Introduction

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Acknowledgements

The articles in this special issue were originally presented at a workshop on authoritarian persistence in Central Asia at the University of Louisville (Kentucky, USA) in April 2015. The Center for Asian Democracy and the Asian Studies Program at the University of Louisville provided funding. Their support is gratefully acknowledged, as is the contribution of the anonymous reviewers and the professional support and encouragement of Madeleine Reeves and the journal’s editorial staff.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Generally, economic rents derive from high-value-added export products such as oil, gold or diamonds, rather than agricultural products. Uzbekistan is a poor country, however, and the economy is dominated by cotton, natural gas and remittances. As a major export earner, cotton is a lucrative source of rents for the Uzbek elite.

2. Radnitz (2010) details how regional elites mobilized popular disaffection to bring down Akayev in 2005.

3. The 2017 US Department of Defense budget (http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2017/FY2017_CTPF_J-Book.pdf) proposes allocating money from the Counterterrorism Partnership Fund to Central Asia – primarily Tajikistan – to counter the Taliban ISIL and other regional terrorist organizations.