Keywords

1 Introduction

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive undertaking with enormous potential to transform Central Asia and beyond. Indeed, in the imagination of Western pundits, the die has already been cast: Chinese efforts will overwhelm local societies and recast them according to Bei**g’s model of development. The best defence one can hope for is a counterpunch, such as one proposed by the Biden White House in 2021 to step up the West’s infrastructure spending in the develo** world as an alternative to China’s (Sanger & Landler, 2021). It follows from this logic that China’s influence is so irresistible that the countries of Central Asia might be fairly renamed “Sinostan.”Footnote 1

In this chapter, I offer a twofold argument. First, China is a great power with enormous and growing influence, but Central Asian publics and policymakers have agency; they can accept, modify, or even resist impending transformations. Second, Central Asia is indeed in the throes of major political and economic transformations, but these transformations may be driven by broader, global trends as much as they are driven by China per se. To make this case, I take stock of authoritarianism across the region. As I hope to demonstrate, any thinking about authoritarianism should be attentive to the various trajectories of Central Asian regime transformations. These trajectories precede China’s recent, visible push into the region—a fact that puts China’s influence into perspective.

2 Democracy on the Rocks

There is no doubt that democracy today is on the defensive. It is being battered by publics cynical about liberal values and disappointed that elections do not necessarily bring positive change as swiftly as promised (Malka et al., 2020). It is being challenged by regimes claiming to champion economic and social rights while showing little interest in political rights, and it is being thrashed by claims that democratic polities govern poorly, helped along by the fact that during the COVID-19 pandemic, open societies did, indeed, initially fare worse than many closed regimes (Nelson, 2021).

In our troubled times, democracy may seem at best to be a luxury. At worst, it may appear a culturally alien imposition. The word itself has taken on highly pejorative meanings that could be with us for decades, if not longer. Across Eurasia, Russian-language terms like demokrat, pravozashchitnik, pravovoe gosudarstvo (“democrat,” “rights defender,” and “rule of law,” respectively) have come to acquire negative meanings quite the opposite of their original connotations.Footnote 2

And it is not just in the post-Soviet space. In many ways, we seem to have experienced a normalization of authoritarian practices. Across the globe, normative tides have shifted, abetted by major powers. In 2013, Russia passed a law outlawing so-called “gay propaganda,” to crack down on LGBTQ people and those protecting LGBTQ rights (Kondakov, 2019). In 2018, Saudi Arabia had Jamal Khashoggi murdered and dismembered in its consulate in Turkey, reminding journalists of the transnational reach of authoritarian regimes (Hubbard, 2020). Also in 2018, China took Canadian citizens hostage as bargaining chips for the purpose of negotiation shortly after it had established internment camps where it incarcerated more than a million of its citizens; in both instances, human lives were considered less important than regime priorities. In 2021, the United States—once considered the globe’s paragon of democratic virtue—saw an incumbent president foment an insurrection against his country’s own democratic institutions. The same democratically elected president had made a policy of quite literally putting immigrant children into cages (Bhatnagar, 2019).

This sense of impunity clearly suggests a moral failing of the globe’s political elite, but it also owes something to the ungoverned spaces of today’s capitalism. As revelations from the Panama Papers (2016) and Pandora Papers (2021) make abundantly clear, and as scholars have addressed as well (Cooley et al., 2018; Sharafutdinova & Dawisha, 2017), kleptocrats find ample space in our global economy to squirrel away their ill-gotten spoils. In turn, these same kleptocrats hold up profit and wealth as signs of cardinal virtue, while painting generosity as weakness or folly.

