중앙아시아의 민주주의와 씨족 정치

초록

This article argues that explanations on democracy of the post-Soviet Central Asia should pay parallel attention to both ‘hybrid regime’ and ‘informal structure,’ especially clans, the structure unique to the Central Asian politics. The grounds for the equal emphasis of this article on ‘hybrid regime’ and ‘informal structure’ are as follows; first, in a hybrid regime like ‘electoral authoritarianism,’ the formal political system can coexist with informal institutions that hold particularism and non-democratic power structure. Even if the Central Asian countries formally have democratic institutions, in other words, it is informal network such as clans and personal connections that control their real politics. Second, when a non-democratic regime has been stabilized from incomplete democracy, it is not proper to regard the regime as an incomplete or transitional democracy. The contemporary Central Asian politics assume the characteristics of stable non-democracy, which is hard to be transformed to democracy because its stability comes from that the informal structure became permanent. Third, it is not easy to apply Western standards for evaluating democracy - such as the degree in which the mass and elite accept to democratic values, or the degree in which political party system is institutionalized - to the Central Asian countries, because these countries at large have not fulfill yet the minimum institutional requirements for democracy. From a comparative analysis on clan politics of the 5 Central Asian countries, this article draws the following conclusions; First, when a political leader gain a stable foothold for the long-term seizure of power in Central Asia, there appears a tendency to seek for a balance of power among clans and to free politics from their influences. Second, the solidity of the clan structure is affected by whether the clan formation is based on blood or region. While in the case of Uzbekistan where the clans are based on region rather than blood, the clan politics has been quite lessened, for example, the solidity of clan structure has been still preserved in Kazakhstan despite the clan-balancing personnel policy of the President Nazarbayev. One thing noteworthy is that it becomes too hard to stabilize the political situation by escalated conflicts among clans when the clan formation is complicated by both blood and region. While the ruling power in the Central Asian countries by and large is centered on the state, there are quite apparent differences among them in the degree of the clans’ political influences; Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan take on the characteristics of a more or less indirect patronage system with crony relationship between government and business. Kazakhstan assumes the characteristics of patronage political party whose political influences are quite direct, and Tajikistan and Turkmenistan shows a despotic factionization. Third, although the Central Asian political system is based on strong presidentialism, it is also true that the presidential power is quite limited by the clans. Fourth, especially in case of Central Asia, the relationship between the clan politics and the phenomenon of resource curse should be highlighted. It is because in case of the resource-rich countries such as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan the national revenues from resources can be utilized to pamper rival clans and amplify personal political power. Here it becomes clear that democratizing an authoritarian system and eliminating the clan-based patron-client network based should be preceded by the growth of market economy and proper distribution of wealth.

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