After the Break-up: Institutional Design in Transitional States

This article integrates historical and rational choice approaches to institutional origin and change to explain the establishment of electoral systems in three former Soviet Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. It argues that institutions designed under transitional circumstances are products of the interaction between the preceding historical and institutional setting and the dynamic uncertainty that surrounds them. Strategic actors engaged in the process of institutional design use both contexts in order to assess the degree to and direction in which their relative power is changing. They then negotiate accordingly so as to attain their preferred institutional outcomes. Central Asia's electoral systems in particular can be best understood as the product of very similar and long-standing regional power struggles being played out under varying dynamic and uncertain conditions.