From Leninism to Karimovism: Hegemony, Ideology, and Authoritarian Legitimation Andrew F. March1

Abstract: A political theorist examines the way in which President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan has attempted to legitimate authoritarian rule since the transition from communism. A comparison is made between late-Soviet modes of authoritarian legitimation and those of the Karimov regime, and the success of the project at the conceptual level is examined. The article closes with a consideration of the implications of this study for evaluating Juan J. Linz’s classical thesis on the relationship between authoritarianism and ideology and some general propositions on the structure of authoritarian legitimation.

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t has been over a decade since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, yet many of the countries in this space have persisted as authoritarian regimes with little or no democratic interlude. While this phenomenon is central to many studies of post-communist democratization, there has been very little research comparing the modes of authoritarian legitimation in these cases with those of the ancien régime. Studying the justification of authoritarianism through state rhetoric and ideology offers a reliable glimpse into the assumptions made by these regimes about the relative appeals of democratic and non-democratic modes of governance for their subjects. Close examination of the rhetoric and ideas behind such regimes is also helpful for understanding the challenges facing democracy in such societies. Furthermore, an accurate understanding of authoritarian ideology helps to identify the pockets of authoritarianism present even in democratic societies and lends sensitivity toward authoritarian appeals by democratic politicians. 1

Lecturer in Politics at Hertford College, University of Oxford (e-mail: andrew.march@ st-johns.oxford.ac.uk).

307 Post-Soviet Affairs, 2003, 19, 4, pp. 307–336. Copyright © 2003 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

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This article explores such a comparison using the case of post-Soviet Uzbekistan under President Islam Karimov, where the regime has engaged in a systematic, formal, and self-conscious campaign to formulate, transmit, and impose a new “national ideology” as a means of legitimation. The ideology has been elaborated over the entire period of independence in a corpus of texts published both under the president’s name and by “court intellectuals” from the fields of political science, philosophy, economics, religion, law, literature, and art. The main canon of Karimov’s works, published in a series of numbered tomes reminiscent of the “Works of Lenin,” are required reading throughout all levels of education in Uzbekistan and are heavily propagated through mass media, state institutions, cultural associations, and organs of local administration. It is clear that the “Ideology of National Independence,” as Karimov has dubbed it, enjoys state status and is designed to replace Marxism-Leninism as the ideological underpinning of the state. As this article will demonstrate, however, it retains striking structural similarities to Soviet modes of legitimation.

UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL LEGITIMATION Every political order asserts through various means and forms of communication its own authority and legitimacy, or its right to rule and the duty of its citizens to obey. There are myriad arguments in favor of democracy and, conversely, in favor of non-democratic systems of rule. Such explicit arguments constitute normative legitimation of political systems in that they appeal directly to values widely held, or thought to be held, in the respective societies. Normative arguments are very important in legitimating political systems, particularly for intellectuals and highly politicized groups. They are not, however, the only mode of legitimation. In addition to explicit arguments or appeals to reason, legitimation also takes the form of assertions about reality: that present political norms or arrangements are natural, inevitable, and commonsensical, not controversial enough to merit explicit arguments in their defense. This hegemonic mode of legitimation seeks not to argue in favor of a political order but to assert the existence of a nationalpopular consensus around a given conception of the state and a given understanding of the content of the political. The rhetorical strategy behind this mode of legitimation is to treat rival conceptions of the socio-political order not as undesirable, but as unthinkable (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 275–276; Lustick, 1999, p. 333). Every political order, democratic or authoritarian, seeks to establish such ideological hegemony about a certain range of political matters. We might say that each political order is constituted by a political sphere and a pre-political sphere. By the latter we mean the minimum consensus surrounding the governing of a society the acceptance of which is incumbent upon any individual or group wishing to be politically active. These are a set of assumptions, or givens, generally not considered a matter of legitimate political disputation. Rather, these assumptions serve to struc-

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ture and constrain political activity; when they are expressly called into question we may speak of a legitimation crisis. The sphere of the political, by contrast, is the sphere of contestation, in which no mandatory binding consensus relating to the goals, preferences, or beliefs political actors may pursue is pre-imposed by the state. In a liberal democracy, legitimacy (ideological hegemony) is generally sought in relation to the borders of the state, the definition of the political community, and the proper procedures for political decision making. The constitution of a democratic state is the quintessential embodiment of a pre-political consensus: it defines the terms of social cooperation and the boundaries beyond which a democratic political decision may not cross, for the rights of citizens in a democracy have been deemed a pre-political “given.” That is, an agreement on this score has been reached prior to the entry into politics, and about which even a democratic majority may not legitimately dissent. In this view, the difference between democracy and authoritarianism is a matter not only of how and by whom binding decisions are made in a state, but also of the relative size of these two spheres: the more that is relegated to the pre-political, the more that is not open to legitimate contestation, the more authoritarian the system; the more that is preserved for open political deliberation, the more democratic the system. Think of the Islamic Republic of Iran: however universal suffrage may be, however open certain political institutions, however vibrant political competition, we cannot call “democratic” a political system in which the pre-political consensus established and imposed by an elite class of guardians is so expansive and the range of issues left for open contestation so small. The approach to political legitimation adopted in this essay is thus to identify the political logic constructed by a ruling elite (the delineation of the pre-political and the political spheres) and the assertions of self-evidence, naturalness, and common sense that take the place of normative arguments in justifying that logic. My thesis is that the nature of authoritarian thought is to assert the existence of a wide-ranging, expansive, and extensive pre-political consensus that goes far beyond the procedural consensus of democratic constitutions. This pre-political consensus includes and takes off the political table virtually all important social and political issues, leaving for the actual political sphere relatively inconsequential matters or the problem of execution. The pre-political consensus at the heart of authoritarian regimes is supported by the proclamation of a common goal or purpose held by the entire political community and from which no loyal member of that community could possibly dissent. This teleological conception of politics is the true marker of authoritarian thought: the abrogation of procedure and politics can only be justified by a higher, common goal (the implementation of true Islamic law, the attainment of pure communism, the glory of the nation), and once such a goal is put at the center of the system it is inevitable that politics will be reduced to relatively minor squabbles over interpretation, implementation, or the spoils of power. Generally speaking, the structure of authoritarian thought

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is thus built around the following concepts: consensus (rather than consent), unity (rather than contestability), goal orientation (rather than procedure), and authenticity (rather than voice or representation).

“NATIONAL IDEOLOGY” AS PRE-POLITICAL CONSENSUS: AUTHORITARIAN LEGITIMATION IN POST-SOVIET UZBEKISTAN To paraphrase the above, all authoritarian ideology can be interpreted as an extended argument against “politics,” where the content of decisions, values, policies, and goals is the outcome of open procedures rather than the subject of pre-determination. The broad strategy of authoritarianism is to argue away the need for politics both by playing on fears of instability and inefficiency, which make politics seem dangerous, and by attempting to present a pre-determined socio-political outcome, which makes politics seem superfluous. Islam Karimov has, indeed, relied heavily on the type of crude appeals that point to the dangers of democracy. The following confession is characteristic and conveniently explicit: “I admit: perhaps in my actions there are signs of authoritarianism. But this I explain as follows: in certain periods of history, especially during the construction of statehood, strong executive power is necessary. It is necessary in order to avoid bloodshed and conflict, to preserve in the region inter-ethnic and civil harmony, peace, and stability, for which I am prepared to pay any price” (Karimov, 1996a, p. 135). It is significant that Karimov’s most heavily propagated text begins with almost 130 pages of description of the various “threats to stability” facing Uzbekistan and the region, including “regional conflicts, religious extremism and fundamentalism, great-power chauvinism and aggressive nationalism, ethnic and interethnic contradictions, corruption and criminality, regionalism and clans, and ecological problems” (Karimov, 1997). The “stability argument” for authoritarianism is thus grounded in immediate political contexts, and it follows that authoritarian legitimation often refers to its own transitory character. In this vein Karimov insists that “if I could impose democracy and the market on society with one command I would do it immediately. But how many years does it take to change the consciousness of people, to establish a harmonious and developed society of free, law-abiding citizens? How long did it take Germany, Great Britain, and France, beginning with the Revolution in 1789? Just what do you want from us?” (Karimov, 1996b, p. 127). However, while such consequentialist arguments for the abrogation of democracy may be the most accessible and widely understood by the population, Karimov also engages in a more subtle, sophisticated, and ambitious attempt to create a theory of the political and pre-political. Unlike the consequentialist appeals, which openly concede the non-democratic nature of the regime, this attempt denies that the regime is authoritarian and instead offers a covert legitimation of authoritarianism by

