Theoretical Framework and Comparative Case Studies on the Objectives, Adequacy, Organization and Effectiveness of OSCE Democratization Measures Aimed at Building Security in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

Contact Persons: Dr Anna Kreikemeyer

Many arguments have been raised in favour of democracy as a universal value. The international community has made democracy building a key element of foreign policy efforts. However, there is some evidence that many international organizations lack tailor-made democratization concepts i.e. for the Central Asian states, based on in-depth regional expertise. Democratization efforts “from above” sometimes lead to flawed results.

Research on post-Soviet Central Asia still frequently revolves around the question of which obstacles prevent the emergence of fully-fledged democracies. The five states of the region are characterized as democracies with adjectives such as “illiberal”, “authoritarian,” “neo-patrimonial,” “pseudo” or “proto”. What these approaches have in common is that they compare the current regimes in Central Asia to the consolidated liberal democracies. Consequently, the situation is evaluated as a failure of democratization. This kind of value-driven research is all too often unable to recognize the region’s political realities.

In its results, the project refers rather to the argument of another strand of research, mainly applied to the Middle East and North Africa, focusing not on the “failure” of democracy but rather on the “success” of authoritarianism. It is argued that the three Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan do not belong to a third wave of democratization but to a wave of regime change that leads either to democracy or to new forms of authoritarianism using the rhetoric of democracy as an important source of legitimacy.

Nevertheless external actors try to influence the transition processes from outside. In this respect the OSCE is characterized by a unique normative connection between the human dimension and security. Therefore the quality of democracy within states becomes the legitimate object of international security concerns and co-operative regulation measures. The democratization work of the OSCE is thus not only legitimized by the direct goal of perfecting democracy, but indirectly by the aim of averting threats to inner-state stability and security. In this way the OSCE becomes an instrument of conflict prevention.

The project was started in early 2003 focusing on political change in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on the one hand and the democratization policy of the OSCE on the other hand. The cognitive interest of the CORE research project was security policy by nature, its key question was: In which way do OSCE-democratization measures contribute to maintaining and strengthening stability and security? In this way the project was devoted to the research of conflict prevention and the development of a strategy of democratic security. It was therefore a first building block in the larger context of the more or less undiscovered area of security building through the democratization measures of external actors.

The project was implemented in co-operation with local partners: in Kazakhstan Dr Dosym A. Satpaev, Director of the Assessment Risks Group, and Sofia Issenova, Lawyer, Internews Kazakhstan, both in Almaty; in Kyrgyzstan Dr Atyrkul Alisheva, Institute for Regional Studies and Gulsara Osorova, Senior Expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, both in Bishkek; in Uzbekistan Dr Farkhod F. Tolipov, Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations of the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, and Marina L. Pikulina (M.A.), coordinator of the S-Monitor Analytical Group, both in Tashkent.

The edited volume “Realities of Transformation. Democratization Policies in Central Asia Revisited” combines scholarly articles with texts from NGO representatives. The contributors from Austria, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan analyse the realities of transformation from various perspectives focusing on the (non) democratization of power structures, democratization efforts by external actors and (non) democratization of the judicial sector, and on the complicated relationship between democratization and security. It is one of the first major analyses of externally driven democratization efforts in Central Asia.

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