Commitment devices, opportunity windows, and institution building in Central Asia

Year

Source: World Bank (2008).

Fig. 7: Net Development Assistance 1995 - 2006

Although weaker, other forms of cooperation between the EU and countries without an EU
membership perspective may also provide a disciplining effect on institutional reforms. Russia
and economies in Central Asia are part of the TACIS-programme. The EU has underscored
the strategic importance of its neighbours in Central Asia and the EU has already become
an important export market for members of the TACIS-programme (European Comission (EC),
2007). Although the TACIS-programme is not a political agreement in the first place it explicitly
stresses institutional, legal and administrative reforms in the former Soviet countries by providing
technical assistance and training to public employees (EC, 2007). This explicitly tackles some
of the points related to education discussed in the previous section. Moreover, the TACIS-
programme became the basis for an ongoing political and economic integration process between
the EU and Central Asian economies (EC, 2007).

Figure 7 shows the amount of net development assistance as a fraction of GDP received by
CEEC and Central Asian countries. As shown by the graph CEEC have constantly received
more development assistance than Central Asian countries from 1995 to 2006. However, those
countries in Central Asia that have turned out to be better reformers, namely Kazakhstan and
the Kyrgyz Republic, followed by Tajikistan, are also those which have received more assistance
than Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. And again, this can be also seen in institutional changes
depicted in Figure 1

15

<<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   >>

More intriguing information