary Central Asia for their detailed and comparative description of the politics of independence in these three republics.

Research methods combine questions raised by political science with what Collins calls "ethnographic methods," meaning hundreds of interviews with people on the village and elite levels. She bases her approach to "clan" on a thorough reading of the Russian and Soviet ethnographic scholarship on Central Asia. Several historical chapters address the Soviet-period role of clans—providing access to scarce goods—and also the official suppression of clans.

Collins makes the case for the political significance of clan most convincingly regarding Kyrgyzstan, in part because the more open political climate there permitted much better access to information at all levels than in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan. In addition, Kyrgyz clans are large networks that claim a particular shared ancestry in a long tradition of nomadism; they were settled under the Soviets. Collins can name Kyrgyz clans and describe their actions.

Collins' definition of "clan" in Uzbek and Tajik politics is less cohesive, ranging from regional network to village kinship network, though Collins argues, rather unpersuasively, that local lineage groups and regional power blocs can both be assumed under the word "clan." The question arises whether a regional relationship of patronage and reciprocity might mobilize different resources and have different social consequences than relationships based on patronage tied to kinship—a point raised by Schatz in his study of clan politics in Kazakhstan.¹ In particular, Collins uses the term "trust" to describe network solidarity, but she does not interrogate what "trust" means in kinship networks as opposed to local or regional networks. However, for both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Collins makes clear that networks of patronage undermine institutional consolidation and create weak autocracy.

Avoiding Orientalist essentialism about clan-based societies, Collins presents the instability of clans, their tendencies to divide, and their changing roles vis-à-vis the state. Collins' systematic comparisons among the three republics, with brief references to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and other states, demonstrate that although clans shape politics in Central Asia, analysis of clan roles allows no simple prediction of political trajectories.