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Abstract

Since 2016, Central Asia has experienced an unprecedented intensification of regional interaction. Informal consultative summits of Central Asian leaders, dense bilateral agreements, particularly between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the expansion of sectoral cooperation in transport, trade, and security have generated renewed debates about regional integration. Simultaneously, the region remains deeply embedded in overlapping external frameworks, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and various “C5+1” formats. This paper examines how internal coordination and external tracks interact to shape the nonlinear dynamics of regional integration in Central Asia.

Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews, qualitative document analysis, and event-based process tracing of key summits and agreements after 2016, the study applies insights from complex systems theory and competing regionalism scholarship. Rather than conceptualizing integration as a linear accumulation of institutions, the paper treats Central Asia as an adaptive regional system structured by feedback loops, threshold effects, and path dependencies.

The central argument is that bilateral “axis partnerships,” especially between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, function as stabilizing cores that generate emergent regional effects beyond formal institutionalization. Internal coordination mechanisms, such as leader-driven consultative summits, create a platform for agenda harmonization, while external tracks provide resources, strategic leverage, and infrastructural connectivity. However, these external frameworks also introduce institutional overlap and strategic competition, producing nonlinear outcomes: periods of acceleration, temporary fragmentation, and adaptive rebalancing.

The findings suggest that competing regionalisms do not necessarily undermine regional cohesion. Instead, they produce a dynamic balancing structure in which internal coordination mitigates fragmentation risks while preserving strategic autonomy. The paper introduces the concept of “nonlinear regional coordination” to explain how Central Asia’s integration trajectory differs from classical models of regional institutional deepening.

By reframing Central Asian regionalism through a nonlinear systems perspective, this study contributes to broader debates on post-Soviet transformation, adaptive regionalism, and the interaction between small-region agency and great-power institutional architectures.

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For those researchers interested in Central Eurasia, locals’ hospitality has long ago become proverbial, almost a truism. Perhaps so obviously so that it has gathered only very little direct scholarly attention despite being such a central value to those who live in this region, not to mention to those abovementioned researchers who come to rely on locals’ traditions of welcome. At the same time, the soft power implications of hospitality remain unexplored, particularly in relation to Central Eurasia, despite evidence that this region’s geopolitics are shaped by relational forces of attraction, legitimacy, and influence by both hosts and guests. How then can the hospitality paradigm help analyse how host countries manage the political diversity of guest countries and generate soft power in this central region? This article aims to dialogue with these points through the onto-epistemological nexus of space, hospitality, Central Eurasia, and soft power, by exploring how these four concepts can work hand in hand to further theorise the relational politics that shape the centre of the Eurasian continent. To reach this aim, the paper first theorises or rather spatialises Central Eurasia as a historical, geographic, and geopolitical space of soft power hospitality. The second part then empirically presents and discusses in the interdisciplinary perspective of the local paremiological fund, the broad travel literature (religious missionaries, diplomatic envoys, foreign travellers), international relations, and geopolitics, some of the most salient data of soft power hospitality past and present collected in the region. Synthesized together, these sections will provide a useful analytical tool to map out the dynamic soft power relations and exchanges that take place in this region, and reinforce the epistemic justice, openness and semantic sensitivity called for by the emerging decolonial strand of Central Eurasian studies.

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This paper intends to shed light on and analyze the soft power strategy initiated by Uzbekistan since 2017. Tashkent has set a roadmap to increase its political capital and visibility by forging an Uzbek soft power. This strategy is primarily focused on culture and tourism. By focusing on these two areas, Uzbekistan's strategy not only aims to strengthen its recent multilateral shift but also enables the construction of a 'national brand'. In this process of steady 'nation-branding' efforts, it can rely on the experience and cooperation with the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula who already possess credentials in the targeted fields. The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation—established in 2017—has skillfully proceeded to apply the toolkit used by its three main partners: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Key demonstrations of the implementation of the 'Arabian Peninsula model' include the establishment of art biennales and the materialization of 'shared desired futures' through the construction of museums and civilizational centers. The scheduled opening of the Islamic Civilization Center in Tashkent to mark the end of Ramadan (March 2026) exemplifies what STS scholar Sheila Jasanoff terms 'sociotechnical imaginaries'.