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presenting all significant political questions as the object of a pre-existing national consensus and thus implicitly obviating the need for democracy. In the case of Karimov’s Uzbekistan, this attempt takes the form of the elite formulation and propagation of the “Ideology of National Independence.” What is remarkable about this project is not so much that it offers a set of specific national goals toward which all social forces will be directed, but rather that it begins with an abstract discussion of “ideology” as such. This meta-discourse on ideology takes the form of a pseudotheoretical treatment of the nature and role of ideology in any society, which, without actually elaborating any specific tenets or doctrines of the “new ideology,” allows Karimov to develop an authoritarian political logic. In Karimov’s words, “it is natural that the state system, its operation and accompanying policies, should above all be constructed on the basis of a concretely formulated ideology” (Karimov, 2000, p. 451). What this statement asserts is that the political system as such, as well as everything that happens within it, is to be subordinated to the demands of ideology. What makes this conception uniquely authoritarian is that the ideology is meant to be extensive in its substantive political content, binding on the political system, and the product not of open deliberation but of prior elite formulation.2 Karimov’s defense of the primacy of “ideology” in a political system comprises four main interwoven theses, which I will term the “ideological immunity thesis,” the “reflection thesis,” the “unification thesis,” and “goal orientation.” The ideological immunity thesis rests on the foundational myth of the stability-craving Uzbek nation constantly beset by one alien ideological threat after another, from the Mongol invasion to Soviet domination, all preventing the expression of “authentic Uzbek national ideology.” Today, the transcendental alien threat is represented by the “Vakhabisty,” 3 who, “under the veil of religion, try to penetrate into Central Asia, including Uzbekistan” (Karimov, 1999, p. 84). This use of Islamophobia for the 2 See March (2002a), where I discuss the grounding of Karimov’s authority claims in the development and state imposition of the national ideology. Briefly, Karimov’s claim to authority is derived from the principle of “praktika” (praxis), or the practical experience of running the state. This claim not only is the ideal way to turn his communist past into a virtue but also is a self-reproducing claim: the very perpetuation of his rule gives him more experience and thus more of a legitimate claim to rule. In this article I also discuss the explicit claim of Karimov and his court intellectuals to the exclusive rights to formulate the national ideology, transmit it through state apparatuses, and impose it on the political system. For example, Karimov proclaims that “we must continue to provide concrete answers to the question, above all, of what kind of society we want to construct, how we imagine our future, and then it is necessary to unite people around these noble ideas” (Karimov, 2000, p. 452). Furthermore, not only are elite state actors entrusted with the formulation of the ideology, but their intellectual-spiritual product is to be fused with state institutions: “Just as it is in the economic sphere, the state is the main reformer in the spiritual sphere of life, raising up the best national qualities, and we should set up the respective legal foundations for the guidelines of spiritual development” (Karimov, 1995, p. 21). 3 “Vakhabisty” is the Russian term for “Wahhabi” and is the standard epithet for Islamists across the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

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purpose of legitimating a paternalistic conception of nationalism is characteristic: the Islamists are rejected as both alien (they “penetrate into” Uzbekistan) and self-serving and insincere (“under the veil” of religion). The alien ideological threat adores an ideological vacuum: “Without an ideology, man, society, and the state lose their pathmarks along their route. And wherever an ideological vacuum arises it will naturally be filled by another ideology” (Karimov, 1999, pp. 82–83). Karimov and his collaborators do not mean by “ideological vacuum” a condition of social anomie or dislocation where the individual finds himself uprooted and torn between traditional values and modern ones. They are referring to a breakdown in the dominant political order, where a multitude of ideological tendencies enjoy not only the cultural conditions but also the political circumstances to compete for adherents. This open ideological competition is an aberration, a vacuum to be filled by a new state ideology with a claim to hegemony, or what Karimov idiosyncratically refers to as “ideological immunity”: “In order to protect our people from various ideological threats, to formulate in society an ideological immunity, it is necessary to arm it with an authentically humanist ideology, comprising in itself a powerful impulse towards the spiritual uplifting of the nation” (National Society of Philosophers of Uzbekistan, 2001, p. 41). The authoritarian implications of this metaphor are obvious. First, we can anticipate that there will be only one such “authentically humanist ideology” eligible for selection, and that it will be one presented to the nation by a closed elite. Second, the allusion to alien ideologies as a type of disease creates the image of vulnerability, which in turn is a call for protection by the guardian regime. Finally, the medical metaphor invokes the language of science and objective knowledge: only certain experts have the authority to deal with disease threats, whether of a physical or ideological sort. It is not Karimov’s intent to elaborate or defend the content of the ideology that is supposed to provide such immunity. Rather, the purpose of this discourse is to avoid having to provide any such elaboration or defense at all. Instead, Karimov offers what I call the reflection thesis, best expressed by the following quote: “The ideology of our society, reflecting the vital interests of the simple man, who himself is the pillar of that society, must become a source of strength and energy for our people in the attainment of a peaceful, secure, prosperous, and stable life. The ideology must first reflect the spiritual particularity and uniqueness of the sacred traditions and aspirations of our nation, formulated over many centuries and millennia” (Karimov, 1999, p. 89). The basic argument of the reflection thesis is that a true national ideology ought to “reflect” or “express” the interests, nature, character, desires, policy-preferences, and culture of the organic nation rather than be instrumental in forming or transforming them. The rhetorical function of this thesis for the legitimation of authoritarianism is to mask the obvious determination of national interests, nature, character, desires, policy-preferences, and culture that the ideology inevitably performs and, thus, to present the ideology as uncontested,

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unproblematic, and uncontrived. Karimov wants it to seem as if he is performing the very modest and unambitious task of formulating an appropriate national program of action around the natural and manifest desires of the Uzbek people without any tinkering or contributions of his own, and by doing so he is attempting to reify the pattern of inclusion and exclusion that is formed by his “disinterested reflection.” It is an attempt to equate national culture with his own ideological project and thus make critique of the ideology akin to critique of the nation. The rhetorical effect of asserting abstractly that “a national ideology ought to reflect the nation” is the understanding that this national ideology has the exclusive claim to the national identity, that it is the nation in ideal form, or as one of Karimov’s court intellectuals at one point puts it, the “incarnation of the glorious values, aspirations and moral principles of its multi-national population” (Zhumayev, 1996, p. 158). The claim that his “Ideology of National Independence” is reflective of the uncoerced desires and values of the Uzbek nation allows Karimov to claim to fulfil a number of the expectations usually attached to democracy—namely, voice, agency, pluralism, and representation. The reflection thesis essentially asserts that the people are the actual authors of their own ideology on the grounds that it is representative of “what the people really want.” The authoritarian implications of the concept of representation used in this way are obvious. If democracy and pluralism can be characterized simply as the accurate and authentic expression of the people’s values, identities, and desires, then it is comparatively easy for the autocratic ruler to define representation in a way that equates it with the loyal and efficient pursuit of a common goal on the part of the regime. The reflection thesis can thus be understood as a social contract in which the promise of authenticity and loyalty compensates for the loss of procedure and contestability. Implicit in the reflection thesis is the assertion of national unity: there is one authentic and authoritative expression of national interests, values, and aspirations. Karimov is quite explicit in his attempt, first, to define the terms and scope of national unity in a way favorable to his regime and, second, to deny systematically the difference between national unity and political unity. This attempt is carried out through the unification thesis: “irrespective of the diversity of the existing views and life positions, aspirations, and hopes of the various social groups prevailing in our society and of the faith and convictions of our individual citizens, a single ideology is called upon to unite these groups and individuals around a single national banner and to secure the priority of the higher interests and goals of the nation and the state” (Karimov, 1999, p. 88). This task assigned to the ideology (and not to the human agents behind it, as if the ideology itself were a charismatic agent) assumes the “unity of the interests and values of the individual, society, and state,” that the ideology is primarily responsible for the “provision of the system-level comprehension and recognition of national interests” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, pp. 28, 34), and that “the process of strengthening independence and the search for one’s own path of renewal and progress are not possible without a single, all-national idea, an ideol-

