Rethinking the International Diffusion of Coloured Revolutions: The Power of Representation in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

It is commonly argued that the international diffusion of post-socialist ‘coloured revolutions’ culminated in the overthrow of the Akaev government in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005. This raises an important theoretical debate about the nature of contagion, diffusion and emulation (how different cases are linked across space and time) in the context of the particular case of the Tulip revolution (what happened and is continuing to happen in Kyrgyzstan). These changes of regime were linked by a common point of reference, the idea of the ‘coloured revolution’, whereby participants in Kyrgyzstan were inspired by representations of the earlier uprisings. However, this link was symbolic and contingent rather than normative and determined. Rather than following a single model or innovating upon an objectively existing example, coloured revolutions were mediated by the power of representation.

Acknowledgements

I was involved as supervisor or reader in a number of works of research cited in this paper; my thanks go to Abdujalil Abdurasulov, Anara Karagulova and Said Yakhoyev for their insights and explorations. David Montgomery, Steffi Ortmann, and Madeleine Reeves gave invaluable comments on an earlier draft. Field research was conducted while I was a visiting scholar at the Centre for Social Research of the American University in Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Most of the writing was completed while the author was a visiting fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies of the University of Notre Dame, 2006–7.

Notes

Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998; first published 1951), p.1.

Mark R. Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolution’, Perspectives on Politics, Vol.5, No.2 (2007), pp.259–76; Mark R. Beissinger, ‘Promoting Democracy: Is Exporting Revolution a Constructive Strategy?’, Dissent, Winter 2006, pp.18–24; Mark R. Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolution’, unpublished paper, November 2005, available at <http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/~beissinger/beissinger.modrev.article.pdf>, accessed 22 Jan. 2006; Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion and Postcommunist Electoral Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.283–304; Henry E. Hale, ‘Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia’, World Politics, Vol.58, No.1 (2005), pp.133–65.

Paul D'Anieri, ‘Explaining the Success and Failure of Post-communist Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.331–50.

Henry E. Hale, ‘Democracy or Autocracy on the March? The Colored Revolutions as Normal Dynamics of Patronal Presidentialism’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.305–29; Scott Radnitz, ‘What Really Happened in Kyrgyzstan?’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.17, No.2 (2006), pp.132–46.

I shall continue to use ‘democratic revolution’ and ‘coloured revolutions’ interchangeably. They are among several tropes used to represent the phenomena across the post-soviet space. In Russian, the term raznosvetnye revolyutsii (‘coloured revolutions’) is often used.

Bunce and Wolchik go further and link these post-socialist revolutions to the invention of a model of ‘electoral revolution’ which began in the Philippines and Chile in the 1980s: Bunce and Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion’, pp.288–9.

Hale, ‘Regime Cycles’, pp.137–43.

Ibid., p.161.

Ibid., p.160.

Bunce and Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion’, p.284.

Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2006: Kyrgyzstan (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2006), p.3.

Flemming Spildsboel Hansen, ‘A Grand Strategy for Central Asia’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.52, No.2 (2005), pp.45–54.

Bunce and Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion’, p.286; emphasis added.

Ibid., p.287.

Ibid., p.288; original emphasis.

‘Modular Democratic Revolution’ (MDR) will be used to signify the particular approach of Mark Beissinger: see Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’.

Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.259.

Ibid., p.260.

Ibid., p.259; emphasis added.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2005, pp.22–5.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.259; see also D'Anieri, ‘Explaining the Success and Failure’.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2005, pp.16–21.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.265.

Ibid., p.266.

Ibid., pp.266–7.

Ibid., p.271, Table 2.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2005, p.26.

For a detailed overview of the elections see OSCE, Final Report: Presidential Elections of the Kyrgyz Republic, OSCE-ODIHR Election Observation Mission 2005, available at <http://www.osce.org/documents/html/pdftohtml/17585_en.pdf.html>, accessed 24 Feb. 2009; see also International Crisis Group, ‘Kyrgyzstan: After the Revolution’, Asia Report No.97 (4 May 2005), pp.2–6.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, pp.271–2, emphasis added.

Ibid., p.261.

Ibid.

Taras Kuzio, ‘Civil Society, Youth and Societal Mobilization in Democratic Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.365–86.

OSCE, Final Report: Presidential Elections of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.264, Table 1.

Ibid., p.272.

Personal communication, 15 July 2005. Beissinger himself notes that the ‘Tulip revolution’ ‘almost occurred accidentally and in contradiction with the plans of the opposition leaders, who had viewed the wave of unrest that eventually sparked the revolution as merely a preparatory phase for a second wave of mobilizations that was to attend upcoming presidential elections in June’: Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.271.

Ibid., pp.273–4.

For an exploration of how the deployment of models deters their realization, see Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Precession of Simulacra’, in Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: semiotext[e], 1983).

Said Yakhoyev, ‘Kyrgyzstan's “Revolution”’, Master's Thesis submitted to the OSCE academy, June 2005.

