The 'Colorful' Revolution of Kyrgyzstan: Democratic Transition
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Introduction
24th Deutsche Schule Athen Model United Nations | 22nd-24th October 2021 Forum: Special Political and Decolonization Committee (GA4) Issue: The current political situation in Kyrgyzstan Student Officer: Chris Moustakis Position: Main Chair INTRODUCTION “A country without solid borders is like a house without solid walls – it is bound to collapse”. Kyrgyzstan is a nation located in Central Asia. It is bordered by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China. Its capital and largest city is Bishkek. Surprisingly, despite the state of solitude that one would assume the nation had throughout history (primarily due to its mountainous terrain and location), it has hosted countless civilizations throughout history, albeit temporarily. It served as a crossroads, as it was part of the Silk Road, a network of trade routes connecting the East and the West. On the 31st of August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow and formed a democratic government. It then attained sovereignty as a nation state, following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ever since then, Kyrgyzstan has remained (at least officially) a unitary presidential republic. Despite this, the nation itself hasn’t been stable since independence. It undergoes ethnic disputes, revolts, transitional governments, political conflict and even economic crisis. To top it all off, on the 28th of April 2021 began a border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The reason for this is rather debatable, as there are multiple theories. Figure 1: A map of the area of Kyrgyzstan and its neighboring nations.1 As the situation was addressed by Russia, the nation is “without leadership” and “chaotic”. It is undeniable that Kyrgyzstan has not had political stability ever since its independence. -
Revolution and Democracy: Sociopolitical Systems in the Context of Modernisation Leonid E
preview version Revolution and Democracy: Sociopolitical Systems in the Context of Modernisation Leonid E. Grinin and Andrey V. Korotayev Abstract The stability of socio-political systems and the risks of destabi- lisation in the process of political transformation are among the most im- portant issues of social development; the transition to democracy may pose a serious threat to the stability of a respective socio-political system. This article studies the issue of democratisation. It highlights the high economic and social costs of a rapid transition to democracy for countries unpre- pared for it—democracy resulting from revolutions or similar large-scale events. The authors believe that in a number of cases authoritarian regimes turn out to be more effective in economic and social terms than emerging democracies, especially those of a revolutionary type, which are often inca- pable of ensuring social order and may have a swing to authoritarianism. Effective authoritarian regimes can also be a suitable form of transition to an efficient and stable democracy. Using historical and contemporary examples, particularly the recent events in Egypt, the article investigates various correlations between revolutionary events and the possibility of es- tablishing democracy in a society. Keywords: democracy, revolution, extremists, counterrevolution, Isla- mists, authoritarianism, military takeover, economic efficiency, globali- sation, Egypt Introduction It is not surprising that in five years none of the revolutions of the Arab Spring has solved any urgent issues. Unfortunately, this was probably never a possibility. Various studies suggest a link between 110 preview version revolutions and the degree of modernisation of a society.1 Our research reveals that the very processes of modernisation, regardless of the level of consumption and the rate of population growth, is closely and organically linked to the risk of social and political upheaval, which can Leonid E. -
Democracy As an Effort Rayna Gavrilova, CEE Trust USAID/Bulgaria Closing Ceremony October 10, 2007, Sofia
Democracy as an Effort Rayna Gavrilova, CEE Trust USAID/Bulgaria Closing Ceremony October 10, 2007, Sofia Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, When I was invited to say a few words at the official closing of the United States Agency for International Development in Bulgaria, the first title that came to my mind was “Democracy as an Effort.” When change began, democracy for us was mostly about revolution – from Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, to Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Eighteen years later, we already realize that democracy is most of all a constant effort made by citizens and institutions. The post- communist countries, including Bulgaria, were lucky not to have been left alone in this process. The international assistance for laying the foundations of liberal democracy and market economy came early and was timely. The United States was among the first countries to get involved. American public organizations such as USAID, non- governmental organizations and an impressive number of individuals made a long-lasting and systematic effort to elucidate and support this social order which, without doubt, remains the choice of the larger part of humanity. USAID left visible traces in Bulgarian social life. Today we hardly remember it, but through their programs a whole variety of previously unknown concepts, such as “rule of law,” “local government initiative,” “transparency”, and “entrepreneurship promotion” entered the Bulgarian vocabulary and practice, and are today the foundation of the state. Some of the terms which had no equivalent in the rigid vocabulary of socialism remain untranslated even today: probation, mediation, microcredit. -