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ogy of national independence, which is shown to be true by the experience of the world community and the praxis of the newly independent states” (Zhumayev, 1996, p. 171). In what is Karimov’s most direct and explicit attack on pluralist politics, he uses the call for unification to advance a distinction between his “national ideology” and opposition “political ideologies.” Invoking his earlier claim that a national ideology must be reflective of authentic desires and aspirations, he characterizes his project as the “integral formation of the ideological platforms of all parties and movements that base themselves on all-national ideas … the political symbol of the nation” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 24) and “a non-partisan and non-class social phenomenon, as a historically inevitable and objective act, called to reality by qualitatively new processes and tendencies” (Zhumayev, 1996, p. 149). In other words, Karimov wants to present the ideology as the common denominator of all political outcomes, while at the same time inoculating it from any criticism or opposition by using the myth of neutrality to remove it from the realm of the political and place it safely in the realm of the spiritual and symbolic.The authoritarian and hegemonic implications of these claims could not be clearer. The ideology is treated as special, true and indispensable. It is assigned tasks, such as the determination not only of national interest, but of the individual as well, which would normally belong in the realm of politics or would remain immune from state interference altogether. The treatment of the indefinite (a national ideology in any society) quickly becomes the definite (this national ideology, the Ideology of National Independence, in Uzbekistan), a rhetorical tactic that adds to the appearance of objectivity and disinterestedness. And most importantly, the clear implication is that this unity (“a single ideology,” “the unity of interests”) to be guaranteed by the state is to come at the expense of political differences that are the natural product of the “diversity of existing views and life positions, aspirations and hopes, faiths and convictions” that are expressly not to be considered (“irrespective”) in the process of ideological formulation. Politics in Uzbekistan thus becomes identical to the ideology, which is in reality a pre-political affair. An important rhetorical tool for these purposes is the inherently negative association attached to the word “politics.” Thus, as opposed to his own “national” ideology, “political ideologies” are defined as the expression of group or private interest, the bare will to power, the treatment of all others as either friends or enemies, the camouflaging of the lust for power as “national interest,” and the will to domination. The word “political” is often used in close association with terrorism, totalitarianism, and obscurantism. Political Islam, for example, is characterized as “spiritual totalitarianism”—an audacious way of saddling the Islamists with the legacy of the Soviet Union and not the regime that is its direct heir and successor. When the word “opposition” is used, it is almost always used in the same sentence as “radical” (as in “radical and opposition political forces”), as if to suggest that they are synonyms and that all opposition is by definition radical in this system. Compromise with them is out of the

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question almost as a matter of tautology: The political system is based in its totality on the ideology; since the opposition is defined as adhering to a competing ideology, it follows according to the political logic elaborated by Karimov that such opposition is to be excluded from politics totally. The keystone of the legitimation of authoritarianism through this discourse on ideology is goal orientation. Karimov and his collaborators are quite explicit in declaring that the strong goal orientation of their ideology is designed “to reduce all political processes to a common denominator” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 37). The logic of authoritarian political unity is only intelligible in relation to some collective good, the validity of which no political force can possibly deny. With his articulation of this teleological conception of politics, Karimov’s legitimation project reaches its fullest and most sophisticated elaboration. The articulation and advancement of the goal on behalf of the nation constitutes the essence of “ideology” in Karimov’s system, to such an extent that the goal and the nation are indistinguishable from the ideological articulation that fuses them into a single entity. The following quote from Karimov is perhaps the clearest and most succinct statement of the entire hegemonic aspiration of the ideological project and the link formed between the concepts of goal, state, nation, and regime through the concept of “ideology”: The goal is the distinct, unifying, directing banner of the nation. This banner is a force embodying the spirit and pride of the nation, its potential and aspirations. The goal of our state, with its grandeur and nobility, its justice and uprightness, should become a powerful stimulus capable of unifying nations and peoples and transform into a force and ideology overcoming everything. It will be an ideology established on the outlooks and mentality of the nation formed over millennia, determining the future of that nation, enabling it to take its distinguished place in the world community, and capable of becoming a stable bridge between past and future (Karimov, 1999, p. 87). The task of goal orientation thus begins with an organic theory of nation, state, and ideology. The nation is the collection of views, mentalities, and goals of a people given protection by a state. The state is the concrete geopolitical space that gives the imagined national interests and goals meaning. The ideology is the framing of interests, goals, and directions on the basis of a “scientific-philosophical foundation” in a way that validates the nation’s history and breathes meaning into the state. All three terms are defined like an M.C. Escher drawing, with the definition of one sliding into the next in such a way that none can be used meaningfully without reference to all three. The aim is clearly to make the claims to legitimacy tautological, necessarily true based on incontrovertible assertions about the union of nation, state, and ideology, underpinned by the teleological conception of the political.

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As will be discussed in the next section, the specific goals that are meant to provide the nation with its reason for being are rather generic. Karimov refers to “guaranteeing peace, the flourishing of the Homeland and the welfare of the people” (Karimov, 2000, p. 459), while one of his court intellectuals explains that “consolidation, integration, reforms, the renaissance of politically significant cultural-historical and spiritual values, are all directed towards the articulation of strategies of development” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 38). A secular nationalist has few choices in what types of goals to pursue, and Karimov offers no surprises: the state will be committed to the pursuit of development and national greatness while guaranteeing security and stability. The only thing unique is the long, drawn-out mystification of these banal goals through the discourse on “ideology.” The banality of “development” as a guiding telos, however, has a certain authoritarian utility. First, there is some justification in claiming that they are goals about which the entire nation agrees more or less spontaneously. Who is against “development”? His sleight of hand, of course, lies in the implication that since the nation is agreed about this most basic and ambiguous of goals there is no further need for competitive politics. Second, unlike playing on fears of war and instability (which require plausible threats and bogeymen), development is a positive goal that is not based on external threats, is comprehensive in the areas of politics it embraces, and, best of all, is open-ended. Merely relying on the fear of instability is, of course, a self-defeating tactic; if the heavy-handedness and repression one is trying to justify are too successful in removing threats, the dictator risks depriving himself of his own legitimation. However, there is always more development to be attained, more renaissance to be achieved, more prosperity to be handed out. The pursuit of development is a natural goal for a regime that legitimates itself largely through identification and the appeal to national pride. The promise of development is Karimov’s promise, displayed on countless billboards and walls throughout the country, of Uzbekistan as a “State with a Great Future.” We are told that Uzbekistan is a “great state” with “great possibilities,” heir to a “great past” (including the “Great Silk Road”), moving toward a “great goal,” and even that Uzbekistan with the advent of the President’s Cup will one day be a country of “great tennis.” Third, as seen in the case of the East Asian “soft authoritarian” regimes, development is a goal that lends itself nicely to enforcing political unity. Development is usually about economics, which is always held to be “above politics” (i.e., criticism), and easily translated into the language of expertise, special knowledge, and “efficiency,” which are all code words for guardianship, consolidation, and the elimination of dissent. “Developmentocracies” cultivate a culture of administration and implementation, rather than debate and competition. If there are “laws of development” to be found, energy not spent on their expert uncovering or execution is energy wasted. The rhetoric of development is a rhetoric of urgency;

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efficiency and progress toward an agreed goal are contrasted with “politics”: self-interested and wasteful obscurantism. This logic is succinctly and explicitly expressed by Karimov’s heavily propagated “Five Principles” of economic development and reform: (1) economics has priority over politics; (2) the state is the main reformer; (3) all reform must occur under the rule of law; (4) the state underlines the importance of strong social protection; (5) the transformation to a market economy must be thought out and gradual (Karimov, 1993, pp. 37–38). The treatment of “politics” as something dangerous and superfluous, the priority given to the state, the presumption of expert management of policy, and the paternalism inherent in these principles all exemplify the indirect and coded legitimation of authoritarianism that is necessary in an age of democratic expectations. The general strategy of authoritarian legitimation is thus is to define the entire state in relation to common goals, to define the goals and aspirations as virtually constitutive of the nation as such, and to equate the regime with the proper articulation and realization of those goals through the state apparatus. These circular definitions, woven together theoretically by the concept of “ideology,” ensure that the acceptance of one claim implies the acceptance of all of them and, more importantly, that opposition to one of the parts can be treated as opposition to all of them.

