An important study of the prospects for Central Asia. This is very timely in view of the unrest in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It contains essential material on political outlook for a strategically crucial region. When the Eastern Bloc and its Soviet Architects began to crumble at the end of the 1980s, the republics on the south-eastern fringes of the former USSR were quite unready to act as autonomous polities. The situation in Central Asia was aggravated by the circumstance that Soviet disintegration not only affected the former member republics but also left an even wider area in urgent need of local-state reorganization and regional reconfiguration. This had far-reaching political and economic implications for the Asian continent at large and, evidently also, for the international community. "Prospects for Democracy in Central Asia" aims to paint a broad picture of the outlook for democracy in the region as seen from the perspective of the political scientist as well as the social scientist, the environmental researcher and the cultural studies specialist. The latest developments in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan make this volume even more timely, since it focuses on a region where political unrest may so easily fuel antagonism not only between people and power elites but also between various social and ethnic interest groups.
