The Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Border: Institutional Legitimacy and Regional Stability
By Major Adam W. Drexler, U.S. Marine Corps
Editor's Note. Major Drexler's thesis won the FAO Association writing award at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 2017. Because of space limitations, the Journal has extracted the Abstract and Introduction, without research notes, for publication here. To see the full thesis, please visit www.faoa.org.
Abstract
Examining the political and social consequences of coercive border enforcement, this thesis hypothesizes that unilateral border hardening erodes institutional legitimacy and undermines regional stability. Relying on a case study of the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border in Central Asia’s Ferghana Valley, the thesis finds that border hardening is likely to change local perceptions of the border, diminish its overall institutional legitimacy, and weaken regional stability. Border institutions depend on a mixture of willing obedience and coercion by the state to obtain social compliance. Coercive and illegitimate means of border enforcement may have unintended consequences, undermining perceptions of legitimacy and leading to a logic of escalation of border hardening measures. This may in turn necessitate increasing levels of coercive border enforcement in order to achieve social compliance. Perceptions of border legitimacy influence the extent to which individuals voluntarily comply with border rules. Methods of border hardening are nearly always regarded as illegitimate and coercive when they adversely affect the local population. Policy-makers and military leaders must move beyond simple assumptions about borders as barriers in order to balance short- and long-term factors of security, strengthen a border’s institutional legitimacy, and promote regional stability.
Introduction
Major research question. Do hardened borders enhance or undermine regional stability? While economic or security concerns may drive unilateral hardening of borders, little is known about the long- term impact of this policy in light of popular support and local perceptions of the border. An underlying theme of this thesis is the role of unintended consequences on the legitimacy of the border institution. The opening question considers whether the policy of hardening -- while intended to improve security -- undermines regional stability by weakening the institutional legitimacy of the border. Under specific circumstances and in a particular historical context, the hardening of a border may drive local perceptions of illegitimacy because it contradicts local expectations for the meaning and purpose of the political border. The border is not only perceived as illegitimate but also complicates the everyday life of borderland people. This perception of illegitimacy -- which is often associated with feelings or beliefs that include annoyance, unfairness, suspicion, corruption, and fear -- may also shape local behavior and influence whether people willingly obey the border rules or comply merely owing to the state’s coercive use of force.
The relationship between border hardening and the weakening of institutional legitimacy is especially evident in the Ferghana Valley, where borders have historically been open and porous. This thesis considers border hardening and local perceptions in relation to institutional legitimacy, which is an element of regional stability. Beyond the historical circumstances of border making in the Ferghana Valley is the contemporary global debate on the meaning and legitimacy of borders to provide national security and enhance regional stability. These issues are geopolitical in nature, while drawing insights from other disciplines, including sociology, political science, behavioral science, and history. Ultimately, this thesis proposes a new theory and research agenda -- albeit narrowly focused on a specific time and place -- for understanding border hardening in light of the institutional legitimacy of the border and regional stability.
While states have long debated the function of their borders, security fears since the 1990s -- especially since the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 -- have resulted in increased border hardening, a deliberate policy response intended to counter international security threats and thereby enhance stability. The term “border hardening” refers to state efforts to demarcate and enforce a territorial border. Border hardening is a border making process, whereby a border becomes more difficult to penetrate socially, politically, or economically. Hardening restricts the movement of people and materials across a border through physical materialization (e.g., fences, walls, and limited gates) or coercive enforcement (as with armed patrols, criminalization of illegal border crossing, restrictive checkpoints, and visa programs). While hardening policies vary across time and place, this process has been directed more recently at countering non-traditional security threats, such as terrorism, that threaten regional stability.
As a concept, the political, social, economic, and cultural dynamics of a region affect stability both internally and among states. “Defined as the orderly and peaceful operation of the balance-of-power system,” according to American political theorist G. John Ikenberry, stability “requires the ability of states to recognize and respond to shifting power distributions.” Consistent with most rationalist, realist, and pragmatist approaches to international politics, the pursuit of stability involves the balance of legitimacy with security and prosperity. Without denying the importance of economic and military stability, the focus of this thesis is decidedly on elements of political and social stability. Border hardening is usually aimed at immediate security concerns, and policy-makers and scholars lack consensus on whether it is constructive for future prosperity and stability. As a result of its complex borders as well as its geopolitical importance to Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union, Central Asia’s Ferghana Valley is a particularly useful case for examining the connection between border hardening and regional stability.
Border scholars and pundits have often thrown up their hands at the complex and squiggly lines representing state borders in the Ferghana Valley, retreating sometimes in their explanations to Stalin’s divide and rule policies or to their impression that someone was drawing lines on a map while drunk. Moreover, security experts have assumed that the irregular and porous borders shown in Figure 1 would promote regional instability.