KARIMOVISM: NATIONALIST IN CONTENT BUT LENINIST IN FORM It is not possible here to treat properly all points of comparison between the Leninist and Karimovist modes of legitimation, including countless concepts, rituals, symbols, forms, and structures. I will point briefly to some of the more superficial parallels and then discuss the more important structural similarity, which I believe best illuminates Karimov’s project. Karimov’s modes of legitimation include many minor, or auxiliary, modes from the Soviet period, including the social contract of stability, social security, and increasing living standards in exchange for political obedience, which particularly characterized the Brezhnev period (see Cook, 1993, and Breslauer, 1978). Clearly this form of “eudaemonic” legitimation—legitimation in terms of “the political order’s performance, especially in the economic sphere” (Holmes, 1993)—plays a large part in Karimov’s communication with his subjects and is key to understanding the conservative and paternalist elements in both late Leninist and Karimovist legitimation. Countless similarities can also be found in the political cultures and languages of the two regimes, which should not be surprising given Karimov’s past. The use of bureaucracies and social institutions for the transmission of ideology,4 the emphasis on the leader’s special relationship

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to the state ideology, the state’s construction of mythological heroes as founders of the political community, the monist conception of politics, the vilification of enemies, the perpetual call to “vigilance and intransigence,”5 and the treatment of ideology as a singular phenomenon all point to Karimovism as “national in content but Leninist in form.” Replace proletariat with nation, Lenin with Tamerlane,6 the bourgeoisie and imperialism with “Vakhabisty” and “Great Power Hegemony,” dialectic materialism with pseudo-idealism, May 1 with September 1 (Independence Day) and one has a “new national ideology.” These superficial, and really ubiquitous, political practices are buttressed, however, by a much deeper structural similarity between the two systems. The most important structural similarity shared by the two systems is their teleological mode of legitimation. T. H. Rigby convincingly argued that the “predominant orientation of [the Soviet] command structures is toward goal-achievement, rather than toward the application of rules, [thus] the legitimacy claimed for the commands issuing from this system is framed in terms of ‘goal-rationality’ rather than the formal-legal rationality of Western ‘capitalist’ systems” (Rigby, 1982, p. 10). The goal that 4

Consistent with Karimov’s claim to monopolize ideological formulation and inscribe it in state institutions, he has made the teaching of the “Ideology of National Independence” (essentially his collected works) mandatory throughout all levels of education and has established a number of state institutions, including the Manaviat va Marifat (“Spirituality and Enlightenment”) and Kamolot (“Perfection”) centers, with branches down to the mahalla (traditional neighborhood) level, where Karimov’s publications are distributed and “ideological education” classes are organized; see March (2002a). 5 Vladimir Tismaneanu (1998) has argued that the “Jacobin-Leninist logic of vigilance and intransigence” was a general characteristic of Communist political culture throughout the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and has been in evidence in post-communist neofascist and ethno-nationalist authoritarian movements and regimes since the fall of communism . Note the Karimovist diagnosis of the problem of Islamic fundamentalism and its cure: “Today, when humanity has entered the 21st century, religious fanaticism and extremism represent an anti-humanist social evil threatening peace and progress on Earth. Consequently, the necessity of being ready for battle with them, of being ever vigilant, becomes an important imposition of the times” (National Society of Philosophers, 2001, p. 11). 6 The cult of Tamerlane has been one of the centerpieces of post-Soviet Uzbek official nationalism. His rehabilitation after years of historiographical ignominy under the Soviets has involved the construction of statues and monuments in the most prominent square of Tashkent (literally on the space where Lenin once stood) as well as other Uzbek cities, the display of his likeness in public space, and the construction of a museum in Tashkent honoring him and his descendants in the blue-domed style of Timurid architecture. The construction of this cult around the memory of Tamerlane is key to understanding Karimov’s self-legitimation. Its role goes beyond the substantive lessons that Karimov can draw from Tamerlane’s own acts and writings (i.e., the emphasis on national glory, statehood, autocratic leadership, and Uzbek regional dominance); there is something in the very act of celebrating Tamerlane that is itself a mode of legitimation for the regime: “The name of Amir Temur was blacked out from the pages of our history in an attempt to bury him in oblivion. The goal was to remove the national consciousness from the soul of the people so that it might lose its sense of national pride and reconcile itself to its dependence and subordination. Our people, trapped for so many years in the clutches of the colonial vice, are no longer deprived of the opportunity to honor our great compatriot and render to him his historical due” (Karimov, 1996c, p. 344); see March (2002b).

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legitimated Soviet domination was the end-state of pure communism; in Karimov’s system it is national development and greatness. While the concepts of development and greatness were present in Soviet political discourse as tools of legitimation,7 and there is thus a substantive conceptual overlap between Karimovism and Leninism also in this, the concepts do not occupy the same structural positions in the two systems. Modernization, development, and national greatness were essentially auxiliary forms of legitimation used experimentally to buttress state legitimacy but not as core forms. With the collapse of communism both as a system and as a legitimating telos, one might say that Karimov elevated these auxiliary forms to core status. What demanded this conceptual shift was the ideological transformation from class to nation as the foundation of the political community and the state’s raison d’être. A party-state committed to the hegemony (rukovodstvo, or “leadership,” in Lenin’s writings) of the proletariat and the achievement of pure communism, a regime that spoke about the world exclusively in materialist and class terms, could only use the appeal to national pride in a restricted manner. With the fall of communism, however, the foundation of the political community shifted from the proletariat class to the nation, and this has profound implications for political legitimation and goal orientation, making, for example, goals related to the flourishing of the nation appropriate for core status. The key to evaluating the relative utility of the two goals for authoritarian legitimation is the question of the autonomy of these goals within the political system. In the Soviet Union, largely because of the unique and utopian quality of the goal, but also because of the revolutionary origins of the regime and the fact that the pursuit of the goal preceded the existence of the regime, the telos of communism was transcendental and autonomous. That is, the ultimate aim of attaining communism exerted a constraint over the choices and options available to Soviet leaders: even “Stalin was not free to change the ideology wholesale, only to interpret aspects of it. He could interpret ideology and claim that socialism had been achieved in the USSR, but he could not go beyond this claim” (Robinson, 1995, p. 329). While this autonomy of the goal may have been highly restrictive and may even have aided the collapse of the regime once reforms were attempted, it is easy to see how having such a clear and unique goal was also necessary for regime legitimation. The appearance of acting within ideological (goal-rational) or moral constraints was a powerful argument for the dictatorship of a specific few. If the Party had been seen as either pursuing a vague, ambiguous, or generic goal or simply doing whatever it wanted, the force behind its claim to hegemonic or monopoly control would have been greatly reduced. It would have been much harder to 7 See Ozinga (1992) for a treatment of Soviet ideology as a “dogma of production and development” and Feher et al. (1983) for a discussion of national greatness and modernization as modes of legitimation from Stalin onwards.

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justify why this cohort rather than that ought to rule. Of course, there are also many specific, substantive aspects of the goal in question that also were crucial to the Party’s self-legitimation—namely, the claim to a monopoly on scientific truth and the need for such special knowledge in directing the community to communism. Thus, the special bindingness of communism as a goal on the Party was both crucial to the Party’s claim being taken seriously but also meant that once the exclusive, monopolistic claim was loosened slightly the entire knot came undone. It is difficult to see development and national greatness as final goals operating in the same way in Uzbekistan for a number of reasons. First, pace Karimov, they were only posited as goals after the creation of Uzbekistan as an independent state; there is an attempt being made in post-Soviet Uzbekistan to identify the state, the regime, the political community, and the goal exclusively with those found in the Soviet Union, but this is not likely to be achieved for historical reasons. As Gorbachev learned, it was impossible to imagine a “Soviet Union” without the exclusive identification with the Party and communism as a telos for the simple reason that altering the political community from one based on class to one based on nation destroyed the entire logic of the Soviet Union. Can the same be said about Uzbekistan? Is it equally impossible to imagine an Uzbekistan without Karimov’s Ideology of National Independence? Uzbekistan’s primary reason for existing (ideologically speaking) is to give form to the political community organized around Uzbek nationhood. The state of Uzbekistan has its origins in the formation of the Soviet Union and its eventual collapse because of nationalist pressures throughout the USSR, including popular nationalist pressures within Uzbekistan. Karimov himself became a nationalist only in response to the pressures of the nationalist opposition, largely the Birlik movement. Thus, the state itself is legitimated through national identification and has an independent ontology from the Karimov regime, even if the state apparatus today is entirely monopolized by that regime. The goals of development and national greatness are posited by Karimov and are fundamental for the legitimation of the regime, but not the state as such. The transformation of the assumptions about political community from class to nation swept Karimov’s presumption of authority (as the then communist leader of Uzbekistan) out from under his feet. Not being able to prevent it, he embraced this transformation wholeheartedly and began to pass himself off as a guardian of the new community. The early years of Karimov’s rule are thus dominated by appeals to security and stability on the one hand and identification and national greatness on the other. As we have seen, these appeals are very powerful ones for legitimating non-democratic rule, but are neutral as to which non-democrat is ruling. The development of the discourse on ideology later on in the 1990s betrays a great ambition on Karimov’s part—dissatisfaction with the mere perpetuation of his power and thus a desire to endow it with a theoretical foundation. How to turn a merely unopposed authoritarianism into true hegemony? This he could only do by seeking to identify exclusively his

