Decolonization in Soviet Borderlands

InfoTrac Web: InfoTrac College Edition. 
                                                                             
   Source:  PS: Political Science & Politics, Sept 1993 v26 n3 p522(4). 
                                                                               
    Title:  Decolonization in the former Soviet Borderlands: Politics in 
            search of principles. 
   Author:  Gregory W. Gleason and Susan J. Buck 
                                                                               
Abstract:  The new states formed following the dissolution of the Soviet 
Union are struggling to establish administrative structures as they have had 
no guidance under Soviet control and western models do not address their 
special problems. The states are adopting market principles, although they do 
not fully understand the concepts and there is a lack of clarity over how far 
decentralization should extend. 
                                                                               
Subjects:  Central Asia - Political aspects 
            Eastern Europe - Political aspects 
            Soviet Union 
            Decentralization in government 
Locations:  Asia, Central;  Soviet Union 
                                                                                                                                                       
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1993 American Political Science Association 
 
Marx is reputed to have said that "there is nothing so practical as a good 
theory." Seventy-odd years of Soviet theorizing have left little useful 
practical theory behind, as demonstrated by the transformations currently 
taking place in Russia's borderlands. As the Soviet Union crumbles, the 
successor states face a unique and troubling situation. For over 70 years, 
their administrative structures have been centralized; their economies, 
transportation and communications systems, and the physical infrastructure all 
controlled from Moscow under a coherent ideological regime. The successor 
states find themselves adrift ideologically and administratively, but the 
centralized physical infrastructure remains. 
 
How are these states to design new administrative structures? How are they to 
cope with the utter failure of their theoretical principles? How may they 
cooperate in the use of the physical systems while establishing their 
political independence? Soviet administrative theory - the "scientific theory 
of socialism" as it was called - has been unable to provide even the most 
basic guidance for the process, and western administrative theory is not 
equipped to address the special problems of the new states. The insights of 
the neo-institutionalists can provide guidelines for these urgent problems. 
 
The Failure of Soviet 
 
Administrative Science 
 
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s in particular, Soviet society devoted immense 
resources to innumerable social science institutes and bureaus that analyzed 
such topics as the "scientific study of society," the "scientific organization 
of labor," and the "optimalization of economic functioning." Yet Soviet 
administrative science was unable to leave anything in the way of a 
theoretical legacy. Scholars in the former Soviet lands find this disturbing, 
although western scholars, who rejected the conceptual underpinnings of Soviet 
administrative theory, are less surprised. Gripped by centrist ideology, the 
Soviet academies could hardly be expected to design decentralized institutions 
and administrative strategies. 
 
More disturbing, however, is the realization that western scholars cannot 
provide useful guidelines for the organizational changes. The rapidity of the 
changes is partly to blame. Some of the blame may be attributed to the fact 
that western theoretical constructs that should have wide applicability - 
market theory and comparative administration, in particular - have not been 
developed with sufficient generality to address the scope of the changes 
introduced by the fall of totalitarian governments. Finally, western scholars 
have failed to recognize the situation as a problem of decolonization. 
 
On a practical level, the need to define new structures is urgent. The 
withdrawal of centralized control from Moscow has left the new countries with 
interruption of commercial relations, a breakdown in communication and 
transportation, and an enormous environmental rectification burden. The aged 
Soviet physical infrastructure is incapable of supporting the competitive 
entrance of many industrial and agricultural sectors into the world market. 
 