The complicated international border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan includes numerous
enclaves and border posts. Despite popular descriptions as “a hotbed of destabilization,” “a tinderbox for violence,” “a knot of difficult problems,” and “a Pandora’s Box of border disputes,” the Ferghana Valley has witnessed twenty-five years of relative stability since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. During most of the Soviet era and immediately following independence, international borders in the Ferghana Valley were relatively porous and open. Border hardening increased in 1999 following terrorist attacks in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, and it was amplified further in 2000 with Uzbekistan’s unilateral building of a fence along its border with Kyrgyzstan.
This thesis seeks insight into the effect of border hardening on regional stability. Unilateral hardening of the international border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan interjected a new dynamic in the region’s previously open and porous borders. Consequently, localized conflict and tensions have increased along the Uzbekistan– Kyrgyzstan border since independence, but especially since 2000. Adapting concepts of legitimacy from multiple disciplines that were originally developed to explain legitimacy and authority for political institutions, this thesis examines the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan since independence in 1991, through a period of border hardening that began in 1999, until 2009. The primary research question is: How has border hardening between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan from 1991 to 2009 affected the institutional legitimacy of the border? Specifically, the focus of the analysis is on how border hardening changes local perceptions of the border, including local perceptions of legitimacy and authority, and therefore improved or undermined prospects for regional stability.
Figure 1. Map of the Ferghana Valley.
The Ferghana Valley is outlined in green.
Significance of Research Question. This thesis investigates an ongoing debate of great importance for international politics: the security and stability consequences of border hardening. It does so by assessing border hardening and the prospects for stability in the Ferghana Valley. It also discusses basic assumptions related to regional stability, security, and border hardening. Scholars and analysts generally agree that stability depends on multiple factors related to sources of conflict as well as cooperation in the region. Many scholars assume also that border hardening supports regional stability when used to counter non-traditional security threats such as terrorism. Framing a border as an institution, this thesis analyzes the subjective forms of border legitimacy and obedience in relation to local perceptions and social behavior. While scholarly research often focuses on the short-term performance and effectiveness of border hardening, few analysts have considered how the means of state enforcement affect the subjective foundations of the border’s authority and legitimacy.
While borders are a dominant feature of everyday life in the Ferghana Valley, the disagreements concern how borders contribute to security and affect prospects for regional stability. Border making is easily understood as a political process, but unilateral state enforcement of borders through hardening also has economic and social effects that sometimes appear to be in tension with immediate security concerns. These political, economic, and social effects of border hardening are related to the perceptions of legitimacy of the border and the willingness of people in the borderland to observe the border.
Policy-makers and military leaders may also benefit from a greater appreciation of border dynamics, the processes of border hardening, and specific aspects of the Ferghana Valley. At the heart of Central Asia, the Ferghana Valley is strategically important to Russia, China, Turkey, the European Union, and the United States; each is interested in the region for its own political, economic, and security reasons. While borders regularly serve security functions for the state, including in military operations, this narrow focus limits appreciation for how border policies affect issues of legitimacy and respect for the border as an institution. Policy-makers and military leaders must also ask when, how, and to what extent border hardening is effective -- either alone or in coordination with other security methods -- in safeguarding against security threats. While policy and military doctrine focus on the short-term goals of securing or regulating the border, this thesis examines the political, economic, and social consequences of border hardening in relation to institutional legitimacy and regional stability. Furthermore, this thesis contributes to a growing body of interdisciplinary literature in security studies, geopolitics, the social sciences, and the humanities that considers prospects for regional stability in relation to borders, institutions, social behavior, and security policies.
Potential Explanations. While satisfactory answers to complicated questions must look beyond simple explanations, short-term gains in state security must also be weighed against the long- term costs for a region’s overall stability. The impact of border hardening between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on regional stability in the Ferghana Valley is complicated. Increased border hardening -- an instrumental means of coercive enforcement by the state -- may weaken the legitimacy of the border, resulting in decreased subjective respect for the border. The relationship of border hardening, institutional legitimacy, social behavior, and regional stability probably depends to a significant extent on state enforcement of borders primarily through instrumental coercion. With border hardening, the subjective willingness to obey the border decreases, the institutional legitimacy of the border weakens, and regional stability is threatened. The broader assessment of this thesis is that border hardening may undermine regional stability in certain contexts. Suggesting a new theoretical framework for understanding border hardening with concepts of institutional legitimacy, this thesis also suggests a research agenda to guide future multidisciplinary studies on political and social borders.
Border Hardening and Regional Stability. This study hypothesizes that border hardening between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan has weakened the institutional legitimacy of the border by changing social perceptions and diminishing willing obedience of the border’s authority, thereby undermining regional stability in the Ferghana Valley. This proposed theory involves identifying the long-term (and unintended) consequences of border hardening that extend beyond the immediate performance and effectiveness of hardened borders. The consequences involve the theoretical and practical dynamics of borders, as well as elements of social obedience in relation to authority and institutional legitimacy. Key factors in how a border contributes to long-term regional stability include the nature of border enforcement and the local perceptions of the border.