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regime and its goals with the very idea of Uzbek nationhood and statehood: “our leader is essentially not only the author of reforms, but also of national state sovereignty and the model of a new Uzbek statehood” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 35). This quote shows that Karimov is not content with a mere social contract of obedience for security but wants to create a theoretical foundation for hegemonic leadership. He wants to recreate the Party’s claim to hegemony through its relationship to the proletariat on the basis of his own relationship to the nation, but can only do this through the concept of “ideology.” Consider the following statements by the Uzbek secular nationalist opposition: “The Democratic Party Erk was formed around the idea of national independence. Our alternative regime for Uzbekistan would form an economy based on a free market and directed toward the formation of a middle class. … [Yet] we know that without stability, the political and economic reforms could not be implemented” (Salikh, 1996, pp. 12–13). And: “The Birlik movement and party promote principles of independence, national rebirth, and democracy” (Polat, 1998, p. 15). These comments show that the opposition most likely to command popular electoral support would not have to challenge Karimov’s basic conception of the political community, the state, or the telos in order to operate politically in Uzbekistan. It is only the specific ruling regime that they oppose. This, of course, is no accident. Karimov’s political language is the product of both a deliberate attempt to structure political discourse around the concepts and orientations most likely to resonate with the populace, to seem like “common sense,” as well as a defensive reaction to the counter-hegemony that arose spontaneously in opposition to the Soviet Union. If Karimov’s program looks like Birlik’s and Erk’s, it should: he got it from them. This is the reason why Birlik and Erk do not figure prominently among Karimov’s “alien, anti-humanist” ideological threats to the state. Partially this is a question of utility: because they have not used violence and have long since been successfully exiled, Birlik and Erk are not threatening to Uzbekistan’s national interests. Referring to them in this manner simply would not resonate. At most he can dismiss them as unfit to rule or power hungry.8 More importantly, however, Karimov does not want to remind Uzbeks that such alternatives exist—i.e., alternatives to the regime that would not be alternatives to the dominant ideology of nationalism, stability, and development that most Uzbeks genuinely do support. Raising the specter of Birlik and Erk in political discourse not only is pointless, but also could be profoundly dangerous. Let us now return to the question: Can “development” and “national greatness” do the work for Karimov that the pursuit of communism did for the Party? Are these goals unique and special enough to create the hegemonic identification sought? In addition to being developed ex post facto, their generic nature and ambiguity present a second problem. We have seen that this is in many ways a good thing for Karimov —who is against “development”?—but this universality also makes it difficult to elide the difference between his regime and the state. It is entirely possible to imagine other political forces operating within nationalist

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and developmentalist ideologies opposing Karimov. Karimov’s regime is not a sine qua non for the historical consensus constructed in Uzbekistan around national identity and development. This should be contrasted sharply with the Islamist opposition, which opposes not only the “Tashkent regime” as they call it but also the entire nationalist foundation of the state, i.e., its original, pre-Karimovist, naturally legitimate reason for being. Consider the Declaration of Jihad by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan: “The amir of the Harakatul Islamiyyah of Uzbekistan has announced the start of the Jihad against the tyrannical government of Uzbekistan and the puppet Islam Karimov. The primary objective for this declaration of Jihad is the establishment of an Islamic state with the application of Shari‘ah, founded upon the Qur’an and the Noble Prophetic sunnah, the defense of our religion of Islam in our land against those who oppose Islam [and] the defense of the Muslims in our land from those who humiliate them and spill their blood” (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan).9 Similarly, while the secular opposition lauds, for example, Karimov’s constitutional commitment to democracy and human rights while attacking him for his insincerity and hypocrisy, the Islamist opposition considers that constitution the “law of disbelief and falsehood” (Hizb ut-Tahrir, 2000b, 2001). These statements reflect a comprehensive ideological war: the Islamist opposition not only is opposed to the “Karimov Tashkent regime” (as is the secular nationalist opposition), but opposes the conceptions of state, political community, and goal orientation that Karimov and the secular opposition share. Note that the Islamist texts do not refer to “Uzbekistan” as such but to “our lands” or, in the case of Hizb ut-Tahrir, to “wilayat Uzbekistan,” meaning (in Arabic) the province of Uzbekistan, presumably of a global Islamic caliphate. They do not make their call (d‘awah) to “Uzbeks,” but to the “Muslims of wilayat Uzbekistan” or simply “Muslims of our land.” The entire notion of “national independence” is 8

This is, in fact, the nature of most of the efforts to discredit the secular opposition (although Salikh was also accused of association with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and, thus, “terrorism.”) In particular, the Karimov regime likes to emphasize the intellectual (and by implication, incompetent) roots of the opposition leaders: “What would happen in Uzbekistan if the likes of Madaminov [Salikh] or Yuldashev [the political leader of the IMU] came to power? Doubtlessly the same tragic events would be repeated as in Georgia under Gamsakhurdiya and Azerbaydzhan under Elchibey, neither of whom had the slightest idea about how to run a state, the economy, or politics. Both of these former dissidents showed that it is easier to be a politician in opposition than to solve the problems of the country” (Gafarly and Kasayev, 2000, p. 252). The proper role for intellectuals, according to Karimov and collaborators, is to remain passive and loyal and to use their talents to “intellectually disarm” the opposition, for “by entering into politics without being practitioners of state and social construction and economic development (the managing of macroeconomic processes), [intellectuals] cause irreparable harm to their nation. In this case, we are dealing with fake intellectuals that stand for a revolutionary and oppositional—that is, a sharply politicized— position, completely abdicating from their entire range of social principles, such as nonviolence” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 69). 9 This declaration formerly appeared on the web site I have indicated in my bibliography, but the accessibility of that web site is sporadic. It is also reprinted in Rashid (2002).

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seen as “dismemberment from the body of the Ummah and has nothing to do with freedom and liberation from the authority of the Kafir colonialist, the accepted meaning of independence.” It was the “Kafir who shook the unity of the Ummah by spreading poisoned thoughts like nationalism and patriotism” (Hizb ut-Tahrir, 2000a). The Islamists thus advance an entirely different conception of state, political community, and the telos. Here we can see a whole new dimension to Karimov’s use of Islamophobia. I have argued above that Karimov bases his self-legitimation not only on fear of the alternative, but on his exclusive claim to identification with the state and national identity through the use of ideology and goals. The Islamist opposition helps Karimov not only to create the fear of war and instability but also to make the argument that the only alternative to his rule is the complete abandonment of the national foundation of the state. Karimov’s claim that the Uzbek state is equal to the nation is equal to the national ideology is equal to the regime that propagates the ideology is actually buttressed by the presence of an opposition that rejects the nation outright as the foundation of the political community. Put simply, the Islamists’ opposition of both Karimov and the nation as political community makes it easier for Karimov to argue that this is actually opposition to the same thing, even though this is not the intent of the Islamists (they oppose Karimov on his own merits and oppose nationalism on theological grounds). The Islamists need Karimov for mobilization purposes; they must appeal to Uzbeks on the grounds of tyranny and injustice (Hizb utTahrir, 2000c, 2002) and not on theological arguments against the nation as such, which are divisive, alienating, and unpopular. But by expressing their obsession with Karimov through their anti-nationalist ideology and political language, they support Karimov’s claim to exclusive identification with the state and the nation. Thus, Karimov’s positing of national development as a legitimating telos, while excluding the Islamists from the historical ideological consensus, does not exclude the rest of the secular nationalist opposition and, therefore, is not in itself an argument against the latter’s assumption of power. This relates to another major problem with the goals of national development and greatness, the problem of ideological autonomy. The autonomy of Marxism-Leninism as a force in Soviet politics refers to the way in which the goal of pursuing communism acted as a constraint on the Party but also aided its legitimation. If one accepts the telos and sees it as something to which elites must actually conform and which they must strive to attain, one is more likely to accept those elites as legitimate than if they were not seen to be bound in their actions whatsoever by any ideological goals. It is much more difficult to see how “national development” as an ideological goal is in any way binding or constraining on Karimov. Put simply, it is difficult to imagine any policy (quick reforms or slow reforms, more democracy or less democracy, neutrality or extensive foreign alliances) that could not be legitimated by the ideology or that would be seen as inconsistent with it. There is, of course, some utility for Karimov in