The sociotechnical imaginaries produced by Arabian Peninsula countries in the fields of art and culture are firmly rooted in Western museological models—particularly American, British and French institutions. While this framework enabled the production of relatively homogeneous definitions of nationhood across the Arabian Peninsula, its adoption remains uneven among Central Asian states. Whereas Uzbekistan has comprehensively embraced this cultural model since 2017, Kazakhstan initiated similar nation-branding processes earlier but focused primarily on the educational sphere rather than cultural institutions. Kazakh higher education institutions—particularly Nazarbayev University—have produced a distinct version of Kazakh modernity, suggesting that sociotechnical imaginaries can manifest through different sectoral pathways across Central Asia.

This paper contributes to the emerging field of Arabian Peninsula-Central Asia cultural relations by shifting focus from religious dimensions to strategic cultural diplomacy and nation-branding. While existing studies have examined energy partnerships, the deliberate transfer of Gulf soft power models to Central Asia remains understudied. Drawing on field observation (Sharjah-Samarkand exhibition, April 2024) and institutional documents, this paper demonstrates how sociotechnical imaginaries manifest through sector-specific pathways. The asymmetric adoption reveals how heritage endowment and developmental priorities shape distinct modernization trajectories across post-Soviet Central Asia.

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This paper examines how supranational institutions evolve under authoritarian regionalism by analysing the competition policy of the Eurasian Economic Union. While existing scholarship portrays the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) as a weak and subordinate administrative body, this paper argues that the EEC nevertheless engages in incremental forms of institutional agency. It examines how the EEC adapts, expands, and restraints its competition policy competences under conditions of limited delegation, strong sovereignty constraints, and politically connected market structures. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the paper investigates three episodes of institutional change via the framework of conversion, drift, and layering. It shows that the EEC pursues conversion through activism on extraterritorial jurisdiction, experiences drift in its strategic restraint regarding investigative powers such as dawn raids, and engages in layering through the formalisation of soft law instruments. The paper conceptualises these dynamics as bounded supranationalism and contributes to debates on institutional change in former Soviet and non-democratic regional organisations.

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It has been almost a decade since the five Central Asian states began working more closely together to strengthen regional cooperation by seeking to effectively solve border disputes, addressing the issue of water resources, deepening economic ties, and fostering people-to-people contacts. This study attempts to review the trajectories of the scholarship on Central Asian regionalism. While earlier scholarly works looked to the European experience as a benchmark to gauge regional integration, recent insights have moved beyond using Western functionalist approaches to conceptualize Central Asian regional cooperation, emphasizing idiosyncratic region-building practices. Currently, renewed regional cooperation in Central Asia is driven by local political actors, who deliberately avoid the aim of achieving regional integration and instead prefer flexible practices based on local sociopolitical norms. Although this approach has increased political trust, resolved long-standing border issues, and promoted regional trade and economic activity, social interactions among Central Asians remain limited.

This research is based on the understanding that social sciences are not only about description but also about creating new meanings and possibilities for change. Therefore, we aim to conceptualize and propose ways in which Central Asian cooperation – and, in the future, even Central Asian integration in certain spheres – can be implemented. One of the biggest problems facing Central Asian countries is the existence of social, economic, and cultural hierarchies. From a decolonial epistemological perspective, hierarchy is a form of oppression, and a hierarchical society is an oppressive society. How can Central Asian countries cooperate if they are internally divided? Thus, this research emphasizes the importance of social rights, such as the human right to decent incomes, social payments, pensions, affordable and quality health care, and the right to education, all of which can help create more egalitarian societies in place of stratified ones. The development of social rights will minimize social and economic hierarchies and promote regional cooperation – and integration in non-sensitive sectors – in Central Asia. Importantly, models of a socially oriented but limited Central Asian state can be based on the legacy of Kazakh-Alash and Central Asian Jadid intellectuals, who in principle followed a social democratic model with a division of powers. For example, the creation of a common Central Asian labor market or a Central Asian Water and Irrigation Community can benefit all. Successful regional cooperation and integration projects were initially operationally limited but philosophically ambitious.