KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

policy, but on the politics of loyalty and obedience to the Soviet regime. Second, local
authorities have been quite reluctant to construct a system of social values to develop
the idea of citizenship among the population that would correspond to the new period
of “democratic” independence.
In the light of populist promises of democratic governance that have never come
into practice, and the deteriorating social and economic situation in the country,
“democracy” has acquired a quite negative connotation among the population.
Therefore, both for NGOs and donors, it is becoming more and more challenging to
work with a democratic agenda. In general, the government brings up the discourse
on democracy occasionally when it comes to international cooperation, or when some
important political decisions are to be made, which leads to further devaluation of the
concept. 3
Without local changes in values and social experience towards the ideas of a
democratic society and administration, the focus of external actors on building a civil
society that will change people’s state of mind and bring reforms to the system of
governance, cannot be considered a realistic project. Democratization is a continuous
process that should be based on locally shaped public discourse and locally driven
reforms in governance and the societal system – a type of structural development that
cannot be achieved solely with external stimulation and strategies relying on international
standards of democratic achievement.
Methods for promoting democracy: the problem of “translation”
Concepts of constitutional democracy and human rights are recognized as
universally binding. They are codified in international conventions adopted under
the auspices of international organizations, such as the United Nations or the Council
of Europe. The international mechanism for their introduction into the national state
system implies their ratification and subsequent incorporation into the national legal
system. Accordingly, democratization policies of the international donor community
have been oriented towards incorporating democratic principles in the legal framework
of the state by means of legal and judicial reforms and supporting the development of
the NGO sector that will monitor the actions of the government and make it respect its
international and national commitments with regard to human rights and democratic
governance.
In Kyrgyzstan, as in many other countries in transition, this approach has resulted
in the creation of imitative forms of democracy 4 , when all the necessary legal norms are
in place, but these norms do not constitute a functioning framework that regulates public
and social relations within the state. It is clear that no genuine legal reforms can take
place in the absence of political and social reforms, when both the judicial and political
3
Immediately after the March 2005 events, the individuals in power extensively used democratic
rhetoric to justify their position vis-а-vis the former regime, but once their position in power was legitimized,
the discourse on democratization vanished from their agenda. Constitutional reform has been impeded by
the struggle between the president and the parliament, the authorities have restricted the right of citizens
to peaceful demonstrations and civic activists who demonstrated against the results of the parliamentary
elections in December 2007 and anti-constitutional actions of the new regime have been persecuted. See
http://hrw.org/englishwr2k8/docs/2008/01/31/kyrgyz17745.htm,15 June 2008
4
See Dmitry Furman, “Challenge 2008: Common and Specific Trends in Transition Processes of the
Post-Soviet States” (Problema 2008: obŝee i osobennoe v processah perehoda postsovetskih gosudarstv):
http://www.polit.ru/-lectures/2007/10/19/furman.html, accessed 29 April 2008.
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