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this flexibility and ambiguity, but it is also easy to see how the universal nature of the “transcendental goal” reduces the need for this particular autocrat and makes him particularly vulnerable to Uzbeks’ expectations of increases in living standards, i.e., performance in relation to the goal of economic development. This question of teleological legitimation brings us to the most important point of comparison between Leninism and Karimovism: authority and charisma. The question of authority is an important one; it is the difference between legitimating non-democratic rule as such and the rule of a specific agent. Under Leninism, all forms of legitimation came down to the authority of the Party as the agent holding a monopoly of knowledge on how to achieve communism. The unity of state, regime, political community, and telos all converged on the Party’s claim to charisma. Much comes down to how we believe Karimov himself is treated in the new ideology, but it is difficult to find an analogue for the Party in the “ideology of national independence,” i.e., a charismatic agent with the permanent claim to special knowledge about the path to the goal. The leader principle is certainly operative in Uzbekistan. Not only is Karimov given the prerogative of determining the content of the national ideology, but this task is deeply attached to his public persona. Tadzhiyev writes in relation to the national ideology that “the most important works, enjoying both methodological and practical significance, belong to the pen of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov. In each speech, essay, and interview of President Karimov, the ideology of reforms has been reflected, the goals and means of national development have been analyzed, and the basic tasks and directions for the realization of constitutional goals have been elaborated” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 10). Karimov is frequently referred to as “leader-ideologue,” “politician-ideologue” or “head of state–ideologue” and it is suggested that the “studying of his works and praxis as leader of the country in relation to the questions of its strategic development is one of the main factors in the formulation of the national ideology” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, 74–75). Yet I would stop short of calling Karimov’s claim charismatic. Karimov’s claim to authority is grounded in his superior experience in statecraft (the claim from praxis) which gives him a special role in the formulation of the ideology, not in any special qualities of grace. Rather, at times it appears that the ideology itself is treated as an independent source of authority, even as charismatic. The ideology is often anthropomorphized, treated as a subject and agent capable of “correcting” tendencies, regulating politics, providing direction, and so on, without any discussion at all of how an “ideology” is supposed to do these things on its own. In an obvious echo of Leninism, the ideology is treated as the “main criterion in social analysis” and all social phenomena are to be “marked according to the degree of their consistency with the goals and tasks of national development. If something doesn’t correspond to the interests of the nation, the ideology includes in its action the mechanisms of correction” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 45). Similarly: “ideology is the reflection of vital realities with the

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intent of their improvement according to the laws of progress. The viability of an ideology is determined not so much by the wealth or depth of its thought, philosophical foundations, or scientific grounding as by its calculation of the interests of individual citizens while reflecting the mentality and psychology of the people” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 54). Thus, while emphasizing the “reflective” nature of the ideology, there is a certain charismatic treatment of it. It is as if the logic of guardianship and uniqueness usually reserved for individual leaders, classes, or parties is applied here to the ideology as an active subject. It is the ideology that is trusted to care for the citizens’ interests as much as the leader; it is the ideology that intends (note the purposive force of Tadzhiyev’s use of the word “intent”) to improve realities through the consideration of vital interests; it is the ideology that bears moral responsibility for failing to change and protect the common man. But unlike the claims of Shari‘ah or Marxism-Leninism, it is not clear what the authoritative foundation of the ideology is. The claim that the ideology must “reflect” the nation’s values and aspirations, and the coopting of Uzbek history for the national ideology,10 suggest perhaps an attempt at a conservative or traditionalist foundation of the claim to authority. It is not clear, however, how this would be consistent with the primary teleological mode of legitimation or how it would solve the question “Why Karimov (and not another authentically Uzbek autocrat)?” It must be said that Karimov’s project is not successful at achieving the total hegemonic unification of state, regime, political community, and telos that characterized Soviet legitimation and that now constitutes the goal of Karimov’s theoretical treatment of ideology as discussed in this article. The very fact of having two oppositions—one that opposes him but not most aspects of his ideology, and one that opposes both—indicates this. Indeed, could such a scenario—i.e., a pro-USSR, pro-communist, but anti-Party opposition—have been conceivable in late Leninism? Nonetheless, even if Karimov has not quite succeeded in equating Uzbek statehood and nationhood with his own project, he has advanced systematically a set of politically unifying national goals underpinned by an “ideology.” This advancement of a claim to an expansive pre-political national consensus based on goal-rationality, rather than procedure, remains the most theoretically sophisticated aspect of Karimov’s legitimation of authoritarianism.

10

See March (2002b), where I show how Karimov attempts to treat the entirety of Uzbek intellectual and political history as a continuous manifestation of his “Ideology of National Independence.” Tadzhiyev’s comment is characteristic: “The national ideology belongs to a concrete nation and, moreover, in respect to time, to all past and future generations. Its ideas are born throughout the entire span of history and national statehood, for example from the states of the Timurids to independent Uzbekistan in its contemporary borders. Each generation of thinkers, state actors, politicians and representatives of the common man makes its own contribution to its development” (Tadzhiyev, 1999, p. 45–46).

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LINZ REVISITED: TOWARD A DEFINITION OF AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES AS “TELEOCRACIES” Authoritarian legitimation under Islam Karimov in post-Soviet Uzbekistan does not rely exclusively on the use of any single concept, argument, logic, or set of symbols. Rather, Karimov hammers at the whole keyboard, employing a wide gamut of available techniques and modes of legitimation. This strategy of legitimation forms a pyramid of modes of legitimation, ascending from accessibility to sophistication. At the bottom of the pyramid of Karimov’s overall strategy of self-legitimation lies, first, the appeal to the security and stability provided by an authoritarian regime. Ascending from this, Karimov relies on identification, i.e., the appeal to national pride, the use of emotionally charged symbols, and the thick matrix of rituals, symbols, monuments, holidays, and buildings used by the regime to assert both its power and its representativeness. Further up the pyramid lies the rigorous emphasis on shared goals—namely, development and “greatness”—at the expense of rules and procedure. Capping this project is the more elaborate and theoretical political logic constructed around the concept of ideology, which provides the more accessible appeals with their authority and intellectual legitimacy. This article has focused mostly on this final aspect. As a way of looking forward out of the confines of contemporary Uzbek politics to the broader theoretical ramifications of this study, I suggest we begin by looking back to a classical argument advanced by one of the doyens of the modern study of authoritarianism, Juan Linz. Linz has defined authoritarian regimes as being “without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities” (Linz, 1964, p. 255). The difference, according to Linz, between ideologies and mentalities is that “ideologies are systems of thought more or less intellectually elaborated and organized, often in written form, by intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, or with their assistance. Mentalities are ways of thinking and feeling, more emotional than rational, that provide noncodified ways of reacting to different situations” (Linz, 2000, p. 162). More precisely, the difference between mentalities and ideologies is that of intellectual attitude versus intellectual content, psychic predisposition versus reflection and self-interpretation, formlessness versus form, and an emphasis on the past and present versus forward-looking utopianism. For Linz, the great specter hanging over his study of authoritarian regimes such as Spain in the 1960s was totalitarianism (unlike the unspoken context of any contemporary study of authoritarianism, that is, the “democratic moment”). Before him, non-totalitarian authoritarianism was treated as a residual category of regimes; he sought to give it unique, positive content, a task that largely required showing and explaining essential differences between it and totalitarianism. Linz was interested in showing that in different types of regimes, “ideas take a different form, different coherence, articulation, comprehensiveness, explicitness, intellectual elaboration, and normativeness” (Linz, 2000, p. 163). The ideal typical