Such reasoning does not deny that border hardening may have led to improved regional security in the short term for the Ferghana Valley. In fact, border hardening between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan may have actually improved regional security in the Ferghana Valley by reducing cross-border illegal activity, “fixing” an ambiguous and porous border, and increasing state security against non-traditional threats common to the region such as terrorism. This assessment is consistent with a global border norm promoting delineated and demarcated borders, as well as with the logic that walls and fences help to keep out people that are regarded as dangerous.
According to an initial assessment of the literature, a multitude of factors influence security in the Ferghana Valley, including local borderland dynamics, national border policies, and social and political resiliency, as well as the prevalence of non- traditional security threats. Various programs intended to decrease conflict and improve security -- on the local, national, and international level -- assess the factors of instability in relation to the effectiveness of border policies and practices. Despite the aforementioned reasoning, there is some disagreement on whether border hardening reduces cross-border illegal activity and increases state security against non-traditional threats. While some border enforcement efforts produce immediate successes, assessments of long-term payoffs are even more mixed than judgments about the short- term benefits of border hardening. Some evidence from other borderlands suggests that border hardening may adversely affect the political, economic, and social life of a region, especially when administered unilaterally along a border. The following section presents several basic assumptions regarding border institutions, legitimacy, and regional stability.
Basic Assumptions for Legitimacy and Regional Stability Border Analysis. Prior to exploring the reasoning behind the proposed theory, this section establishes several basic assumptions and introduces the framework for authority and institutional legitimacy. First, a territorial border is an institution formed through political and social processes rather than arising from purely organic circumstances, such as geographic or environmental factors. A border is not merely accepted or immediately dominant in the political or social landscape; this means that local, national, and regional agents do not respect or acknowledge a border simply because the border is there on a cartographer’s map. As with other institutions, borders have rules enforced by the state. Agents -- including individuals at the local, state, or regional levels -- either honor or disregard a border. Additionally, every state intends to gain either willing obedience or social compliance with the rules of the border. In its purest form, subjective obedience implies an individual’s willingness to accept the rightful authority of the border institution, whereas the mere compliance of an individual is possible even with forms of illegitimate state coercion.
This thesis distinguishes between legitimate forms of institutional authority and illegitimate means of obtaining compliance. Functionally, a border manages or restricts the flow of people and goods either through legitimate institutional authority or illegitimate coercion. Instrumental methods of border enforcement may be legal, but perceived as illegitimate and normatively unjust. When an institution is legitimate, subjective obedience to the border is rooted in a combination of charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal authority in accordance with Max Weber’s framework for political and social behavior. Illegitimate means of enforcement demand compliance with the border either through forms of state coercion or interest.
Legitimate authority -- and, to a lesser extent, illegitimate instrumental forms of enforcement -- not conclusively lead to willing obedience or compliance with the border; rather, there is an increase in the probability that the population will observe the border. Criminal or otherwise nefarious elements will attempt to circumvent a border, ignoring institutional rules, regardless of the means of enforcement or social perceptions of the border’s authority. The difference in the border’s institutional legitimacy -- whether or not a state is almost entirely dependent on illegitimate coercive means of enforcement -- is an important factor in social behavior related to the long-term stability of a functioning border. Individuals are more likely to respect and obey the rules of a border when the population subjectively perceives the border as established by a legitimate authority—that is, right and just according to a combination of the three Weberian “ideal types” of authority. If a border is perceived as illegitimate -- illegal, unjustified, or not right -- then the state must resort to enforcement through coercion or interest. A border merely enforced and lacking the social perception of legitimacy is more institutionally fragile than one perceived as legitimate.
In some cases, compliance with the border depends on whether the state adequately coerces the population through force or other material instruments (i.e., border hardening). As soon as the state loses its will or ability to coerce the population, compliance with the border decreases and the legitimacy of the institution falters. Therefore, a border perceived as legitimate by individuals in the local borderland and society at large is more likely to be acknowledged and obeyed in the long-term. Furthermore, borders legitimized through traditional and rational-legal forms of authority are likely to be more institutionally stable and enduring than borders based on charismatic appeals or borders enforced by purely illegitimate coercive methods of enforcement. In other words, different perceptions of border legitimacy in the borderlands between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan affect social acknowledgement of the border: whether individuals are more likely to obey, comply, ignore, or defy. Traditional more willing obedience, while coercion and corrupt forms of interest (e.g., illegal material incentives) garner only compliance and are more likely to be ignored, challenged, or overturned in the future.
