Regional security cooperation in Central Asia: the influence of Uzbekistan’s leader change on the Rogun Dam project
Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
In Central Asia, the past three decades have been characterised by a lack of
cooperation in security matters, despite the strong incentives for states to cooperate to
solve their common security issues. One of the main sources of tension is the Rogun
Dam project pushed forward by Tajikistan and historically met with strong opposition
from Uzbekistan. Yet, the recent power change following the assession of Mirziyoyev
to the presidency has led to a political U-turn in the Uzbek foreign policy towards the
dam project which cannot be explain by rational system-level theories. This thesis
aims to question the supremacy of the rationalist approach and system-level theories
in explaining interstate cooperation and addresses its limitation in providing
comprehensive explanations in the case of Central Asia. Rather, this research seeks to
provide a complementary individual-focused approach to the study of states’ relations
that focuses on the influence of leadership perceptions in shaping foreign policy
decisions towards security cooperation. The chosen method of analysis is the conduct
of a content analysis on speeches and statements made by key actors of the two
respective administrations. The thesis concludes by stating the key findings that have
been established from the analysis, and are presented in two categories:
cooperation-adverse and cooperation-prone perceptions. The findings confirm the
existence of diverging perceptions between the two leaderships and shed light on their
relation with the respective foreign policy carried by the each leadership, therefore
demonstrating the value of an individual-level analysis.