| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, October 29, 2012 | 12:00PM - 2:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
Central Asia Lecture Series
Why did Tajikistan’s security institutions fragment into state failure and civil war in the 1990s, while Uzbekistan’s law enforcement and security services centralized their personnel systems, modernized their facilities, and expanded into one of the largest and most cohesive security apparatuses in post-Soviet Eurasia? My research proposes expanding the “resource curse” argument to investigate how cash crop economies insert very different mechanisms by which resources promote state failure. In countries whose economies are structured around cotton, cocoa, or coffee production, for example, subtle changes in the underlying patterns of rent-seeking determine whether states keep or lose a monopoly of force within their borders. The examples of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan not only highlight the critical interplay of resources and rents at the local level in Central Asia. They also challenge the consensus in the literature linking resource endowments and conflict, which holds that only non-renewable commodities such as oil or alluvial diamonds — and not renewable resources (cash crops) — can be the primary engines of civil war.
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