Book Review: Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia by Kathleen Collins,

In recent years, two schools of thought have shaped scholarly debate concerning the political development of Central Asia. The first, characterised by a new institutionalist perspective, is that regional identities (oblast and raion) shaped by formal Soviet institutional legacies are a primary factor driving the state building process in Central Asia (Jones Luong, 2002). The second, emphasising a more traditionalist outlook, argues that informal pre-soviet identities are shaping political outcomes (Schatz, 2005). Kathleen Collins book builds and expands on the latter arguing that rather than formal Soviet legacies shaping the developmental trajectories of post-Soviet transition in Central Asia, it is rather the hegemony of ‘clan politics’, an extensive network of kin and fictive kinship relations, that is the dominant social and political force