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totalitarian state exhibits a highly articulated and dogmatic ideology that provides the state’s original reason for being and purports to provide guidance not only on the most explicit political, legal, and economic questions, but also on such matters as art criticism, scientific reasoning, and private life. By contrast, it is much more difficult to see how the mentalities that Linz claims are characteristic of authoritarian regimes serve to constrain either rulers or subjects, and thus to inspire sacrifice or justify coercion. It is harder to diffuse these mentalities through propaganda and education, and they are less likely to have anything to say about religion, science, or culture. They provide answers to a narrower range of issues and with less precision than the ideas underlying typical totalitarian regimes. In the case of Linz’s authoritarian mentalities, one is harder pressed to identify the ideas guiding legislation, for example, and less likely to find the novel and rich language of terms, concepts, and symbols typical of comprehensive ideologies. For Linz, there is an empirical connection between the nature of authoritarianism and the nature of mentalities that supports the thesis. He asserts that there are certain power arrangements characteristic of authoritarian regimes that prevent extensive ideological articulation. Specifically, authoritarian regimes rely on a complex coalition of forces, interests, traditions, and institutions that force rulers to seek the lowest common denominator uniting the disparate factors. The conservative and repressive nature of these regimes requires them to neutralize the maximum number of potential opponents and to depoliticize the maximal range of social elements. The diffuse, flexible, innocuous, and unwritten nature of authoritarian mentalities is thus a natural fixture of such regimes. Autocrats seek a docile, unmobilized, and depoliticized population that is inhibited by the regime’s repression yet contented enough with its performance and representative character to decide that agitation is both futile and unnecessary. This, according to Linz, explains the tendency of authoritarian regimes to appeal to broad-based, ambiguous, and generic sentiments such as nationalism, social order, and prosperity in lieu of more divisive ideologies. The result is a rather bland and elusive mix of symbols and concepts that do little to create conflict but also little to inspire, mobilize, and create emotional identification. In fact, my comparison of Karimovism and Leninism would seem to echo Linz’s basic concern to distinguish authoritarianism from totalitarianism: the total fusion of state, society, and regime around certain ideological goals in the Soviet Union was characteristic of the totalitarian origins of the state. Its passing into a post-totalitarian state with the routinization of Party charisma after Stalin had the effect of making this ideological fusion seem horribly anachronistic and, thus, it also necessitated the inclusion of the various auxiliary modes of legitimation discussed by Breslauer, Feher, Rigby, and others. This account partially explains the artificiality of Karimov’s project: he is imitating the Soviet structure of legitimation not only without the revolutionary origins or aspirations that make it coherent but also long after it became hollow and anachronistic even in its original

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context! There is much in Linz’s characterization of authoritarianism that is supported by the data from post-Soviet Uzbekistan, as well as by my comparison of it with Leninism. Linz’s thesis that authoritarian mentalities tend to be vague, generic, and narrowly political is echoed in my analysis of the indeterminacy of Karimov’s “Ideology of National Independence.” For Karimov it seems to be important mostly that he has an ideology and can assert its priority over competitive politics. Much of this depends on his not over-determining the substantive contours of that ideology. Similarly, my main thesis related to the comparison with Leninism is that Karimov essentially tries to extract too much from his “guiding goals.” He wants the political sphere to be pre-determined by his positing of binding collective goals, and for these goals to be equated with the state’s very reason for being, thus resulting in the legitimation of his specific regime. Yet, as I argued above, it is far from clear that these goals are specific or comprehensive enough to make this attempt convincing and ideologically successful. It is not even clear what specific policies these goals and values would suggest and which they would preclude—i.e., it is not clear what their autonomy is within the political system. Similarly, Karimov’s efforts would seem to corroborate Linz’s assertion that authoritarian regimes seek a passive, depoliticized public by appealing to already-present values and orientations. However, the data presented in this article from the Uzbek case sit less easily with other implications of Linz’s thesis, and I am hesitant to endorse it in toto. Much rests on how arbitrary one considers Linz’s definition of an ideology (Does it have to be utopian? How self-reflective must it be? How rational? How elaborate?), but it should be clear at this point that Linz’s dismissal of the “mentalities” of authoritarian regimes is an unsatisfactory characterization of the way many authoritarian regimes define themselves. While goals like “development,” “progress” and a “great future” might not impress Linz as particularly original ideological goals, perhaps not even meeting some minimal level of divisiveness, originality, or sophistication to earn the appellation “ideology,” such criteria thoroughly miss the point. First, authoritarian regimes are not alone in appealing to innocuous and universal values and associations for the purpose of legitimation. The whole point of an “overlapping consensus” as the pre-political foundation of a democratic political system is to identify those concepts and beliefs that are ubiquitous enough to provide such a foundation. On the other side of the spectrum, totalitarian regimes (Linz’s ideal-type of a state with an ideology) also legitimate their extreme beliefs and measures partly on the basis of goals that were designed to appeal to the depoliticized, atomized masses, such as “development” in the Leninist case, various forms of “greatness,” “purity,” and national superiority in the fascist cases, and “national liberation” in many of the third-world Leninist regimes. More recently, Taliban Afghanistan, which might legitimately be called totalitarian both in the extent of its domination over the private sphere and in its comprehensive, utopian ideology, legitimated itself not only through its utopian aspirations and guiding ideology but, more banally, through

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its claim to have been the first Afghan government in decades to bring stability and order. More importantly, the global radical Islamist movement as represented by al-Qa‘ida, which clearly can be characterized as a totalitarian movement, does not rely purely on its comprehensive, utopian ideology for legitimation purposes, but also relies on what are (for its target audience) much more universal, even generic, themes—namely, the hatred of Israel, America, and the corrupt military regimes of the Islamic world. Second, these broad-based, ambiguous, and generic concepts are not as obvious and uncontroversial as Linz (and the rulers themselves!) would have us believe. Autocrats want to manufacture the appearance of obviousness or commonsense and mask the process of choice and formulation. In reality, the overt claim to hegemony masks the various possible alternative visions for organizing society. As a result, these “generic concepts” often function as code for the opposite of what some political opposition would impose: These positive things are what we want; if the opposition wants something else they must be negative and destructive. More to the point, even if left implicit, the advocacy of these goals usually entails a decontestation of them beneficial to the regime. In the Uzbek case, this is most evident in the use of “development” and “progress” in ways that suggest economic development and progress are the highest priority, thus excluding the spiritual goals of the Islamists from contention for “national” status. Even the very use of nationalism, which Linz might call generic, is an explicit rejection of the Islamic understanding of identity, loyalty, and political community. Thus, while Islam Karimov might not be the Uzbek Fichte, Mill, or Lenin in terms of originality or sophistication, he is nevertheless progressing on the basis of certain concrete assumptions about the nature of man, his condition, and his needs, all of which then suggest certain goals rather than others. In short, one of the implications of Linz’s mentality thesis would seem to be an insufficient appreciation for the diversity of ideologically-based collective goals that various authoritarian regimes might pursue. If the types of goals that authoritarian regimes can pursue are many, this suggests significant variation in the forms of legitimation, justification, and ideological language. Third, Linz wants to build into his definition of authoritarianism that its “mentalities”—even if they fulfil the same function as ideologies—are “ways of thinking and feeling, more emotional than rational, that provide non-codified ways of reacting to different situations.” Forget the fact that all ideologies (especially totalitarian ones) contain emotional, affective, and non-codified components. Theoretically speaking, what is to stop a leader—neither a democrat nor a totalitarian—from putting his and others’ words down in writing, collecting them into a few volumes, and calling them an “ideology”? This is certainly the case of Uzbekistan, Kemalist Turkey, Suharto’s Indonesia, and so on. More damaging yet, what does Linz’s mentality thesis have to say about Iran or Sudan, regimes that define themselves on the basis of an ideology that no one could accuse them of leaving unspoken or “non-codified,” yet cannot plausibly be referred to as totalitarian? Linz’s thesis leaves us having to argue that a non-democratic

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regime operating under what is, by all accounts, a robust, comprehensive ideology, either is, in fact, a totalitarian regime or must not actually have an ideology after all. This is clearly an untenable theoretical restraint and indefensible empirical claim. Having appreciated what is illuminating in Linz’s classical work, as well as what is harder to accept, I propose to define modern authoritarian regimes as “teleocracies.” Importantly, I would argue that this designation places both authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the same category; they are both regimes that are organized and legitimated in relation to the realization of certain hallowed goals.11 The crucial differences between authoritarianism and totalitarianism we must look for elsewhere—in totalitarianism’s aspiration to complete control over not only the public sphere but the private as well, its true utopianism, and its origins in mass mobilization, to name but a few of the more obvious ones. Teleocracies are regimes that seek a quasi-ontological fusion of the national character, the state, and the goal. While there may be plenty of “sultanist” regimes that make virtually no effort to elaborate coherent goals (Mobutu’s Zaire and Niyazov’s Turkmenistan come to mind), and while many autocrats may be rather cynical or insincere in their formulation of the “great goal” (for what it’s worth, Karimov comes to mind), any regime that is serious about legitimating itself in its own eyes and those of its subjects will do so on the basis of linking the attainment of a national goal with the (usually implicit) empirical claim that “autocrats do it better.” Why is this more fundamental than the traditional claim the only “principled” legitimation of authoritarianism is the argument from guardianship, or “special knowledge” (see Dahl, 1989, and Walzer, 1995)? Upon scrutiny, it is clear that guardianship is merely a derivative argument from the defense of the telos, for arguments for rule by the most knowledgeable are not intelligible without reference to a common telos. The ruler claims to have special knowledge about what? About getting to x, whether x is pure communism, the implementation of the Shari‘ah, racial purity, national glory, increased living standards, or even the proper ordering of society to achieve eudaimonia (to bring the claim all the way back to Plato). Interestingly, while the “guardianship argument” is usually contrasted with “crude consequentialist” arguments for authoritarianism, it is clear that there is no logical difference between them: appeals to the benefits of security and stability and other protections from democratic politics can easily be translated into “principled, guardianship” arguments that he should rule who is most knowledgeable about (or capable of achieving) 11

It is possible that Linz’s insistence on the mentality thesis, for all of its convincing claims, many of which are supported by this article, may represent a certain overcompensation for the dominant interest in totalitarianism of the time. Perhaps, owing to Linz’s success in legitimating authoritarianism as an object of study, we can more confidently recognize what both totalitarianism and authoritarianism have in common in comparison with democratic conceptions of the political.