Attempts to apply market theory in the new states provide a good illustration 
of the difficulties. "Privatization" and "transition to the market" are 
offered as the solutions to the successor states' problems. In comprehending 
the dynamics of these processes in the post-Soviet context, analysts tend to 
rely upon the basic models of the privatization and decentralization processes 
in western contexts (Bennett 1990; Cameron 1990; DeAlessi 1987; Fallenbuchl 
and Fallenbuchl 1990; Heald 1990; Ohashi and Roth 1990; V. Ostrom 1976; Pirie 
1985; Pryor 1991; Savas 1987; Schroeder 1988). Consequently, analysts speak in 
terms of "restoring" property rights and "returning" to the natural 
administrative boundaries that predated the Soviet collectivist experiment. 
However, the post-soviet context is very different. In most of the newly 
independent states, the political and administrative borders are artificial 
products of the Soviet period. Private property arrangements have been 
disrupted for more than a century, first by Russian colonialism and then by 70 
years of Soviet-style socialism. Indeed, in many areas there is no historical 
record at all of private property rights in water and agricultural land. In 
most areas, geophysical and cadastral surveys of the land do not exist and may 
never have existed. How can such land be privatized and deeded when there is 
no way to describe the property legally? 
 
In sum, the post-soviet countries face the intersection of profoundly 
theoretical questions about defining the institutions of their future - 
questions that would seem to require careful reflection-and the urgent 
necessity to act quickly. At present, the process of institutional redesign is 
neither theoretical reflection nor pragmatic administration. The process is 
being guided by politics. 
 
Decolonization 
 
Post-Soviet Style 
 
During the final year of the Soviet government, theoretical proposals for 
political reform dominated public attention. Concepts of federal reform vied 
with concepts of "refederalization", "confederalization," and 
"defederalization." At the close of 1991, the leaders of 11 Soviet Socialist 
republics created a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). This new group 
was ambiguous from its very inception: the founding document (the Alma-Ata 
Declaration of December 21, 1991) declared the CIS to be "neither a government 
nor a supra-governmental organization." It seemed more an expression of 
goodwill, or perhaps the final piton before the successor states could scale 
an unfamiliar rock face. 
 
Each of the successor states received diplomatic recognition from major world 
powers and joined the United Nations. Each of the states has actively sought 
cooperative assistance from international organizations such as the 
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And each of the states pledged 
to uphold international standards of conduct such as the principles of the 
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). 
 
Yet, there is great uncertainty associated with the futures of these states. 
Consider only the new states of Central Asia. All of these countries were 
created during the Soviet period; none of these states existed as independent 
entities prior to 1917. All are subject to strong centrifugal ethnic, 
subnational, and religious pressures. All are linked by religious, cultural, 
and linguistic bonds to countries beyond the former Soviet borders. And all 
face delicate and dangerous relations with their neighbors over issues of 
border security, trade relations, and transboundary resources such as water. 
The parallels here with the decolonization of Africa earlier in the century 
are striking. 
 
Decolonization was one of the most significant global political events of this 
century. The "decade of decolonization" began as African states were 
integrated into the international community. In 1956, the Sudan, Tunisia, 
Morocco, and the Gold Coast (Ghana) won independence. Guinea followed two 
years later. In 1960, the French attempt to establish a commonwealth similar 
to the British Commonwealth faltered. More than a dozen former colonies 
rapidly became independent. In all, 47 nation states emerged from the former 
empires. 
 
If this decolonization process is adopted as the model for the new states of 
Central Asia, it is clear that some of the patterns are similar, some 
different. As in many decolonized areas, the national boundaries of the 
Central Asian states are artificial structures, adopted primarily for the 
convenience of the metropole, but no pre-existing national identities were 
associated with these states. As in many decolonizing areas, there were 
nationalist movements stirring, but political opposition was not the key to 
change, and no powerful, charismatic, heroic leaders were swept into power 
with a moral mandate. Like most decolonizing areas, there was a stratum of 
metropolitan settlers in privileged positions, but those privileges were not 
associated with private property and did not offer any advantages after 
independence. Like most cases of decolonization, the metropole had grown 
reliant, if not dependent, on a flow of raw materials from the colonies, but 
Moscow had also extended its basic physical infrastructure of communication, 
energy, transportation, and scientific research to these areas in such a way 
that both the center and the periphery were vulnerable to dislocations. 
 
