Uzbekistan’s Transformation: Strategies and Perspectives

17 Ibid., 8–11. 
18 Lawrence P. Markowitz, “Rural Economies and Leader-
ship Change in Central Asia”, Central Asian Survey 35, no. 4 
(2016): 514–30. 
19 Idem., “Beyond Kompromat: Coercion, Corruption, and 
Deterred Defection in Uzbekistan”, Comparative Politics, (Octo-
ber 2017): 103–21 (112 f.). 

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The Reformer and His Programme 
SWP Berlin 
Uzbekistan’s Transformation 
September 2020 
10 
to the centre and containing the power of the regional 
elites, which also included private-sector entrepre-
neurs. 
To achieve this, the regime increasingly employed 
the institutions of the security apparatus and from 
1997 successively expanded the powers of the law 
enforcement authorities – tax inspection as well as 
intelligence service and police – to keep tabs on key 
local actors. However, integrating the organs of 
repression into the structures they were supposed to 
keep under surveillance did not lead to more efficient 
action against corruption; instead it enabled the secu-
rity services to participate in illegal rent skimming 
using means such as blackmail, threats and physical 
violence, in conjunction with local administrative 
actors.
20
The resulting entanglement of security insti-
tutions and resource extraction made the regime 
increasingly dependent on the former. 
This coalesced the elites, most of whose leading 
figures belonged to President Karimov’s inner circle 
and maintained patronage networks extending down 
to the local level.
21
At the same time, the powerful 
security apparatus functioned as an effective deter-
rent to dissent. Opposition tended to come from the 
private business sector, whose property was protected 
neither by institutional guarantees nor informal 
mechanisms, thus making them especially vulnerable 
to overreach by the state’s organs of repression.
22
Although demands for a liberalisation of trade and 
commerce were frequently voiced, they fell on deaf 
ears because they contradicted the interests of the 
leading circles.
23
That said, the stability of Karimov’s system was not 
based exclusively on coercion and repression. Since 
the late 1990s, largely unnoticed by the outside world, 
a (predominantly urban) middle class had emerged 
and accommodated itself to the circumstances. This 
milieu was socially heterogeneous, comprising a 
broad spectrum of public employees above all in the 
health and education sectors and the administra-
tion.
24
That was no coincidence: Since the end of the