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.