ROUNDTABLE: An exploration of the nature of informal economies and shadow practices in the former USSR region focusing on Kyrgyzstan
Hosted by: Dr Ainoura Sagynbaeva On June 18, SIAR research & consulting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan hosted a roundtable on the topic “An exploration of the nature of informal economies and shadow practices in the former USSR region. The example of Kyrgyzstan”. A roundtable was organized to discuss preliminary results of a quantitative research on the sizes of shadow economy in Kyrgyzstan. The study was conducted in the framework of the “SHADOW”project with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (MSCA-RISE-2017) and theHorizon 2020 program of the European Union (Horizon 2020: EU .1.3.3). The event commenced with presentations of the research project held in Baltic countries and the research conducted in Kyrgyzstan in March 2019. Ainoura Sagynbaeva, PhD, director of SIAR research and consulting and project manager of the research project “The sizes of shadow economy in Kyrgyzstan”, gave an opening speech and moderated discussion. Liga Rudzite, invited researcher from Dublin City University, presented the results of the research done in the Baltic countries (Sauka & Putnins, 2018). Aichurok Ybyraimova, project assistant at SIAR research and consulting, presented the methodology of the quantitative research project, while Ekaterina Mokrousova, analyst at SIAR research and consulting, presented preliminary results of it. The results were based on the survey filled out using CATI method by 502 registered small, medium and large businesses. According to preliminary results, the approximate level of the shadow economy in Kyrgyzstan is 29.8%. The research project consists of three mutual steps. The first step is a quantitative survey performed in Kyrgyzstan in March. The second is in-depth expert interviews and the third is case studies to be conducted as part of the “SHADOW”project. Eighteen invited guests took part in the roundtable discussion including journalists, experts, researchers, university professors and representatives of international donors. The roundtable participants expressed interest in the international research project, discussed the project methodology and outlined possible cooperation after the presentation of the final research results at the end of 2019. The intentions to host joint conferences, roundtables in a number of universities in Bishkek were expressed from the participants. Article posted on the SIAR research and consulting website: http://siar-consult.com/en/news/kruglyj-stol-siar-tenevaya-ekonomika/ References to articles of local media: https://economist.kg/2019/06/18/ozvuchena-nezavisimaya-ocenka-tenevoj-ekonomiki-kyrgyzstana-29-8/ https://www.akchabar.kg/ru/news/38-biznesmenov-schitayut-uklonenie-ot-nalogov-normalnym/ http://vecherka.kg/2019/06/21/podrob/1.html
Read more
Shadow Economy in Ukraine: A Sociological Perspective (Dublin City University)
Presenter: Roman Sigov Summary The economy of every country in the world has an informal dimension. According to various studies, Ukraine has one of the largest shadow economies in European and even worldwide contexts. What are the reasons for that?
Read more
Urban transformations in Central Asia: formal and informal power and resistance (Bishkek American University of Central Asia)
Moderator: Liga Rudzite Summary This 2 day practical interdisciplinary practical workshop offered theoretical and methodological knowledge and tools for studying and understanding the nature and relationship between the formal and the informal practices in a city, as well as gave a practical opportunity to observe and critically discuss these practices as they shape and are shaped by the political and economic context of Bishkek. The workshop was aimed at practising the art of noticing of power relations in a city through a participatory knowledge creation on the ways in which inhabitants of Bishkek conform, resist, and negotiate the power relationships through the formal and informal use and transformation of urban space. Theoretical Framework Contemporary urban space is formed by power relations between its inhabitants and both state and non-state actors (Therborn 2018). The public space is organized by dominating and competing political, ideological and economic practices and symbols (Lefebvre 1991). Political and economic actors strive to acquire and maintain power through establishing particular social orders through tools such as privatization and appropriation of space (e.g. private land, shopping malls, petty trading, billboards, new housing estates), regulation of space and the activities that take place in particular spaces (e.g. markets, roads, parks and green zones), creation and dismantling of ideological and moral spaces (e.g. parks and memorials, cemeteries, nightlife joints), and exclusion through unequal access to resources and services (e.g. housing, transportation, sanitation, waste management). Often, these are done with little involvement of inhabitants in decision-making. However, city dwellers learn both formally and informally to negotiate these spatial power relations and undertake everyday practices which subvert and/or resist the ways in which state and non-state actors construct and develop contemporary urban space (deCerteau 1984). In doing so, citizens are able to counter practices of exclusion, privatization and ideologicalisation of the public space (Hou and Knierbein 2017). Noticing the formal and informal practices of conformity, resistance, contestation, and communication in urban spaces can provide insights into the particular power dynamics and, through that, illuminate possible pathways for change and transformation (Tsing 2015).
Read moreNetworks, informality, and corruption: how to parse Central Asian governance (SOAS/University of London)
Speakers: Prof Alena Ledeneva (UCL-SSEES) Dr Abel Polese (Dublin City U, Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction) Scott Newton (SOAS Law) Summary Three decades after the collapse of the USSR, the allied discourses/paradigms of transition and democratisation have run out of steam, analytic force, and explanatory value in accounting for the observed changes in Central Asian states and societies, along with broadly parallel changes in their post-Soviet cousins. The celebration of ‘colour revolutions’ (Orange, Rose, Tulip) has receded into embarrassed or puzzled silence. In the view of most informed students of the region (and Eurasian space more generally), a novel and distinctive profile of governance has emerged and become consolidated, which exhibits significant points of continuity but of rupture as well with Soviet governance. The rise of so-called patronal politics or systems (in the coinage of Henry Hale) has little to do with ‘liberal market democracy’ as an ideal-type and is instead predicated on the central role of informal, organised networks of patronage and loyalty. Network or patronal systems thoroughly blur the boundaries between the public and the private, the political and the economic, the formal and the informal, the legitimate and the corrupt. Central Asian governing networks, typically organised in a pyramidal fashion with an apex leader (usually holding the chief executive office of President) and a complex, nested set of subordinate patron-client ties, exercise the real governing power by means of securing and occupying the bureaucratic posts and political offices comprising formal public authority, and then regulating access to it and directing its operation. Only in recent years have the specific characteristics and dynamics (and they are very dynamic, notwithstanding the apparent stasis) of these systems come to be appreciated by scholars as forming a pattern or type and to be subjected to investigation and analysis. Three expert panellists with differing albeit complementary disciplinary perspectives (politics, economics, and law), wide experience in the region, and deep knowledge of informal practices and patterns will explore the ramifications of Central Asian governing networks, in the interests of deepening our understanding both of post-Soviet Central Asia and of contemporary informal governance.
Read more
Recent Comments