Leaders, ideas, and norm diffusion in Central Asia and beyond
| Author | Assylzat Karabayeva |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2057891119887813 |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Research article
Leaders, ideas, and norm
diffusion in Central Asia
and beyond
Assylzat Karabayeva
International University of Japan, Japan
Abstract
This article considers how the ideas and worldviews of the first presidents of the post-Soviet
Central Asian countries have shaped their states’ identities, and their domestic and foreign policies.
It argues that the contested ideas of regionalism in Central Asia were responsible for the rejection,
reconstruction, and diffusion of foreign norms within the region and beyond. The ideational norms
of the Central Asian states are argued to play a critical role in the creation of new norms—multi-
speed and multi-level Eurasian regionalism—and their diffusion into global normative processes.
Thus, the Central Asian region, and its contribution to the development of Eurasian normative
regionalism, deserves recognition in world politics.
Keywords
Eurasian integration and regionalism, ideas, leaders, norm diffusion
Introduction
The Central Asian region was inaugurated in 1993 when the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan decided to rename themselves “Central Asia” instead of
Kazakhstan and the Middle Asian States. The name Central Asia was smoothly incorporated into
international convention. Central Asia aimed to establish common economic policies in the early
1990s.
1
However, regional processes have not achieved any significant outcomes other than
changing the name of their institution from the Central Asian Union to the Central Asian Economic
Community, and later to the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO). The organization
was eventually disbanded following its incorporation into the Eurasian Economic Community
(EurAsEC) between 1994 and 2005. The lack of regional accomplishments ensured the region
gained a reputation for being “pathologically” non-cooperative (Spechler, 2001) and consisting of
Corresponding author:
Assylzat Karabayeva, International University of Japan, 777 Kokusai-cho, Minamiuonuma, Niigata 949-7277, Japan.
Email: assylzat@iuj.ac.jp
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2021, Vol. 6(1) 25–44
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891119887813
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fragile states always looking outside their borders. The characterization of the region as being the
“Eurasian Balkans,” a “gathering storm,” and a “location prone to chaos” induced authors to
consider the region from within. Inside-out approaches
2
ensured that the region shifted from being
a “land of discord,” representative of “the disparate and anarchic theatre of global geopolitics”
(Kavalski, 2010: 3) to “successfully [...] coexisting w ithout violence, even in the absenc e of
agreement” (Rubin and Snyder, 1998: 166). Cummings (2012: 5) argued that the Central Asian
region was mostly studied using Eurocentric methodologies, and Heathershaw and Megoran (2011:
612) invited researchers to “read and write Central Asia’s place in global politics differently.”
Most of the literature that adopted an inside-out approach favored more rationalist than idea-
tional explanations for the failure of the regional integration process.
3
They overemphasized either
the role of the patrimonial regime, regional security or personality cults (Allison, 2004, 2008;
Anceschi, 2010; Collins, 2009; Cooley, 2012), as well as local rivalries over regional leadership
(Allison and Jonson, 2001; Bohr, 1998; Brzezinski, 1997). The majority of research (Ambrosio,
2008; Aris, 2009; Cooley, 2015; Lewis, 2012; Obydenkova and Libman, 2019; Russo, 2018) that
has analyzed the normative stance of the Central Asian states has used outside-in approaches to
show how regional organizations (such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the
Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)) that were
built by external actors (such as Russia and China) influenced the creation and diffusion of
authoritarian regime strengthening norms in Central Asia.
4
Very few researchers have analyzed the normative aspects of Central Asia from within. Adopted
norms have been researched in Central Asia through the prism of human rights (Waters, 2009) and
democracy (Isaacs, 2018; Warkotsch, 2007). In addition, Kavalski (2010) and Cummings and
Hinnebusch (2012) investigated how Central Asian states have borrowed universal sovereignty
norms. Moreover, Costa-Buran elli (2014) found that Central Asian c ountries often use similar
discourses and take pluralist “Westphalian” stances on the international stage. To contribute to our
understanding of constructivism in Central Asia, this article examines how sovereignty principles
and regionalist norms were adopted and became entrenched both within and beyond the region. The
study employs Acharya’s (2004, 2011) constitutive localization and norm subsidiarity approaches to
explain the importance of local actors and identify their ideas within norm diffusion processes. It
focuses on two important actors within Central Asia—Kazakhstan (for its economic strength and
territorial mass), and Uzbekistan (as the most populated country in the region).
The article argues that two phenomena—sovereignty-constraining integration and autonomy-
seeking cooperation—drive norm contestation and norm formation within the region and beyond.
5
It refutes the idea that Eurasian regionalism is a product of Russia’s foreign policy (as advocated by
authors including Malfliet, Verpoest, and Vinokurov (2007), Moga and Alexeev (2013), Wilson
(2016), and Kaczmarski (2017)).
This article adopts a qualitative and interpretative method of analysis. To trace the norm
contestation, formation, and diffusion processes, official documents retrieved from the Archive
of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan are used. Speeches, interviews, press conferences,
articles, and books issued by heads of state, particularly the first presidents of Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan, are also analyzed.
The article comprises three sections. The first section briefly describes the theoretical principles
of norm diffusion. The second section shows how norms promoted by founding leaders shape
states’ identity and formulate their domestic and foreign policies. The third section explains
Eurasian integration and multi-speed and multi-level Eurasian regionalism as cases of localized
and subsidiarized norm development.
26 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 6(1)
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