Comparative Research Design - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 68

Hence, in both countries the presidential administration is a powerful bureaucratic apparatus
solely accountable to the President. 66 De facto also the governors and the local agencies are
subordinated to the president and not to the prime minister, albeit de jure they are controlled
by the latter. The members of the high courts are also nominated and dismissed by the presi
dent. The judiciary is actually subordinate to the President and lacks the capacity and power to
act independently. The courts are not trusted by the population as they are considered to be
corrupt and government dependent (Dukenbaev, Hansen 2003: 34f; Lewis 2006: 24f; GoT
2002: 18f; BTI 2003, 2003a, 2006, 2006a).
Due to the high personalization of power, policy outcomes depend highly on the personal
motivation, capacities, and abilities of the respective person in power and his patronage net
works. This is not a new phenomenon after independence, but builds on patriarchic and hie
rarchical societal traditions and was already visible during Soviet times: The term in office of
the Central Asian party leaders was on average 22 years; due to highly personalistic power
structures, ultimately, the Soviet state stayed subordinate to the logics of personal relations
(Hensell 2004: 18). Today, quasi democratic rules co exist with personal and regional forms of
political loyalty.
Political Clientelism
Many scholars of Central Asian politics agree that clientelism and patronage is a dominant
feature of politics in the entire region (Geiss 2006; Cummings 2002; Ishiyama 2002; Collins
2002). In Central Asia, political clientelism is closely connected to powerful regional networks.
For centuries, Central Asia was ruled by different hordes in the nomadic parts and Emirs in the
Khanates of the oasis regions. Clans, kin groups defined by a (constructed) shared ancestor,
have been the primary units to which collective identities referred. In Tajikistan, the basic unit
is the avlod , the extended family, that often includes loyalty to clan or regional based groupings
(Abdullaev 2004: 7, BTI 2003: 7). The USSR organized people into kolkhozes and sovkhozes and
brigades (the sub units of the collective and state farms). But it failed to entirely replace the
existing institutions. The new structures often replaced old ones only by name while actually
kolkhozes were often structured according to clans or other kin groups and then formed a new
solidarity group in which the chief of the farm inherited the role of the elder (and often this
position was indeed inherited by his son). Members of the s/k belonged to it qua birth in the
kolkhoz , even when grown ups eventually left the kolkhoz to go to another working place. Roy
(2000) hence classifies kolkhozes as “neo tribal”.
Soviet policies tried to abalish existing, “traditional” social institutions and to strove to
replace them with Soviet, 'modern' ones. However, in many cases existing institutions were
only superficially superseded, transformed or even strengthened by Soviet institutions: For
example, hashars 67 were transformed into “ subbotniki ”, the Soviet form of collective voluntary
work; sovkhozes and kolkhozes were organized along kin ties, brigades were often set up parallel
to mahalla structures (Roy 2000: 85 100; Grundmann 2004: 10). It would be wrong to account
for these phenomena by blaming a “patrimonial Socialism” in peripheral regions as opposed to
a rational and “modern” Soviet bureaucracy and power apparatus in the center. The Soviet
Union as a whole was deeply penetrated by patronage and corruption as crucial informal rules.
66 Scholars of post-Soviet countries explained the overall establishment of presidential systems in the FSU states (apart
from Latvia and Estonia) with the preservation of long-standing patterns of relations to state authorities which often
took on the role of the former Communist Party institutions and often even exceed them in size (Beissinger, Young
2002a: 45).
67 For an explanation see chapter 5.3.