Border hardening between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan has restricted the flow of people and goods in the Ferghana Valley, in some locations dramatically, thus affecting everyday life in the borderlands. Evidence is scarce, however, on how perceptions of border legitimacy affect security and regional stability. As the border is enforced through instrumental means of coercion -- including hardening, securitization, and militarization -- those living in the borderlands may increasingly perceive the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border as illegitimate. As the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border loses local and regional perceptions of legitimacy, increasingly coercive means of enforcement may be required to influence social behavior and obtain compliance with border rules. The use of border hardening to counter extrinsic threats, such as terrorism and drug smuggling, may therefore ultimately threaten regional stability when state enforcement creates hardships on people in their everyday lives and erodes the institutional legitimacy of the border.
Conclusion
The great task is to discover not what governments prescribe but what they ought to prescribe, for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind.
—Lord Acton, 19th century British historian and politician
The preceding analysis investigated the underlying dynamisms of the Uzbekistan– Kyrgyzstan border as an institution. Considering the historical and geopolitical context of the Ferghana Valley, this thesis contends that coercive forms of border enforcement through hardening are linked to regional stability through the component of legitimacy. Specifically, within the historical context and the regional circumstances of the Ferghana Valley, the unilateral hardening of the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border may have delegitimized state authority, which necessitated further coercive border hardening practices that influenced local perceptions and behavior. Although further research needs to be done to evaluate local perceptions in more depth and variety, these critical local perceptions are indicative of low institutional legitimacy. The perceptions of suspicion and annoyance toward some forms of authority, feelings of unfairness and lack of respect for the border rules, and a sense of a systemic lack of transparency and accountability on the part of those enforcing the border all combine to ultimately undermine the border.
Institutional legitimacy of the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border is central to the stability of the borderlands. Local perceptions of the border are a crucial variable to border legitimacy. This thesis contends that coercive border hardening erodes the institutional legitimacy of the border under certain circumstances and threatens regional stability. Although border hardening presents many ethical questions related to the use of force by the state, the primary argument of this thesis is that coercive border hardening -- when perceived as illegitimate -- may undermine the actual security-related goal that it is meant to address through unintended consequences.
Chapter I established several premises for understanding borders in relation to the concepts of institutional legitimacy, authority, state security policies, and local perceptions. Chapter II provided the basic landscape for understanding borders and their dynamics. Chapter III explained border making in the Ferghana Valley, including the contemporary “danger narrative” and the historical context for border hardening as well as the basic chronology for the hardening of the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border. Chapter IV builds on the understanding of borders and the context for border hardening with the concepts of institutional legitimacy and observance of the border. Chapter V puts forth the theory and framework that are meant to conceptualize the relationship between border hardening and legitimacy when analyzed through local perceptions.
The historical and geopolitical contexts of the Ferghana Valley are important qualifiers to the proposed theory and framework. Along with the global norm calling for “fixed” borders in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, these contexts inform the basic assumptions in this thesis, as outlined in Chapter V. The historical context represented a shift from open to closed borders in a relatively swift period. The Ferghana Valley borders were traditionally characterized as porous and open; despite being demarcated under the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century, these lines remained largely administrative in nature. The shift from porous and open borders of “friendship” to the hardening of borders occurred over a period of several years in the late 1990s, solidifying with Uzbekistan’s 1999–2000 unilateral building of a fence along the border with Kyrgyzstan.
This thesis hypothesizes that when an institution is perceived as a legitimate authority, the population generally complies with institutional rules through willing obedience. Such an institution is considered stable. When the state no longer fulfills popular expectations, over time the institutional authority of the state is delegitimized. People are less likely to obey or comply with an institution’s rules or demands under perceptions of illegitimacy.
In the case of a border, such negative perceptions by the borderland people erodes the institutional legitimacy of the border and leads to at least discontent among the local population, but at worst, active resistance and violent opposition to the border and state authority in general. Border institutions depend on a mixture of willing obedience and coercion by the state to obtain social compliance. Coercive and illegitimate means of border enforcement may have unintended consequences, undermining perceptions of legitimacy and leading to a logic of escalation of border hardening measures. This may in turn necessitate increasing levels of coercive border enforcement in order to achieve social compliance. Perceptions of border legitimacy influence the extent to which individuals voluntarily comply with border rules. Methods of border hardening are nearly always regarded as illegitimate and coercive when they affect the local population adversely.
Between the intended short-term benefits in security and the long-term effects on stability, illegitimate means of border enforcement have unintended consequences. The logic of escalation becomes an engrenage or circular gear-like pattern that necessitates increasing levels of coercive border enforcement in order to achieve social compliance. When coercive border hardening is perceived by large groups of the borderland population as illegitimate, then the very border being secured by the state is undermined institutionally and politically, and its stability is weakened.