Research

The Variety of Democracy Institute’s Regional Center for Central Asia was founded in October 2016 at the American University of Central Asia to explore the dynamics of regime change and post-soviet transformation in Central Asia and other parts of the post-Soviet space. Its activities are aimed to support and advance scholarship in this area through collaborative research projects. The center chiefly seeks to examine political regime dynamics and political transformation of the region through research and organizing academic conferences, workshops, roundtables, summer schools, and public events. More information about V-Dem is available HERE.

In 2020, the department has undertaken systematic research on dominant electoral and discursive strategies deployed by contending parties during the campaigning period leading up to the parliamentary election of October 04, 2020. The overall analysis indicated that parties continue employing a varying configuration of electoral clientelistic strategies and established that the proclivity amongst parties for large-scale vote-buying practices, unseen in previous electoral cycles, could be potentially explained with a close association of ‘vote-buying’ parties with the ruling regime. The tendency to buy votes also seems to be reinforced by the party strategy to recruit prominent politicians possessing considerable political and financial resources and capable of distributing patronage benefits. 

For more details, please check the following website: www.election.kg.