Cultural policy in Central Asia: comparative analysis of legislations and public policies

This thesis provides an innovative and original contribution to the field of cultural policy research, critically assessing the public cultural policies enforced in three Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Moving from the conceptual framework of system and lifeworld, this dissertation studies how the Central Asian governments tend to colonize the cultural sphere intervening through legislative, financial and institutional measures. The first chapter looks at the concept of cultural policy and related to it theories. The cultural policy refers to policies of diverse stakeholders that are directed to regulate or affect production and distribution of cultural goods and services. This chapter considers first, the framework of Deulund P., based on the interplay of Habermasian concepts system and lifeworld and second, the types of governmental approach toward the cultural sphere proposed by Hillman-Chartrand and McCaughey. The second chapter introduces the legislations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the cultural sphere. Identifying the main similarities and differences this thesis argues that the main reason of similarities are Soviet legislation and regional integration processes. One of the sections argues that the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan possess central position in shaping the cultural policy. The third chapter after assessing the legal terms related to the cultural property, studies the balance of the divergent interests (international, national, private) regarding the cultural property in the legislations of analyzed countries. The study is performed through the analysis of two hypothetical cases (national vs. private) and dualism between cultural nationalism and cultural internationalism. The fourth chapter investigates the cultural decentralization process, applying two analytical tools: the Type Function Framework and the Administrative Design Framework. There are two main conclusions emerged after collected data analysis. First, Kazakhstan has embraced the most decentralized system, while the management of the cultural sphere in Uzbekistan is still largely based on a centralized decisionmaking. Second, all three analyzed countries have adopted a strategy of Distributed Institutional Monopoly. Concluding, this thesis draws up a historical reconstruction of the administrative cultural policy-making in independent Kazakhstan. The goal is to highlight how the structure of the ministry of culture, the public finance in the cultural sector, and the landscape of cultural organizations has changed over the years. In this way, it has been possible to identify the trends of the cultural policy development in Kazakhstan as well as to critically evaluate the practical efficacy of the governmental strategy.