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- Convenors:
-
Sherzod Eraliev
(Lund University)
Rustamjon Urinboyev (Lund University)
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- Chair:
-
Albina Aidarkhankyzy
(Al-Farabi Kazakh National University)
- Discussant:
-
Sherzod Eraliev
(Lund University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Public Administration & Public Policy
Abstract
More than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, governance and legal reform in Central Asia continue to be shaped by the enduring interaction between formal state institutions and informal norms, practices, and networks. While many reform initiatives have focused on strengthening formal rule-of-law institutions and promoting technocratic modernization, everyday governance in the region often operates through layered institutional arrangements where Soviet administrative legacies, informal welfare mechanisms, and patron–client relations coexist with contemporary legal frameworks. Understanding these dynamics requires moving beyond formal legal analysis to examine how law and governance are practiced, negotiated, and adapted in everyday institutional settings.
This panel brings together contributions from the EU Horizon-funded research project POLCA (The Political Economy of Legal and Governance Reform in Non-Western Societies: Insights from Central Asia) to explore how alternative institutions and informal norms shape governance and legal reform across the region. Drawing on socio-legal, political economy, and historical institutional perspectives, the panel examines how Soviet administrative traditions interact with contemporary reforms and how informal institutions continue to structure relations between citizens, bureaucracies, and the state.
The papers examine these dynamics from complementary angles. Rustamjon Urinboyev analyses the concept of layered administrations, demonstrating how communist institutional legacies interact with informal norms to shape the functioning of the everyday state in post-Soviet Central Asia. Kobil Ruziev analyses institutional contradictions in Uzbekistan’s reform trajectory, demonstrating how informal governance practices and relational networks persist despite ambitious reform programs and shape the credibility of formal institutions in hybrid regimes. Dilaver Khamzaev traces the institutional afterlife of Soviet prosecutorial power, examining how archival practices and bureaucratic authority persist within contemporary public administration. Zhuldyz Davletbayeva examines civil service modernization in Kazakhstan, focusing on efforts to build a more citizen-centric and professional public administration and the challenges these reforms encounter in practice.
Together, the panel advances a socio-legal and political economy perspective on governance in Central Asia by foregrounding the role of informal institutions, administrative legacies, and everyday bureaucratic practices. By examining how formal reforms intersect with historically embedded institutional arrangements, the panel contributes to broader debates on legal pluralism, state transformation, and the challenges of governance reform in non-Western societies.
Accepted papers
Abstract
Uzbekistan’s post 2016 reform agenda aspires to establish inclusive, transparent, and market enhancing institutions, yet the persistence of informal practices continues to shape governance outcomes in ways that diverge from official policy intentions. Drawing on New Institutional Economics and the conceptual distinctions between economic actors and economic institutions, impersonal versus interpersonal relationships, and inclusive versus exclusive incentive structures, this paper explains why well designed formal reforms frequently fail to achieve credibility in hybrid regimes. Soviet organisational legacies, hierarchical administrative logics, and deeply embedded reciprocal networks continue to structure decision making, access to opportunities, and enforcement practices, producing a path dependent blend of formal and informal governance. Using two empirical cases, the state’s deployment of mahalla institutions and the informal survival of sectoral management despite its formal abolition, the paper illustrates how competing informal institutions co opt or reinterpret new rules, undermine impartiality, and weaken the credibility of formal commitments. These contradictions generate persistent gaps between policy goals and policy outcomes, particularly in areas such as public administration, resource allocation, and citizen participation. The paper contributes a dynamic framework for analysing institutional change in hybrid regimes, showing how actor incentives, inherited relational structures, and informal enforcement mechanisms interact to reproduce governance paradoxes even under ambitious reform programs.
Abstract
Post-communist public administration is often analysed through the lens of “communist legacies,” which typically emphasise institutional persistence, politicisation, and centralisation inherited from the socialist period. While this literature has generated important insights, it frequently assumes that administrative change follows a trajectory in which Soviet institutions are gradually replaced by Western-inspired governance models. This article challenges that assumption by arguing that administrative change in post-Soviet contexts is better understood as a process of institutional layering, in which multiple administrative logics coexist and interact rather than sequentially replacing one another.
Drawing on socio-legal and public administration perspectives, the article introduces the concept of layered administrations to explain the coexistence of three distinct yet interrelated governance repertoires in post-Soviet Central Asia: (1) inherited Soviet administrative doctrines, including hierarchical supervision, discretionary enforcement, and informal compliance mechanisms; (2) post-independence institutional reforms inspired by Western models of public administration, rule-of-law institutions, and new public management practices; and (3) informal normative orders rooted in local social institutions, moral economies, and community-based governance structures. Rather than displacing earlier administrative practices, these reforms have produced an additive governance environment in which bureaucrats navigate overlapping legal norms, administrative expectations, and informal obligations.
Empirically, the article draws on qualitative evidence from Central Asia, with particular attention to Uzbekistan, including ethnographic observations, socio-legal fieldwork, and analysis of administrative practices in everyday interactions between citizens and state officials. These materials reveal how administrative actors strategically mobilise different normative layers—formal law, bureaucratic rules, and informal norms—to manage policy implementation, resolve conflicts, and maintain administrative authority.
By conceptualising post-communist governance as a layered administrative order, the article contributes to debates on institutional change, informality, and state practice in post-socialist contexts. More broadly, it demonstrates that understanding the everyday state requires moving beyond dichotomies of legacy versus reform and recognising how administrative systems evolve through the accumulation and interaction of multiple governance traditions.