Comparative Research Design - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 82

though formally dissolved still is a dominant institution in most rural places. The FSK
leaders are still in leading positions as the structures of the FSK in most places still exist, albeit
officially with another name. As many rural dwellers are not aware of the implications of land
reform due to lack of information, they still perceive the FSK director as their rais . The bri
gadier is one of the most powerful persons at the village level as he is the one who controls the
distribution of land and water. Consequently, he is often perceived as the de facto leader of the
village (Grundmann 2004: 19, 26).
Like the political regime in general, the arena of local governance in both countries is also
characterized by the tension and complex interaction between partly democratic formal struc
tures and patrimonial informal institutions: In both countries, formal organizations of local
self government with democratic mechanisms were established. On the other hand, the local
arena is characterized by personalistic leadership and patronage politics. Informal institutions
in both countries are similar. Patronage networks of the FSK still exist. The fact that the
people orient themselves towards the elders is indicative of the main characteristics of the local
political culture: a lack of proactiveness and reliance on authorities.

5.5.5 Donor Policies as an Interfering Variable

In addition to these four variables, a fifth interfering variable emerged as prominent in the
course of the research. An interfering variable is a variable that affects the relation between the
independent (explanatory) variable and the dependent variable. This interfering variable is the
role of international donor organizations.
On the one hand, donors are actors that take part in the political process by trying to put
their priorities on the political agenda or by implementing projects. Thereby, they act in the
institutional setting like other actors. In this respect, donors are influenced by the neopatri
monial regime in which they act: The neopatrimonial institutional environment sets parameters
for donor involvement and influences their activities and outcomes. On the other hand, their
policies, project guidelines, and loan conditionalities take on the character of informal institu
tions as they provide rules and incentives that influence the national actors' behavior. In addi
tion, the formal and informal donor rules interact with the context and can mitigate or aggra
vate certain aspects of neopatrimonialism.
Due to the different context in both countries, donor involvement varies considerably:
Kyrgyzstan was beside Kazakhstan the Central Asian state with the most liberal reform
agenda (in political as well as in economic matters) after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
And it was very successful in marketing its democratic image as the 'Switzerland of Central
Asia' (Dukenbaev, Hansen 2003: 28; Pétric 2005: 323; Anderson 1999). This proved to be
essential in order to attract Western engagement as Kyrgyzstan is of no geo strategic impor
tance, nor does it have nuclear weapons or oil resources, which may attract investments by
Western companies and governments. Subsequently, international organizations and Western
governments became the main 'investors' in the small country and a myriad of development
projects started, while the government simultaneously formally endorsed democratic standards
and rules. It was the first country of the former USSR to receive financial assistance from the
World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is the only Central Asian
member of the WTO (LaPorte 2005: 3). When counting official development assistance in aid
per capita, the Kyrgyz Republic received 46 USD per capita in 1998 almost three times the