One of the most compelling examples of the dislocation of government 
institutions is the political fragmentation of the highly centralized water 
management system in the states of the former Soviet southern tier, Central 
Asia.(1) Now that the individual Central Asian states have sovereignty over 
their natural resources, they find themselves at odds with one another in a 
way that they never experienced while they were tributary states of the USSR. 
 
Central Asia's two main river systems, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, 
irrigate roughly 75% of Central Asia's agriculture. Each of these rivers flows 
through three of the five Central Asian states.(2) Due to agricultural draws, 
the inflow to the Aral Sea from the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers fell to 
near zero by 1982; the desiccation of the Aral Sea threatens the local economy 
and the ecology of the entire Aral Sea basin, and it may have 
hydrometeorological effects on a global scale (Micklin 1991). As long as the 
Central Asian irrigation system was under the control of Moscow, it continued 
to function without overt conflict among appropriators. With the transition to 
political independence, conflicts that were previously resolvable by fiat from 
Moscow became international transboundary conflicts. 
 
Water management is not the only issue generating conflict between the 
successor states. They also find themselves arrayed antagonistically in terms 
of trade, security, and the allocation of other natural resources. These 
pressures result in greater demands on the new capitals to solve pressing 
problems. This tends to strengthen the "hard shell" of each of the new nation 
states, turning them to a dangerous form of self-reliance when most nations 
are moving toward interdependence. 
 
Decentralization: In Search of 
 
Institutional Equilibria 
 
It is clear that the centralized economy controlled by Moscow has vanished and 
that replacement institutions must be either salvaged from the old or created 
with new ideas and structures. The colonial approach used by the Soviet 
government did not encourage indigenous management regimes and the 
Soviet-style bureaucratic institutions are entrenched in the new governments 
of the borderlands. The successor states are eagerly embracing market 
solutions, although they have an imperfect understanding of markets and 
private property institutions. The level of decision making has moved out of 
Moscow and into the new capitals. The central question now is: once 
decentralization has started, how far should it proceed? Accepting market 
solutions and private property institutions as defining optimal equilibria 
fails to give any direction in deciding the optimal level for decision making. 
The search for solutions to these questions requires a return to the logical 
primitives of neo-classical and neo-institutional economics: market theory and 
hierarchy theory. 
 
Theoretical economists have emphasized the collective action trap encountered 
by collectivist societies because of a disjunction between ownership and 
incentives (Coase 1937; Olson 1965; Demsetz 1967; Alchian and Demsetz 1973; 
Axelrod 1981). They have explored the theoretical relationships between 
collective management institutions and the phenomena of free-riding, shirking, 
opportunism, and risk-avoidance (Moe 1984; Eggertsson 1990; North 1990). 
Recent re-analysis of the returns from the Soviet experiment of these past 
seven decades has provided convincing empirical evidence for these economists' 
theoretical conclusions: in the Soviet Union, the attempt to transfer all 
categories of property into the category of "public" property led to massive 
problems of free-riding and opportunistic behavior and, eventually, to 
resource exhaustion on a scale far surpassing that of societies recognizing 
private property conventions (Kaminski 1992; Kornai 1992). 
 
More recent work in the neo-institutional tradition has led to theoretical 
breakthroughs regarding the complex interplay of institutional design and 
individual incentives (E. Ostrom 1986). Ostrom's empirical studies have 
documented how cooperation may emerge on a local level in some political 
subsystems while not in other parallel systems, without respect to the scale 
of the system or other external variables (E. Ostrom 1990). She argues that 
the specific set of decision rules (how the problems of opportunism and free 
riding are addressed) determine whether a particular institutional 
configuration leads to optimal outcomes, concluding that self-government 
depends not upon a specific structural configuration but rather upon the 
appropriateness of the rules in use. Types of durable, self-governing 
political organizations may vary widely; nonetheless, the use rules of the 
resource system are not merely important, they are the essence of the system. 
 
