Clans, Pacts, and Politics in Central Asia
Clans, Pacts, and Politics in Central Asia
复制标题
中亚的氏族、契约和政治
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Kathleen A. Collins
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kathleen A. Collins
中亚突然出现在世界地图上。事实上，9月11日和美国在阿富汗对塔利班和基地组织恐怖网络的战争已经将中亚从边缘拉到了地图的中心。为阿富汗制定战略的决策者已经开始意识到，整个广阔的地区都受到越来越弱的国家和政权的困扰，这些国家和政权正在失去民众的合法性。因此，一项成功的政策不仅必须考虑到阿富汗本身，而且还必须考虑到周边国家，这些国家面临着同样的挑战，即尽管经济衰退，社会四分五裂，但仍要建立统一和民主的国家。从这一更大的战略背景来看，中亚问题确实令人清醒。苏联解体十年来，前苏联中亚各共和国的稳定、政治巩固、繁荣和自由与1991年相比没有增加，实际上更少了。其中一些或所有国家都可能重蹈阿富汗1990年代的覆辙。任何避免这种可怕前景的努力，开始都必须首先问一问，为什么它是一种如此可信的前景。虽然人们对推动向民主过渡的原因进行了大量研究，但我们对向独裁主义或内战过渡的方式的理解要不那么可靠，事实上，在过去十年左右的时间里，在太多的地方，这种情况已经发生了。我们也不理解我们现在看到的在曾经的苏联世界出现的威权主义类型。然而，正如阿富汗提醒我们的那样，我们需要了解这些非民主政权的性质和动态。凯瑟琳柯林斯是圣母大学政府和国际研究助理教授，也是凯洛格国际研究所和克罗克国际和平研究所的教员。她目前正在写一本书，根据她1999年斯坦福大学博士论文“氏族，条约和政治：了解中亚政权过渡”。
Central Asia is suddenly on the world map. Indeed, September 11 and the U.S. war against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terror network in Afghanistan have drawn Central Asia from the periphery to near the center of that map. Policy makers forging strategies for Afghanistan have begun to realize that the entire vast region is plagued by increasingly weak states and regimes that are losing popular legitimacy. Thus a successful policy will have to take into account not only Afghanistan itself but also nearby countries that face the same challenge of building coherent and democratic states despite declining economies and fragmented, clanbased societies. Viewed in this larger strategic context, the problem of Central Asia is sobering indeed. The lapse of a decade since the breakup of the USSR finds the former Soviet Central Asian republics not more but actually less stable, politically consolidated, prosperous, and free than they were in 1991. Some or all could follow the disastrous path taken by Afghanistan in the 1990s. Any effort to avert this frightening prospect must begin by asking why it is such a plausible scenario in the first place. While much research has been done on the causes that drive transitions to democracy, we have a far shakier grasp of how transitions to authoritarianism or civil war can come about, as in fact they have in all too many places over the last ten years or so. Nor do we understand the types of authoritarianism that we now see emerging in what was once the Soviet world. Yet as Afghanistan reminds us, we need to understand the nature and dynamics of these nondemocratic regimes. Kathleen Collins is assistant professor of government and international studies at the University of Notre Dame and a faculty fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She is currently working on a book, based on her 1999 Stanford University doctoral dissertation “Clans, Pacts, and Politics: Understanding Regime Transition in Central Asia.”