Independence, Intervention, and Internationalism Angola and the International System, 1974–1975
Independence, Intervention, and Internationalism Angola and the International System, 1974–1975 ✣ Candace Sobers Mention the Cold War and thoughts instinctively turn to Moscow, Washing- ton, DC, and Beijing. Fewer scholars examine the significant Cold War strug- gles that took place in the African cities of Luanda, Kinshasa, and Pretoria. Yet in 1975 a protracted war of national liberation on the African continent escalated sharply into a major international crisis. Swept up in the momen- tum of the Cold War, the fate of the former Portuguese colony of Angola captured the attention of policymakers from the United States to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Colombia to Luxembourg. The struggle over Angolan independence from Portugal was many things: the culmination of sixteen years of intense anti-colonial struggle and the launch of 28 years of civil war, a threat to white minority rule in southern Africa, and another battle on the long road to ending empire and colonialism. It was also a strug- gle to define and create a viable postcolonial state and to carry out a radical transformation of the sociopolitical structure of Angolan society. Recent scholarship on Angolan independence has provided an impres- sive chronology of the complicated saga yet has less to say about the wider consequences and ramifications of a crisis that, though located in southern Africa, was international in scope. During the anti-colonial struggle, U.S. sup- port reinforced the Portuguese metropole, contiguous African states harbored competing revolutionaries, and great and medium powers—including Cuba, China, and South Africa—provided weapons, combat troops, and mercenar- ies to the three main national liberation movements. -
Portugal's History Since 1974
Portugal’s history since 1974 Stewart Lloyd-Jones ISCTE-Lisbon AN IMPERIAL LEGACY The Carnation Revolution (Revolução dos Cravos) that broke out on the morning of 25 April 1974 has had a profound effect on Portuguese society, one that still has its echoes today, almost 30 years later, and which colours many of the political decision that have been, and which continue to be made. During the authoritarian regime of António de Oliveira Salazar (1932-68) and his successor, Marcello Caetano (1968-74), Portugal had existed in a world of its own construction. Its vast African empire (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, and Cape Verde) was consistently used to define Portugal’s self-perceived identity as being ‘in, but not of Europe’. Within Lisbon’s corridors of power, the dissolution of the other European empires was viewed with horror, and despite international opprobrium and increasing isolation, the Portuguese dictatorship was in no way prepared to follow the path of decolonisation. As Salazar was to defiantly declare, Portugal would stand ‘proudly alone’, indeed, for a regime that had consciously legitimated itself by ‘turning its back on Europe’, there could be no alternative course of action. Throughout the 1960s and early-1970s, the Portuguese people were to pay a high price for the regime’s determination to remain in Africa. From 1961 onwards, while the world’s attention was focused on events in south-east Asia, Portugal was fighting its own wars. By the end of the decade, the Portuguese government was spending almost half of its GNP on sustaining a military presence of over 150,000 troops in Africa. -
© in This Web Service Cambridge University
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-83720-0 - The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Crises and Détente: Volume II Edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad Index More information Index Cumulative index for Volumes I, II, and III. Bold page numbers refer to maps and photographs. 9/11 attacks, III.134, 537, 550, 554–5 anti-Sovietism, I.150 Berlin crisis, II.168 abortion, III.468, 469, 473 Cuban missile crisis, II.73 Abstract Expressionism, II.30 division of Germany and, II.482–3 Accornero, Aris (Italian social scientist), I.54 European integration, II.182, 183–4 Achaeans, II.1 French relations, II.168, 169, 184 Acheson, Dean, I.78 German unification and, II.203 Acheson–Lilienthal Report, II.397 Khrushchev and, I.319 Excomm, II.71 loss of power, II.483 on Germany, II.119, III.156 Marshall Plan, I.170 grand strategy, I.84–6 NPT and, II.408 Ho Chi Minh and, I.82–3 nuclear weapons, II.487 Japanese policy, I.82, III.156 US relations, II.484 Korean War, I.276 values, II.462–3 Marshall Plan and, I.155, 159 Advanced Research Projects Agency, see NATO, I.81 ARPA Pacific policy, I.274 advertising, III.503, 504–5 political influence, I.83 Adzhubei, Aleksei (Soviet journalist), III.402 postwar assessment, I.74 affluent society, II.510–13, 518 on racial segregation, I.433–4, III.456 Afghanistan Schuman Plan and, II.182 Al Qaeda, III.133–4 Ackermann, Anton (German Communist), bibliography, III.566 I.180 Cold War and, I.484 Acton, John (British historian) I.1, 2 Egyptian relations, III.126 Adamec, Ladislav (Czechoslovak prime fundamentalism, III.536–7 -