Even once the dilemmas of collective action are clearly recognized and the 
importance of institutional design in solving the dilemmas is accepted, there 
is still the question of what principles should guide institutional 
re-designers. The boundaries of the authority of any particular level of 
government should be decided with respect to the contributors and 
beneficiaries of a good or service. The problem is two-fold: what level of 
institution most completely captures the maximum number of providers and 
beneficiaries, and what level of institution is most efficient in the 
administration of the provision of goods and services? Two principles guide 
the definition of these groups: fiscal equivalence and fiscal accountability. 
 
The principle of fiscal equivalence maintains that there is a need for a 
governmental institution (agency, body, committee, commission, collective, 
boss, and so on) for every collective good with a unique boundary, so that 
there can be a match between those who receive the benefits of a collective 
good and those who pay for it (Olson 1969). For example, the Central Asian 
irrigation systems benefit cultivators in all of the new states; the principle 
of fiscal equivalence suggests that the institution that governs the 
allocation of irrigation water should be regional and transnational. Such an 
institution would be able to monitor water use throughout the river basins and 
could assess fees appropriately, without primary regard for the nationality of 
the users (Buck and Gleason 1993). Any lower level of institution would 
exclude some beneficiaries from the management institution, leading to some of 
the compliance problems of commitment, monitoring, sanctioning, and conflict 
resolution identified by Ostrom (E. Ostrom 1990). 
 
The second postulate, fiscal accountability, states that only those who pay 
for a good should benefit from it and only those who benefit should be 
required to pay: free riding and spillovers are unacceptable on principled 
grounds as well as economic ones. Adherence to fiscal accountability may be 
relaxed in favor of redistributive policies, but even when it is suspended, 
benefits should be proportional to payments. Thus institutions must be 
established at the level that captures jurisdiction over the costs of 
provision and the reception of benefits. In Central Asia, for example, the 
benefits of irrigation have widespread economic implications throughout the 
economies of all the new states. Management institutions constructed at a 
purely national level would not adjust to the costs and benefits in 
neighboring economies. The costs of misapplication of pesticides would be 
borne by downstream water users, and the rewards for water conservation would 
be dispersed to other sectors of the economy, for example, by increasing the 
amount of water available for new housing construction or industrial 
development. With a regional management institution, these costs and rewards 
could be adjusted across borders. 
 
Clearly, these two principles are complementary. By defining a unique boundary 
for the good or service, the principle of fiscal accountability sets the 
parameters of the management institution as small and as low in the hierarchy 
as possible. By directing our attention to the possible inefficiencies caused 
by externalities, the principle of fiscal equivalence encourages the designers 
to cast their institutional nets more widely. The balance between the two is a 
matter of judgment, but deliberate consideration of both principles fosters 
enhanced institutional designs. 
 
As the public and private institutions of the post-soviet world are 
reconfigured, the prominence of local politics in determining who decides 
what, when, and how may not necessarily be bad. Recent empirical analysis of 
Third World public and private interaction has offered strong arguments that 
local politics may determine the outlines of local government more efficiently 
than centrally driven campaigns (de Soto 1989). The failure of the 
collectivist experiment in Russia and its borderlands is a lesson of 
importance for theoreticians and practitioners alike. Any analyst who truly 
seeks to understand institutions, hierarchy, and collective forms of 
management cannot afford to ignore it. 
 
Notes 
 
(*) This article draws upon a larger research project on natural resource 
policies within the newly independent states. Support for this research was 
provided by grants from the National Science Foundation (#SES-914766) and the 
National Council on Soviet and Past European Research (#806-13). (1.) It is 
traditional to speak of the southern tier republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, 
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as the core Central Asian republics. Many sources 
include the southern veliatlar (formerly oblasts) of Kazakhstan in Central 
Asia as well. Contemporary common usage in the new CIS states, however, 
includes Kazakhstan as a whole in Central Asia. (2.) The Amu Darya flows from 
Afghanistan through Tajikistan, through Uzbekistan, into Turkmenistan, back 
into Uzebkistan, and then into Karakalpakstan before reaching the Aral Sea. 
The Syr Darya flows from Kyrgyzstan and parts of China into Uzbekistan and 
then into Kazakhstan. 
 
