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WHY and how do clans matter in the politics of transitions and posttransition regimes? This question is inspired by the post-communist politics of Central Asia, the southern tier of the former Soviet Union, where the transition from communism has reinvigorated an informal system of governance, unfamiliar to students of transition and democratization. As the Soviet system collapsed, clans-informal identity networks based on kin or fictive kin bonds-emerged as political actors. Clan politics-the politics of informal competition and deal making between clans in pursuit of clan interests-has had profound effects on the political trajectories of these regimes. Interclan deals helped to stabilize the transitions in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Interclan competition fostered regime breakdown in Tajikistan, leading to one of the longest and bloodiest post-Soviet conflicts. And democratization, where attempted, has failed. Yet authoritarian regimes have not consolidated either. Increasing clan tensions in all five cases have political leaders in the region worrying about more civil violence. Both President Akayev of Kyrgyzstan and President Karimov of Uzbekistan have called for getting clans out of politics.1 These cases strongly suggest that we take clans seriously in explaining regime trajectories.
This study is inspired by a puzzle. Although the Soviet state attempted to modernize Central Asia by eliminating clans, twelve years after independence all five Central Asian states are increasingly pervaded by clan networks. Even more puzzling, despite initially distinct trajectories in the early 1990s, the new regime institutions, leaders' ideologies, and elite choices-the "transitions" and "institutions" to which most literature directs its attention- were quickly transformed. Instead, the trajectories evident since the mid-1990s demonstrate the emergence of an informal regime of clan politics. The transitions and institutionalist literature offers no answers as to why the Central Asian cases have not followed the pattern anticipated by the theory. Nor can the theory explain why some of these regimes have endured while others have collapsed or become increasingly unstable.
Studying the role of clans demands a framework that takes informal organizations and the social basis of politics seriously. Surprisingly, informal organizations have been little studied and have rarely been linked to major debates about regime change or political development.2 Clans are commonly talked about throughout Central Asia, but the politics of clans, an informal social organization that has...