Paper abstract:

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, following his election as the president of Uzbekistan in December 2016, emerged as a reform-oriented leader, openly acknowledging the failure of the Karimov-era governance practices. He presented himself to both the local population and international community as a reformer, expressing eagerness to open the heavily closed country, modernize the system of governance and curb systemic corruption. The pace of changes was particularly felt in the local governance agenda. Perhaps, the most noteworthy feature of these changes was the introduction of the system of sectoral management of regions and districts which resulted in the new local governance system in entire Uzbekistan – each district is being divided into four geographic sectors led by hokim (the governor), public prosecutor, chief of police and head of tax department.

Heads of sectors—hokim, prosecutor, police chief, head of the tax department—require one to fulfil many functions outside of his/her qualifications and skills. Each sector leader is responsible for addressing and solving all issues of local importance, essentially assuming the broad list of local government functions. For example, public prosecutors, whose professional task is to ensure the rule of law, crime prevention, and human rights, are now also tasked with implementing state social welfare policies. However, assigning social welfare and job creation functions to sector leaders raises numerous questions about capacity and leads to informality and frustration. In the absence of favourable results in resolving issues of the local population, sector leaders are removed from office, even if the heads of the other three sectors (prosecutor, head of the tax service and head of police) do not have direct access to local budget and are dependent on hokim’s discretion. As a result, this “authority” of sector leaders without resources can lead to illegal activity, making sector leaders dependent on local business elites who have the resources to meet the needs of sectors. Accordingly, corruption, informal/semi-legal practices, and conflicts of interest are endemic to local governance in Uzbekistan. The way the local governance system is organized is prone to corruption and informality. Based on these considerations, this chapter aims to examine the sectoral management in Uzbekistan’s local governance system and its impact on the business environment and legal system. The chapter relies on the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork conducted between June 2021- November 2022 in Tashkent city, Bukhara and Fergana regions of Uzbekistan.