Peaceworks 2

Central Asians Take Stock
Reform, Corruption, and Identity

Nancy Lubin

The United States is interested in encouraging the development of stable, democratic systems, and market economies in new countries such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, and to minimize the social, ethnic, religious and other sources of conflict that could destabilize the region further. But increasingly, effectiveness in these efforts will depend as much on the views from below as from policies promulgated from above. As a small step towards understanding some of these popular views, then, Lubin conducted a public opinion survey in June, 1993, among 2000 respondents in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan—countries that together comprise almost three quarters of Central Asia's population and about 80 percent of its land mass. The survey focused on attitudes towards democracy and market reform; corruption and organized crime; environmental and other social challenges; Islam, ethnic, and nationality identity; and ethnic/ national intolerance and foreign policy orientations.

Nancy Lubin, an associate professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, has spent the past twenty years following ethnic and domestic politics in the former Soviet Union. She specializes in nationality issues, particularly in Central Asia where she has travelled widely. In 1978–79, she was a researcher at Tashkent State University in Uzbekistan.

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