Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts

By: Pauline Jones Luong

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Synopsis: Although the three former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan shared similar economic and political histories, they developed surprisingly different electoral regimes in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. Luong (political science, Yale U. ) seeks to unravel the puzzle of the causes of these institutional developments. She argues that the negotiations over electoral systems lay bare asymmetries of power that can then inform not only the nature of current political change, but also future prospects. She places elite perceptions of shifts in power at the center of her analysis, concluding that none of the political elites saw a fundamental challenge to their power and therefore continued to rely on regionalism as a foundation for their politics. Annotation c. Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)