Aaron Brudny, presentation to ‘Tulip revolution’ conference, American University in Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 31 March 2005.

Personal communication to author, 9 April 2005.

Yakhoyev, ‘Kyrgyzstan's “Revolution”’.

Radnitz, ‘What Really Happened’, p.132.

Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.262.

Mamasaliev, the head of KelKel, cited in RFE/RL, ‘Kyrgyz Youth Leader Speaks About Opposition Organization's Intentions’, 28 Feb. 2005, available at <http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/02/0ddf6c5b-67eb-429b-8dfb-b91039bad7d8.html>, accessed 24 Feb. 2009.

Ibid.

Kuzio, ‘Civil Society, Youth and Societal Mobilization’.

Beissinger ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.262; emphasis added.

Beissinger ‘Structure and Example’, 2007, p.261; reference is to Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (Boston, MA: Albert Einstein Institute, 2002; originally published 1993).

International Crisis Group, ‘Kyrgyzstan: After the Revolution’, p.8; Erica Marat, The ‘Tulip Revolution’: One Year After, March 15, 2005 – March 24, 2006 (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2006), pp.27–8.

Civil Society Against Corruption, headed by Tolkan Ismailova, organized the translation and publication of Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy in February 2005, just before the ‘Tulip revolution’. It has received financial assistance from the Open Society Institute and Freedom House, which ran an independent printing press in Bishkek from November 2003. However, at the same time the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives money from the US Congress, decided to stop funding Ismailova's organization because of its ‘pronounced opposition bent’: see Philip Shishkin, ‘Ripple Effect in Putin's Backyard: Democracy Stirs – With US Help’, Wall Street Journal, 25 Feb. 2005, p.A1.

Bunce and Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion’, p.285.

Emanuel Adler, ‘Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.26, No.2 (2005), pp.249–78.

John Heathershaw, ‘New Great Game or Same Old Ideas? Neo-Sovietism and the International Politics of Imagining “Central Asia”’, in David Dusseault (ed.), The CIS: Form or Substance? (Helsinki: Kikimora, 2007), pp.237–68.

For more on how ‘authority’ and ‘stability’ are essential to elite, neo-Soviet regional discourses in Central Asia, see ibid.

Graeme P. Herd, ‘Colorful revolutions and the CIS’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.52, No.2 (2005), p.4.

Igor Torbakov, ‘Arch-conservative Pundits in Russia Characterize Bush Administration as “Neo-bolshevik”’, Eurasia Insight, 28 Sept. 2005, available at <http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav092805.shtml>, accessed 2 Oct. 2005.

For more on the propensity of local and international actors towards discourses of danger with regard to Central Asia, see John Heathershaw and Stina Torjesen (eds.), Discourses of Danger in Central Asia, special issue of Central Asian Survey, Vol.24, No.1 (2005).

Anara Karagulova and Nick Megoran, ‘Gothic Kyrgyzstan and the “War on Terror”: Discourses of Danger and the Collapse of the Akayev Regime’, paper presented to the annual conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1 Oct. 2006.

BBC News Online, ‘Region's press gripped by Kyrgyz uncertainty’, Saturday, 26 March 2005, available at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4384383.stm>, accessed 28 March 2005.

Ibid.

Serik Primbetov, ‘Human Security in Central Asia’, presentation to UNESCO Conference, OSCE Academy Bishkek, 8 Sept. 2005.

Personal communication to author, April 2005.

Personal communication to author, April 2005.

However, I witnessed looters of various ethnic backgrounds, including many Russians, steal from Beta Stores on the night of 24 March.

Madeleine Reeves, ‘“We're With the People!” The Eventfulness of Identity in Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution’, presentation at the London School of Economics workshop, ‘The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan One Year On’, London, 28 Feb. 2006.

Abdujalil Abdurasulov, ‘Titular Group and Ethnic Minorities After the Kyrgyz Revolution: The Changed Interaction’, presentation at the LSE workshop, ‘The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan One Year On’, 28 Feb. 2006; Elina Karakulova, ‘Multiethnicity in Kyrgyzstan's Multicoloured Revolution’, unpublished Master's thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2006.

Daniel Kimmage, ‘The Failure of Managed Democracy in Kyrgyzstan’, RFE/RL Central Asia Report, Vol.5, No.13 (12 April 2005).

Burul Usmanilieva, written personal observation, passed to author, April 2005.

Beissinger, ‘Promoting Democracy’.

See, for example, Kumar Bekbolotov, ‘Protesting Kyrgyzstan: “Devaluation” of Meaning, Or Increasing Ineffectiveness?’, article for the Institute of Public Policy, Bishkek, 23 May 2006, available at <http://ipp.kg/en/analysis/191-23-05-2006>, accessed 29 Aug. 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Heathershaw

John Heathershaw is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter. He has a PhD from the LSE and has previously held teaching and research posts at the University of Notre Dame, the American University in Central Asia, and King's College, London. He spent most of the period 2001–5 living and working in Kyrgyzstan.