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security and stability. In this sense, guardianship is not so much a justification of authoritarianism as a synonym. What is “modern” about this? Traditional (medieval) authority seemed not to depend so much on performance in relation to a goal. The argument “You should obey me because your ancestors have always obeyed my ancestors” performs the function of absolving the ruler of having to constantly validate his position in relation to performance. The “divine right of kings” is even more emphatic on the right of the particular person to claim obedience right or wrong. In this sense it establishes what we might anachronistically call a “procedural consensus” about the political order, as it answers the questions “Who decides?” and “When is a decision legitimate?” rather than “What has already been decided will be our common goal?” In a sense, some of the paternalist arguments in favor of monarchy from the 18th century onward developed a consequentialist character (aprés moi…), but the consequences were always the chaos and loss of harmony resulting from the rejection of tradition and the obligation to obey. The idea of natural equality of men makes it illegitimate for kings to justify their rule over others without their consent. Some argued further that the idea of natural rights, as well as the idea of skepticism toward “final truths” and utopias, makes it illegitimate to rule over others arbitrarily or absolutely with their consent. This is the dilemma that faces modern autocrats: It is no longer possible to argue for the right to rule based on inherent inequality. Indeed, some claim to consent is inescapable. But consent does not have to be perpetually re-established. The loophole used by autocrats from Lenin to Karimov is that once original consent has been secured to go after “what the people really want,” or once consent can be asserted to exist because of the regime’s self-proclaimed perfect representation of the popular will, any form of what might be euphemistically called “procedural streamlining” is in order. The real logic of these regimes, and the real source of their tension with democracy, is thus the ancient ethical one of consequentialism versus deontology, of ends justifying means. Liberal, constitutional democracies are supposed to treat all ends as part of the good life, i.e., something to be pursued politically only in compliance with the right, i.e., the rules. Rawlsian liberals have criticized utilitarian liberals of being weak in their defense of rights because of their lack of such a distinction. Obviously, the same and more applies to authoritarian regimes that make the telos (the “good”) the cornerstone of the entire state, particularly when the telos is collective, communitarian, and pre-determined.

CONCLUSION By way of final conclusion, a word about authoritarianism within democratic systems. My emphasis on teleology as the defining feature of authoritarianism might be interpreted as a suggestion that all of democratic theory and legitimation can be reduced to a procedural consensus and a legalistic conception of the political. Indeed, much of the post-Rawlsian

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communitarian critique of liberalism has seized on the mantra of “shared goals and purposes” (see, for example, McIntyre, 1988, and Sandel, 1982) as the source of meaning in communal life and something that is seriously neglected in the liberalism of the “procedural republic” (Sandel, 1996). Needless to say, defenders of this conception insist that the liberal emphasis on procedures, rights, and neutrality no more precludes the pursuit of common goals and purposes than the rules of football preclude the pursuit of various goods and virtues, both individual and collective (see Kymlicka, 1989). In the language of Kant and Rawls, “the right” constrains and structures the pursuit of “the good” but does not do away with it. It is just as true for liberals as for communitarians that a life lived solely for the purposes of upholding the right is just as barren and uninspiring as a sports career pursued with no other purpose than not to break the rules (a feat most easily accomplished by not playing). What, then, is so unique or noteworthy about the authoritarian emphasis on common goals? More precisely, what is so authoritarian about it? Most obviously, the authoritarian aspect of such teleocracies consists in the elite formulation of common goals, their bindingness on the political system, and the means used to suppress dissent from them. More importantly, it consists in such regimes’ implausible assertion that such goals can account for the totality of political life. It is not simply that Karimov, for example, posits a “consensus” about the pursuit of economic development in an authoritarian fashion or even that he alone reserves the right to determine what economic development requires in the way of policies. Rather, it is his assertion that the “natural, pre-political consensus” that obtains around a limited set of goals is sufficient to pre-determine the entirety of what society might wish to decide politically. In essence, the rhetorical strategy is to proceed from national unity about a given set of issues (where the ruler does enjoy popular consensus) to full political unity on all public issues (where he may not). By contrast, it is the enduring insight of liberalism that the goals of persons, both individually and collectively, are many, that they may not be commensurable, and that they are not so much the subject of objective knowledge but of preference. Liberals are bound to have a problem not only with the political aspects of authoritarianism (the closed political system, elite prerogative in determining policies, the lack of civil and human rights) but also with the ideological notion that collective life could ever be determined by the pursuit of a single goal (or set of goals) and that public life, given consensus around these goals, could thus devolve into expert administration, as is the case in the political logic of authoritarianism. This is not to say that there are not pockets of authoritarianism present in democratic systems. Such pockets tend to take the form of executive bureaucracies (including the military) and expert bodies, such as the governing boards of central banks. It is implicit in such bodies that their authoritarian structures are justified not only on pragmatic grounds of corporate efficiency but in the fact that they have a single reason for being (a single telos) that is synonymous with their very existence and that the

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realization of this telos is a matter for expert knowledge and experience. Corporations, militaries, foreign ministries, central banks, political campaigns, and football teams are authoritarian structures not merely because dissent and contestation (i.e., democracy) would be chaotic and unworkable, and not merely because those at the top have a plausible claim to special expert knowledge, but because the range of contestable matters is so vanishingly small. What possible dissent could there be about the final goal of any of the above institutions? The institutions and their final goals are mutually constitutive. The only matters for contestation are questions of policy and execution, areas that plausibly lend themselves to the logic of guardianship. What distinguishes democratic thought from authoritarian is the simple empirical claim that societies, political communities, are not like corporations and football teams in the sense that there is no single reason for being, no single final goal that is synonymous with or constitutive of that community. Communities exist for their own sake, and which goals they ought to pursue cannot be known (this objectivity or epistemological realism being a precondition for guardianship), but merely felt. This is why all of government cannot legitimately emulate the workings of a corporation, military, or football team, however strong the yearning for such clarity may be in all types of societies; the totality of communal and political life has no single analogue to the constitutive goals of those associations. The only “special knowledge” that can legitimate power in a democratic society is special knowledge of what is genuinely desired by members of the political community. The broad normative and moral argument against the legitimacy of moral coercion and paternalism is buttressed by another empirical claim, namely, that—unlike associations such as the military, a corporation, or a political movement—membership in society is not voluntary and persons cannot be reasonably asked to leave if they do not subscribe to any given political consensus. This is not to say that politicians in democratic societies do not emulate the rhetorical strategies of authoritarian leaders. I have tried to show that authoritarian legitimation rests largely in the co-opting of political language with strong positive and negative emotive force. Concepts that have a positive association even for us in democratic societies have great authoritarian possibilities: namely, “unity,” “consensus,” “authenticity,” “national interest,” “stability,” “security,” and “commonsense,” to name but a few. Similarly, certain concepts seem to have inherent negative associations across many types of societies, including “dissent,” “disunity,” and, above all, “politics.” The authoritarian tactics of insisting on the existence of “national consensus” around their policies, of eliding the difference between “national unity” around a given issue (say fighting terrorism) and political unity around all issues (say tax or environmental policy), of equating dissent with a lack of commitment to the national interest at best and disloyalty at worst, or asserting that one’s own policies (unlike one’s opponents’) are “above politics” should be no less familiar to post-9/11 Americans than to post-USSR Uzbeks. Understanding the

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rhetorical tactics of authoritarianism is not only the imperative of those living in authoritarian states and is, for us, no mere academic exercise.

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