Pulling the rug

More notes from May 2009

The possible impact of the global economic crisis on political instability in Central Asia and the Transaucasus
The level of trust in a range of political institutions across the counties of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was low even before the onset of the ongoing global financial and economic crisis, but it will make the situation worse.
In broad terms, the consequences of the crisis have been transmitted to the countries of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus through the impact of the financial meltdown and fall in hydrocarbon prices on the region's leading economies. For many former Soviet countries, the consequent fall in trade, remittances and investment inflows has already started to be felt, although not evenly, in terms of declining incomes and rising unemployment—two factors that tend to presage outbreaks of social and political unrest. However, economic stress on its own would not usually be enough to cause an outbreak of unrest. Rather, it is the interaction of economic stress with specific political and social factors already in place that is crucial.

Much in common
The states of Central Asia, the Transcaucasus and Russia share a number of these underlying factors associated with political upheaval. For instance, all of them, except Russia, have had a limited existence as independent states, all emerging as national entities only with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. In many, low levels of public trust hinder the effectiveness of political and governance systems, all of which are also mired by high levels of corruption. Finally, all of them, except Russia and Kazakhstan, are surrounded by countries that are also prone to the structural causes of unrest. This is the so called bad neighbourhood effect, which is one of the main causative factors behind political stability, according to the political science literature.

Most exposed
Those states most at risk because of pre-existing structural weaknesses—the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Georgia—share a number of relevant traits in common. The Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan exhibit a high degree of ethic fragmentation; for example, conflicts between the ethnic Kyrgyz majority and the Uzbek minority, which is concentrated in the south of the country, have been a persistent source of political tension in the Kyrgyz Republic since independence. Tajikistan and Georgia have both experiences of at least two major episodes of political instability in the recent historical past. Tajikistan, for instance, suffered two bouts of all-out fighting in its five-year civil war of the 1990s, in which at least 50,000 people were killed (fuelled, among other things, by ethnic rivalries). For its part, not only has Georgia seen the outbreak of armed conflict as a part of it effort to bring its breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under control—most recently and disastrously in August 2008—but the existing political order has been overturned by force more than once. The first time was in the early 1990s, when the nationalist president, Zviad Gamsakurdia, was ousted in a coup. His successor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was kicked out in turn in a peaceful, large-scale social protest following a falsified election in the so-called Rose Revolution of November 2003. (Demonstrations in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, ongoing since April 2009 against the authoritarian drift of the current president, Mikheil Saakashvilli, have suggested to may observers that a similar pattern may be about to be repeated.)
Another important factor, shared by the Kyrgyz Republic and Georgia, is that they are held to be regimes of an intermediate type. That is, they benefit from neither the public consent necessary for the working of a consolidated democracy, nor the combination of institutions and resources for repression necessary to maintain wholly authoritarian rule. Additionally, Georgia's susceptibility to the underlying causes of unrest is greatly heightened by the combination of its intermediate regime type and a fractional polity (mainly reflecting the inability of the central authorities to exercise political control over the country's breakaway regions, which make up 10-15% of Georgia's territory). On the other hand, Georgia's better economic starting point puts it in a healthier position to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis than either Central Asian country. The likely impact the regional economic downturn on unemployment rates in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan thus put them at highest potential exposure to political instability overall.

Look at the fine print
Finally, at the beginning of 2009, suffering electricity shortages and blackouts, facing factional fallouts within the ruling group, a unifying opposition and a looming economic downturn, the government of the Kyrgyz Republic began to look vulnerable to a financial crisis. However, a large aid package from Russia in February has since turned the situation around completely. This shows the importance of looking at detailed country case studies, in combination with quantitative comparative models, when assessing vulnerability to political unrest in specific cases.