None of this, as we shall see below, is lost on Central Asia. Kazakhstan’s long-serving president appeared to have arranged an illicit payment of 30 million USD to what media described as his “unofficial wife” (Putz, 2021). The processes by which state wealth is privatized and sent abroad has been happening across the region since the Soviet collapse (Cooley & Heathershaw, 2017). In October 2020, Kyrgyzstan witnessed a peculiar series of rapid developments impossible to understand without considering the global democratic decline and rise of impunity. The incumbent president, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, was faced with massive street mobilization, as protesters decried the fraudulent conduct of recent parliamentary elections. No stranger to mass protests, Kyrgyzstan quickly descended into uncertainty as the president went into hiding. In the meantime, Sadyr Japarov, a populist opposition figure, was serving prison time for participating in the kidnap** of a regional governor. When the turmoil erupted, his supporters conducted a jailbreak, freeing Japarov. The same day, the country’s Supreme Court voided his kidnap** charge. Within weeks, Jeenbekov had resigned, and Japarov had manoeuvred himself into the position of interim president. This astonishing move from prison to the presidency tells us much about our current moment: frustration with the rule of law lends radical populism a broad resonance.Footnote 3 Neither China nor the BRI is directly responsible for the authoritarian impunity of Central Asia’s regimes, but at a minimum a great power’s see-no-evil approach to the region does nothing to undermine it.

It is not just impunity that characterizes our era. Autocrats around the globe are making claims—some more credible than others—that they are able to provide good governance. From economic growth to public goods, to social welfare, and to sound public health, the notion is that democracy diminishes efficiency. Whether or not this is true is a separate question (Foa, 2018), but that does not stop autocrats from advancing the claim. Indeed, it would be hard to dismiss this as mere apologetics, when in areas like public health, digitization, and security, autocrats may not do poorly. After all, many of the more politically free countries around the globe have indeed struggled against a deadly virus. The rule of law, with all its deliberateness, also seems inadequate in addressing rapid changes abetted by digital technologies. Robust free speech protections likewise challenge a government’s ability to conduct surveillance for potential security threats.

In sum, for the short term it is hard to summon much optimism about democratic prospects for Eurasia or in fact for the globe. We would be forgiven for assuming that what we face is nothing less than an authoritarian juggernaut that is impossible to stop. But what is this authoritarian moment and how permanent should we expect it to be? Let us address some commonly  held assumptions.

2.1 Eurasia’s Variety

The first assumption often made about our moment is that authoritarian governments share some common essence. In abstract sense, this might be true, but authoritarianism polities are really more like Tolstoy’s unhappy families. Just as Lev Nikolaevich posited that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways, each authoritarian polity is authoritarian on its own terms. This fact is not lost on scholars of authoritarianism, starting with Linz (1975) and moving far beyond his seminal contributions.Footnote 4 Much of this great variety is on display in the Eurasian cases.

Kazakhstan achieved independence rather by accident. After a brief period of what Lucan Way (2015) calls “pluralism by default,” its first president established firm control, buoyed by oil revenues and a generally demobilized society. Its authoritarianism today is based on claims of effective governance and an ability to manage its cultural and religious pluralism. It is also based increasingly on managing (and repressing) its opposition abroad, as Alex Cooley and John Heathershaw (2017) have expertly documented. Resource extraction, technocracy, and transnational oppression are the pillars of Kazakhstan’s authoritarianism. In early 2022, protests erupted across the nation. Initially a local outcry against a price hike for fuel in western Kazakhstan, protests soon engulfed cities across the country and, for a moment, authoritarian governance appeared wobbly. Nonetheless, after a reckoning among the political-economic elite and the introduction of Russian-led “peacekee**” troops at the request of President Tokayev, the situation stabilized, and the basic governance formula was restored. At a minimum, the governments of neighbouring countries were relieved, viewing Kazakhstan’s authoritarianism as synonymous with stability.

Russia’s trajectory is different. Russia achieved independence when it rather dramatically seceded from the Soviet Union and embraced a wild-west pluralism that lasted for the better part of a decade, enriching a class of globe-trotting oligarchs bent on conspicuous consumption. In the meantime, statists—who were suddenly on the losing end of the changes—saw in Russia’s destiny something unique. They began to agitate and mobilize resources for a new, more patriotic Russia that could re-take its rightful place as a “great power” in a multipolar world not dominated by the United States.Footnote 5 Practically, its authoritarianism is based on what Keith Darden (2001) calls the “blackmail state” in which broad surveillance produces abundant opportunities for gathering kompromat (personal information that could be used to embarrass or compromise opponents), thereby controlling the political field. Resource extraction, geopolitical revisionism, patriotic revanchism, and anti-Westernism are the pillars of Russia’s authoritarianism.

