Abstract

In recent years, two schools of thought have shaped scholarly debate concerning the political development of Central Asia. The first, characterised by a new institutionalist perspective, is that regional identities (oblast and raion) shaped by formal Soviet institutional legacies are a primary factor driving the state building process in Central Asia (Jones Luong, 2002). The second, emphasising a more traditionalist outlook, argues that informal pre-soviet identities are shaping political outcomes (Schatz, 2005). Kathleen Collins book builds and expands on the latter arguing that rather than formal Soviet legacies shaping the developmental trajectories of post-Soviet transition in Central Asia, it is rather the hegemony of ‘clan politics’, an extensive network of kin and fictive kinship relations, that is the dominant social and political force.