References 
 
Alchian, A., and H. Demsetz. 1973. "The Property Right Paradigm." Journal of 
Economic History 33:16-27. Axelrod, R. 1981. The Evolution of Cooperation. New 
York: Basic Books. Bennett, Robert, ed. 1990. Decentralization, Local 
Governments, and Markets. Oxford: Clarendon. Buck, Susan J., and Gregory W. 
Gleason. 1993. "The |Institutional Imperative': Resolving Transboundary Water 
Conflict in Arid Agricultural Regions of the US and CIS." Natural Resources 
Journal (forthcoming in October). de Soto, Hernando. 1989. The Other Path: The 
Invisible Revolution in the Third World. New York: Harper and Row. Cameron, 
Rob. 1990. "Decentralization: A Framework for Analysis." Politikon 17: 39-50. 
Coase, R. H. 1937. "The Nature of the Firm." Econometrica 4:386-405. DeAlessi, 
L. 1987. "Property Rights and Privatization: Prospects for Privatization." 
Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 36:24-35. Demsetz, Harold. 
1967. "Toward a Theory of Property Rights." American Economic Review 
57:347-59. Eggertsson, Thrainn. 1990. Economic Behavior and Institutions. New 
York: Cambridge University Press. Fallenbuchl, Adam, and Zbigniew Fallenbuchl. 
1990. "Privatization and Marketization in Poland." Studies in Comparative 
Communism 23:349-54. Heald, David. 1990. "The Relevance of Privatization to 
Developing Economies." Public Administration and Development 10:3-18. 
Kaminski, Antoni. 1992. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes: Design, 
Function, and Breakdown. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies 
Press. Kornai, Janos. 1992. The Socialist State: The Political Economy of 
Communism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Micklin, Philip P. 1991. The 
Water Management Crisis in Soviet Central Asia. The Carl Beck Papers No. 905. 
University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian and East European Studies. Moe, 
Terry. 1984. "The New Economics of Organization." American Journal of 
Political Science 28:739-77. North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, 
Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University 
Press. Ohashi, T. M., and T. P. Roth. 1980. Privalization Theory and Practice. 
Vancouver, BC: Fraser Institute. Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective 
Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Olson, Mancur. 1969. "The 
Principles of |Fiscal Equivalence': The Division of Responsibilities Among 
Different Levels of Government." American Economic Review 59: 479-87. Ostrom, 
Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for 
Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ostrom, Elinor. 
1986. "An Agenda for the Study of Institutions." Public Choice 48: 3-25. 
Ostrom, Vincent. 1976. "The Contemporary Debate over Centralization and 
Decentralization." Publius 6:21-32. Pirie, Madsen. 1985. Dismantling the 
State: The Theory and Practice of Privatization. Dallas: National Center for 
Policy Analysis. Pryor, Frederic L. 1991. "When Is Collectivization 
Reversible?" Studies in Comparative Communism 24:3-24. Savas, Emmanuel S. 
1987. Privatization: The Key to Better Government. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House 
Publishers. Schroeder, Gertrude E. 1988. "Property Rights Issues in Economic 
Reforms in Socialist Countries." Studies in Comparative Communism 21:175-88. 
 
About the Authors 
 
Gregory W. Gleason 
 
Gregory W. Gleason is an associate professor of political science at the 
University of New Mexico. He has written extensively on policy issues in 
Central Asia. He is the author of Federalism and Nationalism: The Struggle for 
Republican Rights in the USSR (Westview 1990) and Central Asian States: Common 
Sovereignty in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan 
(Westview, forthcoming). 
 
Susan J. Buck 
 
Susan J. Buck is an associate professor of political science at the University 
of North Carolina at Greensboro, specializing in environmental policy and law. 
Her research is focused on management of common pool resource systems. She is 
the author of Understanding Environmental Administration and Law (Island 1991) 
and The Global Commons. Their Legal and Political History (University of South 
Carolina Press, forthcoming).