Living Law and Political Stability in Post-Soviet Central Asia
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LIVING LAW AND POLITICAL STABILITY IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA A Case Study of the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan Living Law and Political Stability in Post-Soviet Central Asia A Case Study of the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan Rustamjon Urinboyev Coverphoto Itchan Kala, the walled inner town of the city of Khiva, Uzbekistan Photo by Jonathan Cence Copyright © Rustamjon Urinboyev Graphic Design Ilgot Liljedahl ISSN 1403-7246 ISBN 91-7267-350-8 Printed by Media-Tryck, Lund University, Sweden 2012 Contents Contents ................................................................................................ 5 Acknowledgements ............................................................................... 7 Abstract ................................................................................................. 9 Note on Transliteration ....................................................................... 11 Chapter 1 - The Book and the Central Problem ................................... 13 1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 13 1.1. Welfare and Political Stability in Post-Soviet Central Asia ................. 14 1.2. Public Policy Developments in Post-Soviet Central Asia .................... 23 1.3. Review of Relevant Literature .......................................................... 32 1.4. Research Purpose and Questions ..................................................... 40 1.5. What is the ‘Mahalla’? ..................................................................... 42 1.6. Scope and Delimitations .................................................................. 43 1.7. A Brief Overview of Four Articles ..................................................... 45 Chapter 2 - Theory............................................................................... 49 2. Living Law as a Unifying Theoretical Concept ...................................... 49 2.1. Resituating the Study of Political Stability in Society’s ‘Norm Structures’.............................................................................................. 49 2.2. Eugen Ehrlich’s Concept of ‘Living Law’ ............................................ 50 2.3. The ‘State-in-Society’ Approach ....................................................... 56 2.4. Bridging the Theory and Method through Concept of Norms ........... 60 Chapter 3 - Methodology .................................................................... 62 3. Studying Political Stability ................................................................... 62 3.1. Literature Review ............................................................................ 63 3.2. ‘Being in the Field’ – Ethnographic Fieldwork in Uzbekistan ............. 64 5 3.3. Studying Law through a Socio-Legal Approach ................................. 67 3.4. Historical Method ............................................................................ 68 3.5. Dealing with Validity and Reliability Issues ....................................... 69 3.6. Model for Analysis of the Empirical Data.......................................... 74 Chapter 4 - Results and Analysis ......................................................... 79 4. Results and Analysis ........................................................................... 79 4.1. The Primary Results of the Articles................................................... 79 4.2. Analysing the Empirical Data and the Four Articles of the Thesis ...... 84 4.3. Conclusions ..................................................................................... 90 References .......................................................................................... 98 Chapter 5 - The Articles ......................................................................115 6 Acknowledgements The completion of this Ph.D. thesis marks the end of a long journey, and has only been possible due to the support and encouragement of a great number of people whom I would like to thank. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Prof. Karsten Åström and Dr. Måns Svensson. This thesis would not have been possible without their help, support and patience. I learnt a lot about life and humanity from them. Their curiosity, diligence, enthusiasm and insightful comments and advice were supervision above and beyond the call of duty. They skilfully guided me in my long journey, providing clear and constructive feedback. The hard-edged and constructive nature of their critique made me rework my ideas countless times. The thesis is the better for it. Prof. Håkan Hyden was a great source of help and inspiration. Although never a formal supervisor, he carefully read my papers and provided valuable comments. Notably, my first article on the mahalla institutions was inspired by his insightful lectures on the concept of norms. Prof. Per Wickenberg was also very supportive throughout this process. Both morally and financially, he always supported my initiatives and facilitated my research trips and conferences. His wit, wisdom, humanity and humble personality are always admirable. The Head of our Department, Dr. Matthias Baier, was also helpful in my research process, offering support and advice along the way. I would like to thank all my colleagues and friends at the Department of Sociology of Law for making my PhD period intellectually interesting, exciting and joyful. I am especially grateful to Karl, Stefan, Muhammadrorfee, Julija, and Ana Maria for their good camaraderie. Without their sense of humour and friendship, this would have been a joyless process. My special thanks also go to Lilian Dahl who was amazingly helpful and tirelessly supported me in any administrative issues. I would like to thank Johanna Alkan Olsson for providing me with teaching opportunities in research methods courses, which I found very rewarding. I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to do short-term research at the Department of Public Administration, Tallinn University of Technology (TUT) under Prof. Wolfgang Drechsler’s supervision. I greatly benefited from his careful reading of my articles and chapters. His Ph.D. course, Non-Western Public 7 Administration: The State and Public Administration in Classical China and Islam, broadened my understanding of state-society relations and public administration in non-Western societies. I also benefited from presenting my papers at the NISPAcee annual conferences in Poland, Bulgaria and Macedonia. I would like to thank Prof. Michiel de Vries, the co-ordinator of the Conference Working Group on PA Reforms, who regularly provided excellent feedback on several articles of my thesis. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Department of Sociology of Law, Lund University, for providing resources and an atmosphere conducive to research which made this thesis possible. My research was primarily financed by the Erasmus Mundus External Co-operation Window Programme, funded from the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, EU. I am also grateful to the Swedish Institute (The Guest Scholarship Program) and Open Society Institute (The Global Supplementary Grants Program) for additional funding and to the DoRa Scholarship Programme (funded by the REU) and Tallinn University of Technology for financing my research stay in Tallinn, Estonia. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to John, Eileen, Erik and Oliver, whom I regard as my Swedish family. They all offered support in innumerable ways, and constantly remained helpful and supportive throughout this process. Eileen, an enormously talented and warm-hearted person, proofread a final version and thereby significantly improved the quality of this thesis. I would like to thank my siblings, Rohatoy, Ravshanbek and Abdurasul, for their love, care and ceaseless support. They have always been enormously helpful, and I am very fortunate and happy to have them. I am immensely grateful to my wife, Shahnoza, for her love and care, and standing by me through the good and bad times. Her contributions are immeasurable in making this thesis possible. Above all, this thesis would not have been possible without love, care, good upbringing, intelligence and investment of my parents. Due to the retrenchment of the welfare state and economic decline in the post-Soviet period, very few people in our mahalla in Ferghana invest in the education of children. Despite their limited financial means, my father, Uktamjon and mother, Yoquthon, devotedly invested much time and resources in my education, often at the expense of their and my siblings’ basic nutrition. For many reasons, but most notably their humanity, generosity, modesty, wisdom, dedication, love for children, and altruism, they will always serve as models for me. It is to them that this thesis is dedicated. Rustam Urinboyev Lund, Sweden, December 2012 8 Abstract Central Asian countries are facing multidimensional political stability and security challenges in the post-Soviet period. Current scholarly discussions of political stability in post-Soviet Central Asia continue to revolve around the issues of Islamic upheaval, ethnic conflicts, civil war or inter-clan struggles, and how the authoritarian regimes in this region deploy coercive strategies and penal sanctions to cope with political instability. There is a lack of research, though, that addresses the relationship between welfare structures and political stability. It is evident that political and coercive strategies