For its part, Uzbekistan moved rather dramatically to distance itself from its Soviet past and, by extension, its relations with post-Soviet Russia. Broad social conservatism gave sustenance to Islam Karimov’s narrow, negative (and as it turns out, slightly paranoid) view of global connections. Uzbekistan under Karimov was not quite a hermit kingdom, but it was an inward-looking authoritarian system. In 2016, this changed dramatically, with the new president Shavkat Mirziyoyev embracing Uzbekistan’s ties with neighbours and partners, fostering connections and economic opportunity, and generating untold riches for select few with uncertain prospects for wealth trickling down. Uzbekistan’s authoritarianism is rooted in social conservatism, minor political opening and major economic liberalization amidst global trends to the contrary, and the declaration that it is open for business not in a unipolar moment but amidst an increasingly multipolar world order (Schatz, 2018).

All of this is different from Tajikistan’s autocracy. The country’s small size, limited natural resources, and legacy of a brutal though short-lived civil war in the 1990s mean that Tajikistan’s authoritarian rule has been tenuous and confounded by endemic state weakness. The regime of Emomali Rahmon gradually began to consolidate its power and generate new revenue streams, ultimately banning the only major opposition political party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, in 2015. Since then, Dushanbe has been able to leverage its borders with China and Afghanistan to claim a crucial role in global security as it charts its distinctive way forward.Footnote 6

Finally, Turkmenistan deserves close attention. Closed, autarkic, deeply repressive, and strangely sultanistic, Turkmenistan unfortunately appears in the Western imagination largely when its absurd cult of personality makes headlines (Freedman, 2007). While Ashgabat has become interested in selling its natural gas more broadly than in the past, it nonetheless seeks to studiously avoid other international entanglements that might force it to make difficult decisions. Its authoritarianism is rooted in rentierism, a devastated civil society, and a still-isolationalist ethos.

It would be convenient if we could array this variety along one dimension, but the reality of Eurasia is that it does not bend to our analytic convenience. Authoritarian trajectories vary widely and in many ways. And, if we widen our lens further to China or Myanmar or Venezuela, we realize that a simple coding of “authoritarian” seems woefully inadequate to encompass the wide range of authoritarian experiences on display around the globe today.

2.2 An Authoritarian “Internationale”?

The second assumption often made about our authoritarian moment—and one that is connected to the first—is that we are witnessing a deep convergence of principles and practices, such that there is effectively an authoritarian block of states. For example, in January 2022 when unrest in Kazakhstan prompted the introduction of Russian-led troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), all the regions’ states seemed to be on the same page; they prioritized stability over human rights or popular grievances while accepting the Kazakhstani government’s depiction of “foreign terrorists” as the instigators of violence.

I do not doubt that authoritarian rulers can appear to stand in solidarity with each other. Russia can generally count on Chinese support in the UN Security Council. China can generally count on Russia’s. Yet, one wonders about the durability of this apparent convergence of principles and practices. Russia has embraced the Eurasian Economic Union, with its own political and economic logics. In the meantime, China—largely through the BRI—seeks to foster a different vision. To say that this generates contradictions is to put the point mildly. To date, the states involved in both the EEU and the BRI have papered over these contradictions through broad declarations of purpose, especially through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

It is not impossible that these differences can be ironed out. But other possibilities loom. Let us rewind to the unbreakable friendship between Mao’s China and Stalin’s Soviet Union. The problem with the unbreakable friendship was that it was much more fragile than it seemed. To borrow Alexei Yurchak’s (2006) phrase, “everything was forever until it was no more.” After Stalin’s death, relations between Moscow and Bei**g soured rather rapidly (Radchenko, 2009). There are many reasons for these changes that should not detain us here; suffice it to say that Mao’s relationship with Stalin was a highly personal one and each regime was a highly personalist one.

