Continuity of Clan Politics: An Agent-Based Approach

Abstract

Post-Soviet central Asian states initially diverged into a variety of different regimes. Kyrgyzstan experimented with democracy, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan established authoritarian regimes, while Tajikistan succumbed to civil war. Regardless what particular form their government took or whether a stable regime formed or not, each political system contains an underlying clan structure which shapes politics. Clans appear to be a form of cooperation which is long-term stable. Social trust is one mechanism which has been used to understand societal cooperation. It is not clear if social trust can be linked to the development or stability of clan politics. In this paper I use agent-based modeling to explore whether a set of basic social trust assumptions will lead to stable clan interactions or whether a pervasive social trust prevents the development of clans. Individual actors are found to prefer placing their trust in a single clan even when conditions support a more general social trust and when there are no benefits to interacting with one's own clan. The model results in a stable system where each actor places trust in only one clan even when the model's parameters are varied extensively. A complexity-based view of social trust provides a basis for understanding the stability of clan politics and its future course. Political institutions and formal politics may not be effective in limiting the influence of clans. Since clans have their roots in informal behaviors it is societal change, not formal political change, which may challenge clan politics.