25 April 1974: an End Or a Beginning
Stewart LLOYD-JONES, Lusotopie 2002/2 : 141-147 An End or a Beginning for Portugal ? Some Notes on the Legacy of 25 April 1974* complete generation of Portuguese have passed into adulthood since the heady days of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. For this new Ageneration of Portuguese, globalisation, European integration, and the information revolution are much more significant to their lives than corporatism, colonial wars and the Carnation Revolution can ever be. The chasm that exists between the present generation’s real life experiences and the experiences of their parents and grandparents could not be wider. In all, the 1960s and 1970s are as remote to them as the 1930s and 1940s are to everyone. We can all recognise that the present is shaped by the past, but, with the passage of time, it is much more difficult to assert that events that occurred thirty years ago have a greater influence than those that occurred five or even ten years ago. We are now standing at a moment in time in which it is possible to shed much of the ideological and reverential baggage of the past. While we may acknowledge the actions and sacrifices of older generations, we should no longer be obliged to bow to them. Perhaps it is now time for a few pedestals to be swept away, and for a much more sober assessment of the recent past to be made without seeking approval from those who participated in the events that made the history. With the passage of time and with the release of new archival material, the significance of the participants’ (often unreliable) memoires is reduced. -
Revolution in Bad Times
asef bayat REVOLUTION IN BAD TIMES ack in 2011, the Arab uprisings were celebrated as world- changing events that would re-define the spirit of our political times. The astonishing spread of these mass uprisings, fol- lowed soon after by the Occupy protests, left observers in Blittle doubt that they were witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon— ‘something totally new’, ‘open-ended’, a ‘movement without a name’; revolutions that heralded a novel path to emancipation. According to Alain Badiou, Tahrir Square and all the activities which took place there—fighting, barricading, camping, debating, cooking and caring for the wounded—constituted the ‘communism of movement’; posited as an alternative to the conventional liberal-democratic or authoritar- ian state, this was a universal concept that heralded a new way of doing politics—a true revolution. For Slavoj Žižek, only these ‘totally new’ political happenings, without hegemonic organizations, charismatic leaderships or party apparatuses, could create what he called the ‘magic of Tahrir’. For Hardt and Negri, the Arab Spring, Europe’s indignado protests and Occupy Wall Street expressed the longing of the multitude for a ‘real democracy’, a different kind of polity that might supplant the hopeless liberal variety worn threadbare by corporate capitalism. These movements, in sum, represented the ‘new global revolutions’.1 ‘New’, certainly; but what does this ‘newness’ tell us about the nature of these political upheavals? What value does it attribute to them? In fact, just as these confident appraisals were being circulated in the us and Europe, the Arab protagonists themselves were anguishing about the fate of their ‘revolutions’, lamenting the dangers of conservative restora- tion or hijacking by free-riders. -
Kyrgyzstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests
Kyrgyzstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests Jim Nichol Specialist in Russian and Eurasian Affairs August 30, 2013 Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov 97-690 CRS Report for Congress Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress Kyrgyzstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests Summary Kyrgyzstan is a small and poor Central Asian country that gained independence in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The United States has been interested in helping Kyrgyzstan to enhance its sovereignty and territorial integrity, bolster economic reform and development, strengthen human rights, prevent weapons proliferation, and more effectively combat transnational terrorism and trafficking in persons and narcotics. Special attention long has been placed on bolstering civil society and democratization in what has appeared to be the most receptive—but still challenging—political and social environment in Central Asia. The significance of Kyrgyzstan to the United States increased after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Kyrgyzstan offered to host U.S. forces at an airbase at the Manas international airport outside of the capital, Bishkek, and it opened in December 2001. The U.S. military repaired and later upgraded the air field for aerial refueling, airlift and airdrop, medical evacuation, and support for U.S. and coalition personnel and cargo transiting in and out of Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz government threatened to close down the airbase in early 2009, but renewed the lease on the airbase (renamed the Manas Transit Center) in June 2009 after the United States agreed to higher lease and other payments. President Almazbek Atambayev and the legislature have stated that the basing agreement will not be renewed when it expires in 2014. -
A Hollow Regime Collapses
