Authors

Discussion

The assumption that the demands of protestors are ignored in nondemocratic contexts is widely held, but rarely investigated. My research challenges prevailing assumptions through an investigation of the response of Central Asian governments to protest.

Using a Protest Event Analysis (PEA) methodology, I have constructed an original dataset of protest events and government responses to them in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, between 2015 and 2019. This data has generated two key findings. Firstly, in all three cases, protests were sometimes met with concessions. Secondly, whilst Uzbekistan saw the fewest protest events, when a protest event did occur, it was more likely to win concessions in Uzbekistan than either Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan.

On the basis of these findings, I argue that protest functioned as an information mechanism between state and society, allowing the government to identify and respond to popular demands as part of a long-term survival strategy. Uzbekistan was more likely to offer concessions because it had fewer alternative information mechanisms. This echoes the findings of work on the response to rural protest in mainland China (Lorentzen, 2013).

Popular mobilisation has the potential to bring down presidents, as it has three times in Kyrgyzstan, but it also presents them with an opportunity to monitor and respond to popular opinion. Protest may thus, somewhat paradoxically, play a stabilising function whilst representing an immediate crisis.