UNCHARTERED DEMOCRATIZATION IN CENTRAL ASIA Explaining the Unlikely Democratization in Clan-Based Kyrgyzstan

Abstract: This thesis examines the political development in Central Asia from the onset of independence in 1991 to 2011, with an in-depth focus on explaining Kyrgyzstan’s democratic development in clan-based Central Asia, that is rarely discussed in research. I introduce a theoretical framework building on “democratization by state formation” by introducing and analyzing the difference between open-, and closed clan-governance systems. By tracing and bringing new empirical material from interviews in Kyrgyzstan and Sweden, the analysis was performed by doing a comparative historical analysis. The results from the analysis suggest that the assumption, proposition and hypothesis are correct and important to include in the analysis. It appears the Kyrgyzstan indeed had an open clan-governance system while the rest of the countries in Central Asia prolonged the Soviet styled authoritarian regime under closed clan-governance. This implies that rivalling and competing clan-networks in Kyrgyzstan could build up and secure their own power bases, in a system that required balancing between clan-networks. Whenever the executive in Kyrgyzstan would disturb the balance, excluding rivalling networks, this would eventually result in their removal. Democratization in 2011 was pushed to formalize the open clan-governance system as a way for clan-networks to secure their own access to the state. Nevertheless, this study also suggests that clan-structure as a key variable needs to be analyzed in relation to confounding factors in order to sufficiently explain democratization in Kyrgyzstan, especially economic level and state capacity in relation to the other Central Asian countries.