Paper long abstract:

How can we understand non-state actors in Central Eurasia when some appear to impact the lives of people in ways that might rival the prerogatives of states? Eurasian non-state actors are often local patrons and their networks, whose activities are growing local economies, building infrastructure, providing political stability, establishing cultural and media institutions, and providing social protections for communities. I argue that these patrons accumulate power by mobilizing forms of trust based on cultural-traditionalist tropes and delivering political-economic goods. I also show that these formations of trust and power are best understood as postcolonial phenomena, whose forms result as responses to Soviet techniques of rule.