ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of three decades of international development initiatives in Central Asia. It starts by outlining the principles of Soviet modernisation, which until now influence development thinking in the region. In turn, it identifies three phases of development cooperation in Central Asia and sketches their main characteristics by paying attention to actors, interventions and associated imaginaries of development. The chapter analyses how the dominant development paradigms shifted from Western donors’ support to democratisation and free market in the region in the 1990s; through a turn to security and differentiating development trajectories in five Central Asian countries in the 2000s; to an arrival of new donors’ and a emergence of a new, heterogenous development landscape in the region in the 2010s. Two case studies of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan demonstrate how donor-funded projects interplay with current state and nation-building processes in Central Asia, and showcase new constellations of power relations emerging between international donors and local actors.
