‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’: Personalised Power Dynamics in Kyrgyzstan in 2020-2025

Paper title: ‘Good cop, bad cop’: Personalised power dynamics in Kyrgyzstan in 2020-2025 According to the most recent V-Dem data, three thirds of the current world population live in authoritarian countries. While this phenomenon is often referred to democratic backlash or democratic erosion in the formerly democratic parts of the world, this has been a steady reality for Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The five republics of Central Asia has been and remain on a largely authoritarian spectrum ranging from nearly totalitarian Turkmenistan to occasionally ‘party free’ Kyrgyzstan. Nevertheless, there are two evident recent trends in the region: evolution of modern, more stable and sustainable authoritarian regimes in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the final definite shift towards authoritarianism in Kyrgyzstan, which have often been seen as fluctuating between democracy and autocracy in the last thirty years. At that, Kyrgyzstan has also shifted from the Soviet legacies and developed a peculiar type of Central Asian populist authoritarianism – populist authoritarianism based on a strong presidential rule. As a result of the last government coup of 2020, the country is de facto headed by two politicians – President Sadyr Japarov and the head of the State Committee of National Security Kamchybek Tashiev. This rather unusual duumvirate has also developed an efficient tactic of working with the public. President Japarov often acts as a forgiving, kind and humane father of the nation, while Tashiev is more often seen as a classic strong man. While this tactic might work when working with the general public, it signifies a major flaw in the political system. The system has become highly volatile, personified and dependent on the internal dynamics of the ruling duo rather than on the country’s Constitution, the rule of law, and the political institutions. In this paper, I use the current political system of Kyrgyzstan to address the broader issues associated with the contemporary presidential systems.