Paper long abstract:

The region of post-Soviet Central Asia has been described as a notoriously unfriendly business environment, both for local and international investors, as is true, indeed, for many former socialist parts of the world. This has been ascribed to the slow transition path and to the many legal insecurities that allowed local and national elites to keep a firm hand on any activities and to intervene on their behalf, should they see a potential benefit in this. Political and social circumstances were thus seen as major obstacles for a successful transformation and economic growth in the region.

There is certainly a lot of truth in that, although such a picture neglect further aspects of resource endowment and global entanglements. But clearly, a major driver, or barrier, to entrepreneurship is the overall institutional framework, composed of different and sometimes overlapping layers of formal and informal rules and patterns that define the attractiveness and plausibility of economic activities. Property rights, taxation regimes as well as established business customs all play a preeminent role in this. They shape the expectations people have regarding different strategies and investment opportunities. In situations of high transaction costs and asymmetrically distribution of information these will naturally be rather limited and thus precent beneficial courses to be taken.

This paper will outline a general framework and theoretical conceptualization of studying business culture and entrepreneurship empirically in the larger Central Asian region, as part of the inter-disciplinary project ‘Central Asian Law’, funded by the Horizon 2020 scheme. Taking examples from different parts and across the last thirty years, it aims to show the interlinkages of individual strategies, official legal and political specifications, as well as the multiple levels of informal arrangements between entrepreneurs, political and business actors, and the social environment within which they take place.