Fast-forward to the 2020s. In today’s Russia, power has become increasingly personalized, centred around the personal qualities and, indeed, whims of one man over the past 20 years. Likewise, China’s system—which for a few decades seemed bent on avoiding highly personalized leadership—has now slipped into a mould not unlike Russia’s, with President ** sound immigration policies to fighting climate change to battling outbreaks of disease to contending with anti-democratic populist backlashes. These challenges are real, but it does not follow that some unspecified authoritarian alternative would fare better. To be clear, if one could design a specific authoritarianism, it might look like this: an enlightened, generous, well versed, and infinitely capable autocrat governs a society that shares his or her values and welcomes his or her leadership. If we could custom make such an autocracy, then our bright future might indeed be authoritarian.

But we do not have the luxury of choosing which variety of autocracy we live under. And even if we could, autocrats are famous for dying, leaving in their wake degraded, diminished, and depleted versions of themselves and their visions. Chavez seduced Venezuelans with the promise of something better and then left Venezuela with the less capable, less inspirational, less legitimate Maduro. Similarly, whatever hope one might have had for Berdymukhamedov after Turkmenbashi’s passing in 2006 now looks hopelessly misplaced.

In the end, in spite of authoritarian rhetoric, regime type is orthogonal to governance. Both democracies and autocracies can provide effective governance, and both democracies and autocracies can provide ineffective, corrupt governance. If we ask which regime type better addresses social and economic problems over the short or medium term, we can expect a hung jury. On the other hand, if we ask which regime type allows for voice, participation, and protection of its most vulnerable people, we should expect a unanimous verdict in democracy’s favour.

2.4 Pockets of Democracy, Pockets of Authoritarianism

A fourth assumption about our authoritarian moment is about scale. We tend to believe that the scale that matters most is the national one. This sort of methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002) is understandable; one wouldn’t want to ignore the importance of regime type at the national level. We have not—as it turns out—witnessed the dissolution of nation-state frontiers with the rise of global connectivities of various sorts. The pundits who confidently declared that the “world is flat” (Friedman, 2005)—that is, that we now reside in a frictionless world of unlimited possibility untroubled by mere political frontiers—have gone strikingly silent.

Yet, the national is not the only scale that matters, and it may—depending on the question, depending on the situation—matter less than other scales. As Lisa Wedeen (2008) has documented about Yemen, which at the national scale is authoritarian, democratic practices are part and parcel of everyday life scaled—and lived—locally. To say simply that Yemen represents an authoritarian context is to miss something crucial. Similarly, to say that Canada is democratic is perfectly accurate until one sits in on a typical faculty meeting at a Canadian university or, less trivially, experiences Canadian life as a person of indigenous descent. National authoritarianisms are shot through with democratic practices and institutions scaled at the non-national level. For their part, democracies are also shot through with authoritarian practices and institutions scaled at the non-national level.

Feminist scholars have known this for a long time. We should be in the business of disaggregating politics, at various scales, and identifying how such politics play out for various communities and various individuals involved (Crenshaw, 1990). Broad patterns do not cease to matter when we use such a lens, but their effects are always highly mediated. Turkmenistan does not cease to be an autocracy just because some citizens tell jokes in their kitchen at Berdymukhamedov’s expense, but how Turkmenistan’s autocracy functions is inseparable from what happens in these more intimate spaces, at these more local scales.

2.5 Democracies in the Vernacular

Finally, a fifth assumption about our moment returns us to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Remember Tolstoy’s full quote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Vse schastlivye sem’i pohoji drug na druga, kajdaia neschastlivaia sem’ia neschastliva po-svoemu.) Under our analogy, democracies should be essentially similar.

Alas, the analogy fails us here. Beyond some basic, minimal features, each democracy truly exists only in the vernacular. I do not have in mind a literal vernacular, in which politics can only become intelligible through well-defined, scarcely changing, traditional cultural frameworks (Kymlicka, 2001). Vernaculars are not straightjackets. But democratic governance does require a reckoning with the specific cultural complexities, the specific political history, and the specific horizons of possibility of any given context.

