The arts and societies of the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush

A considered examination of the causes of the Arab Awakening and the likely appeal of Turkey. The next 5-10 years will be unstable and uncertain. But the previous regimes were in any case inherently unstable as autocratic leaders shut down almost all political life and thus slowly widened the constituency for Islam. As the Arabs forge theirb way forward, they will not look to the democracies of the West which in many cases supported the autocrats. They will look instead to regional models. It seems that Turkey is more attractive than the theocratic models of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Turkey is seen as a vibrant democracy and a dynamic economy. It is not just the Turkish model, but the success of the model which attracts.     

Agrarian transition in former Soviet Central Asia: A comparative study of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

While analysing in detail the agrarian transition that is taking place in two former Soviet Central Asian republics, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (concentrating on agrarian reform, deregulation and financial institutions), the crude classifications that are normally used as framework, such as ‘slow’ versus ‘fast’ reforms or ‘gradualism’ versus ‘shock‐therapy’ are seen as not very useful. These transitions are highly complex and diverse, and therefore any analysis and policy design must be based on a real understanding of the institutional setting of the agrarian sector. It is concluded that agrarian markets are not spontaneously appearing, and that there is an important role for the state to promote ‘the construction of markets’.