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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to reveal how much the mahalla kengashi in the settlement areas with different socio-spatial structures in Tashkent, have changed their position between civil society and central administration with the effect of institutional reforms introduced with the Mirziyoyev period.

Paper long abstract:

One of the first steps in the institutional reforms of Uzbekistan, which gained its independence in 1991, was to accept the neighborhoods -a socio-spatial settlement unit- as an autonomous local government. Neighborhood administrations (Mahalla Kengashi), which have been accepted as the only autonomous local government in the country since 1992 with the constitutional guarantee, have a very important and unique place in the discussions of local government-central government and local government-civil society relations in the academic literature. Accepted as autonomous local government today, neighborhoods together with their historical position in the Soviet regime both support and challenge the original local government-civil society arguments of the liberal view and the original local government-central government arguments of the Marxist view. This situation owes both to its functions arising from its historical continuity and to the geographically (spatially) unequal development and realization of class and identity construction in Uzbekistan historically.

In this context, this paper aims to reveal how much the mahalla kengashi in the settlement areas with different socio-spatial structures in Tashkent, have changed their position between civil society and central administration with the effect of institutional reforms introduced with the Mirziyoyev period. While doing this, 4 different neighborhood typologies determined according to the class-identity structure of Tashkent ((1) old city neighborhoods, (2) ideal microrayons, (3) neighborhoods built on the periphery and (4) neighborhoods converted into microrayons after the Tashkent earthquake in the old city). In this study, it will be tried to determine the changes before and after Mirziyoyev, based on the basic 3 functions of the 4 type mahalla kengashi will be examined. The functions in question are (a) the distribution of social assistance by the neighborhood administrations - as a means of implementing social policy by the central administration; (b) reports of neighborhood governments on those who joined extremist religious groups - as agents of the central government; and (c) lastly, the common public activities carried out by the neighborhood administrations in the neighborhood - as the representatives of the residents of the neighborhood.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on the internationalisation of higher education in post-Soviet Uzbekistan based on two main areas: international student mobility and international research cooperation. The data extracted from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS), Web of Science (WoS) and Scimago.

Paper long abstract:

Central Asian outward student mobility and international research cooperation are debated in several theoretical environments. For example, Chankseliani (2015) provided world system theory to explain outward student mobility after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Syed Zwick (2019) applies the motivation-opportunity-capacity model to explain student mobility in Central Asia. Kuzhabekova (2020) writes about the limits of North South categorization in explaining international research cooperation.

This research is on secondary data. The main resources are the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Scimago, the Web of Science (WoS). The data obtained through WoS is interpreted by using the Netscity application.

Student mobility indicators show that internationalization has caused more inequality: between 1998 and 2017, the enrolment rate of Uzbek students among all international students in Western European and North American universities fell from 9.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent (UNESCO), despite 50 per cent of outward mobility (from 1329 to 1998). Central and Eastern Europe region hosted most of the students from Uzbekistan (from 3,315 in 1998 to 25,244 in 2017), an increase of nearly 800 per cent. From the other hand, the proportion of Uzbekistan's research output in the world's research output has fallen, while the international cooperation rate of research results has risen from 18.02% in 1996 to 57.26% in 2017. Research output has grown from 489 in 1991 to 776 items in 2019 (all categories referenced in WoS), while the ratio of participating countries in Uzbekistan's research output has more than doubled from 1995 to 2019. Based on Netscity application, Uzbekistan's research cooperation shows more international cooperation; China's role is increasing and may have a greater role in the 2020s. However, regional research cooperation is weak.

The study indicates that, in both areas of internationalisation immediate opportunities may have a great impact. The new vectors and opportunities of research cooperation develop, and regional cooperation may emerge in Central Asia, where Uzbekistan may have a central role.

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Paper short abstract:

Study of the shifting patterns of Uzbek foreign policy through an analysis of Uzbek foreign policy communication. Communications in Russian language were scraped from the website of the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (26,391 documents, 2001-2021) and examined through a Structural Topic Model.

Paper long abstract:

Uzbekistan represents an interesting example of post-Soviet economic transition in Central Asia as its path of reform was a more gradual transition from a socialist to a mixed economic model compared to other post-Soviet countries. Protectionism and trade differentiation have been described with the concept of economic ‘self-reliance’. Furthermore, the literature on Uzbekistan’s nation-building depicts the construction of the Uzbek state as an exercise of nationalistic identity-building focused on decolonisation, Islamisation/Turkification and derussification. The focus on identity-building is common in the academic debate on Uzbek regional policy along with a list of domestic drivers of foreign policy. Among these, ‘regime survival’ is vastly the most quoted, together with ‘national independence’. The latter is characterised in practice as ‘non-alignment’ and is designed around either an ideological sense of ‘recognition’ as an independent international actor, again the policy of ‘self-reliance’, or as a function of pragmatic national interest. Under Islam Karimov’s rule, Uzbekistan’s foreign policy was distinctive in Central Asia, as the country did not stably join Russian-led endeavours and, at the same time, did not chose a completely isolationist approach.

Uzbek foreign policy was often described as ‘multivectoral’ as it maintained good relations with countries or international organisations with contrasting roles in the international arena. Yet, different moments in time have signified shifting loyalties, particularly with Russia and the United States. The most stable vector of Uzbek foreign policy, the Asian vector, is often overlooked, particularly in terms of the puzzling success of Sino-Uzbek relations, in a context of Uzbek wariness of close relations with great powers. China’s economic and political relevance in Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Uzbekistan is based on a successful engagement in the past which helped building stable ties between the two countries. This paper tries to examine the shifting patterns of Uzbek foreign policy empirically through a quantitative analysis of Uzbek foreign policy communication between 2001 and 2021. Each available piece of external communication in Russian language was scraped from the website of the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (26,391 documents) and analysed through a Structural Topic Model (Roberts et al, 2014). The objective is to focus attention of the ideational shifts in Uzbek external self-representation to shed light on this puzzle. The research is part of larger project to analyse Sino-Uzbek relations in the 21st century and will be complemented by a similar document analysis of Chinese sources and semi-structured elite interviews in Uzbekistan and China in 2022.

[This page (https://www.centraleurasia.org/conferences/summer/individual-paper-proposals-summer-conference-2022/) said 250-400 words, so I followed that advice. If it's 250 words as it says on the form on this page, please consider only the second paragraph.]