There is much, for example, in the Kyrgyz or Kazakh nomadic tradition that is consistent with key democratic principles. This is not to say that advocates for democracy would want to recreate nineteenth-century nomadic communities, but it is to say that democratic advocates would be wise to depict their initiatives as building upon and extending—rather than departing from—such traditions. We see this across the Middle East, with feminists finding sustenance and legitimacy in the Quran and Hadith; they seek not to deny the rightful place of holy texts in society but to build upon these texts as they chart a very human way forward (Abu-Lughod, 1998).

The corollary of course is also true. Those in Russian society who would posit the ostensible incompatibility of democratic values and practices with the broad sweep of Russian political history have probably not seriously reckoned with Russia’s checkered past. Consider the democratic promise of sayings like “God is far up high, the tsar is far away” (Do boga vysoko, do tsaria daleko). Invoked when one cannot expect help to come, it implies a need for self-reliance. Lightly governed for most of its political history, Russian society enjoyed myriad freedoms by default, even if not by principle. Life in the sprawling Russian empire was no more democratic than was life in Kyrgyz nomadic encampments, but the point remains: a recoverable, usable past is available for those interested in speaking democracy in the vernacular. Of course, in the context of Russia’s dramatic autocratic deepening in 2022, Russia’s democratic potential seemed to have evaporated. But, if human societies were simply prisoners of their recent—and in this case brutally autocratic—past, we would all be living under autocratic rule.

The argument for one regime type over another is not that one brings greater economic performance. Regime type may or may not grow the economy. It may or may not generate greater equity. It may or may not improve lives. It is also not that one regime type brings great political benefit, by endearing a state to a great power involved in some kind of geopolitical competition. Today’s darling may become tomorrow’s estranged “ex.” Rather, choosing democracy is simply and only about selecting political practices and institutions that are fairer and more humane. If fairness, humanity, generosity, and freedom play any role in a state’s recoverable, usable past, it too can speak democracy in the vernacular.

3 Is the BRI a Blessing or a Curse?

All of this returns us to the question that animates this book section. Is the BRI a curse or a blessing for democracy? The answer comes in two parts.

First, we are smart to take stock of the BRI’s influence. In the short term, the BRI can indeed provide a lifeline for authoritarian governments—especially those that are cash-strapped during difficult times produced by economic decline, public health crises, or natural disasters. This lifeline has the potential to shore up autocrats’ claims to legitimacy.Footnote 7 There is nothing quite like a palpable, visible infrastructure project shouted from the rooftops of authoritarian palaces to suggest that the regime is working for the people.

But the relationship is contingent; the BRI's influence is a variable, not a constant. If regimes are seduced by concessional loans but unconcerned about the quality or practical utility of the infrastructure being built, they open themselves up to downstream accusations of corruption. If regimes are unconcerned about creating jobs and distributing any new wealth generated by involvement with the BRI, they expose themselves to a downstream populist backlash. If regimes find themselves doing the bidding of foreign governments in their treatment of minority populations, this builds pressure for counter-mobilization over the longer term and raises the costs of repression domestically in the short term.

To be sure, the BRI is a well-funded development scheme promoted and underwritten by the world’s largest and arguably most powerful authoritarian regime. It would seem natural to push in an authoritarian direction, but it may well be that—borrowing a phrase from Alexander Wendt (1992)—the BRI is what Central Asian states make of it. Change seems inevitable, but the direction and endpoint of that change are hard to predict. By rapidly shifting the configuration of forces in tremendously unpredictable ways, the BRI inevitably opens new horizons of what is politically possible. Its transformative potential is enormous, but if there is one thing we know from prior historical examples of similarly enormous transformations, it is this: the architects of change do not have the power to determine the final outcome.

Second, while we recognize the BRI’s influence, we are smart to avoid exaggerating it. There are myriad processes afoot in the global political economy that—independent of China and its foreign policy in Central Asia—are poised to change the region. Isolating China’s role in these changes will be no mean analytic task, but it is one that scholars should endeavour to undertake.