Shkel’ S.N. Political regimes of the post-Soviet states of the Central Asia and Caucasus

Abstract: The subject of this research is the political regimes of the post-Soviet states of Central Asia and Caucasus. The author gives an in-depth analysis to the typology problems of the modern political regimes and the methodological aspects of measuring the regime dynamics. Special attention is given to the issue of operationalization of the proposed concepts and review of empirical data, which can objectively reflect the character of the political regimes. The author claims that the measurement of these two parameters: level of competition among the elites and the degree of influence of informal practices within the political process, represents the most relevant assessment of the regime forms of the post-Soviet states. A synthesis of two theoretical concepts is used in this article. It offers the typology of the political regimes, developed upon the electoral and neopatrimonial approaches. By combining the two basic variables (level of competition and the autonomy of the elites) six possible regime types are determined: atomized particularism, sultanism, neopatrimonial authoritarianism, neopatrimonial polyarchy, institutionalized authoritarianism and institutionalized polyarchy. For the offered criteria of the assessment of the regimes, the author formulates a method of operationalization using the data from the electoral statistics and indexing the levels of corruption. The regime dynamics of the post-Soviet Turkmenistan is presented in the article as a demonstration of the practical implementation of the developed typology.

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