Policy Briefing Asia Briefing N°102 Bishkek/Brussels, 27 April 2010 Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses This briefing explains and analyses the events of the past I. OVERVIEW five years, in an effort to provide context and background to the uprising. Bakiyev came to power in the so-called A swift, violent rebellion swept into the Kyrgyz capital Tulip Revolution of March 2005, which ousted President Bishkek in early April 2010, sparked by anger at painful Askar Akayev, whom opposition leaders accused of nepo- utility price increases and the corruption that was the de- tism, corruption and growing authoritarianism. Once in fining characteristic of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s office, Bakiyev quickly abandoned most semblances of rule. In less than two days the president had fled. Some democracy, creating a narrow-based political structure 85 people were killed and the centre of the capital was run by his own family and for their profit. A combination looted. The thirteen-member provisional government now of ruthlessness and incompetence led to the regime’s faces a daunting series of challenges. Bakiyev leaves be- downfall. Almost exactly five years after his victory, Baki- hind a bankrupt state hollowed out by corruption and crime. yev was charged with the same abuses as Akayev had been, Economic failure and collapsing infrastructure have gen- by many of the same people with whom he had staged the erated deep public resentment. If the provisional govern- 2005 “revolution”. ment moves fast to assert its power, the risks of major long-term violence are containable: there are no signs of Despite the much-discussed theory that Moscow instigated extensive support for Bakiyev or of a North-South split. -
Running Into the Sand? the EU's Faltering Response to the Arab
December 2013 Running into the sand? The EU’s faltering response to the Arab revolutions By Edward Burke Running into the sand? The EU’s faltering response to the Arab revolutions By Edward Burke Before the Arab Spring, the EU believed it could promote political reform through economic liberalisation. That approach proved ineffective. Since the Arab Spring, the EU’s response has produced limited results. Its ‘more for more’ principle has not resulted in meaningful democratic change. European funds are stretched, North African agricultural exports remain unwelcome in Europe and security concerns often trump concern for democracy. A pragmatic approach to reform in the southern neighbourhood is needed, so that the EU takes account of the different circumstances in each of the countries. The EU should invest in civil service reform, education, judicial reform, a regional free-trade agreement and building security relations across the region. The EU should also increase its democracy assistance to the region through training and capacity- building. But, if it wants to remain a credible actor, Brussels should only fund democracy promotion in those countries where reforms are happening. 1. Introduction1 In 2011, the EU responded to the political uprisings Two years later, optimism for the region’s future has given that swept across North Africa and the Middle East way to concern and even despair. Most dramatically, with a striking mea culpa. In a speech to the European in July 2013 the Egyptian military overthrew a Parliament, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement and democratically-elected president, Mohammed Morsi. Even Neighbourhood Policy, Štefan Füle, admitted: “Too many in Tunisia, often regarded as the most ‘successful’ transition of us fell prey to the assumption that authoritarian in the region, a draft constitution threatens to severely regimes were a guarantee of stability in the region. -
Port Raritancommissionoffers
VOLUME 46 No 41 South Amboy, N. J., Friday, January 14, 1927 Price Four Cents. PORT RARITAN COMMISSION OFFERS ENTERTAIN PARENT FOURTH CHAUTAUQUA PETITION URGES GIVING COUNTY MAIN TEACHERS ASS'N TUJESDAY, JAN. 25TH PLAN FOR WATERFRONT DEVELOPMENT Regular Monthly Meeting Tuesda Engaging Program Planned for Fi- ST. AND PAVING IT AS CONNECTING LINK Enjoys Program by Pupils. nal Event of Series. Would Reclaim Nearly 400 Acres Now Inundated—Urge St. .Mary's Parent-Tciachers Asso The fourth aiwi last of the Chau- Council Asked to Initiate Action—Ordinances Appointing elation held its regular monthly meet tauqua series of entertainments will Full^Cooperation of Property Owners—Ask For Condi ing on Tuesday of this week. be given in the high school auditor- Officials Adopted at Lengthy Session Opened With The attendance was good despit ium on Tuesday, Jan. 25th, both af- tional Options on Riparian Rights and Titles. the cold weather some parents travel ternoon and evening. Prayer. ing all tine way from Keyport to en- At 3:30 P. M. a musical prelude a joy the evening's entertainment. The Port Raxitan Commission pre- ===^^==^= will be given by the Betty Booth The paving of Main street from eented at the City Hall here Monday IMOITD ANf V AP|7rV'I\ The following program as pre Concert ,Co., and a special entertain- Washington avenue to Roses Corner sen ted speaks for itself; ment for the children will be pre- "• night a comprehensive plan for the Overture, "In the Middle of th, POLISH CITIZENS CLUB by (thb Board of Freeholders after (reclamation otf nearly four hundred sented by the famous ventriloquist, taking <yver the road 'by *hat body was Night", Alioe Kennedy, on the violin Frederick C.