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REGIONAL AND NATIONAL DIVERSITY AS A FACTOR OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION THEORY DEVELOPMENT: PROBLEM STATEMENT1
Pain Emil, A.
Doctor of Political Sciences, professor of the Department of State and Municipal Service,
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of State and Municipal Management, the HSE.
Address: National Research University Higher School of Economics, 20 Myasnitskaya Str., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation.
E-mail: epain@hse.ru
Abstract
The article discusses the problem of the applicability of modern public administration theories and practices outside liberal democracies. The theory and practice are not universal; they do not apply to the conditions of the most numerous type of state in the world, namely nation-states, with «hybrid» political regimes and a mixed system of economic, social and cultural relations. The type of political and socio-economic development of these states cannot be defined in some fields; it is extremely resolute in being temporary and transitional. This is especially true in societies with clan and patron-client relationships, where these prevail at each level of the civil service hierarchy. By using the examples of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the author shows that this type of relationship gives rise to corruption, but also performs a number of important functions in the social sphere, and could sometimes be used as capital modernization by the authorities. Russia, described in the article as a country with ruined social mutual aid traditions, demonstrates that clan relationship traditions continuing in a number of Central Asian countries may cause less damage than full social atomization. The paper is aimed at formulating a hypothesis of the feasibility of convergent approach in public administration theory development for further research. The core idea represents the counter convergence of the theories and the real conditions of governance in various nation-states with hybrid regimes. The article is based on the author's own research and the public administration department's student studies, performed under his supervision.
Keywords: globalization, hybrid regime, clan traditions, corruption, modernization, uni-versalism.
The article was prepared within the grant work (RNF № 15-18-00064).
Introduction: Universality borders in the context of civil service evolution
The fundamental idea is that the criteria exists for evaluating public administration effectiveness and civil servant activity even though it has been historically changed all over the world2. The Weber - Wilson concept (at the beginning of the 20th century) was determined by measuring the effectiveness of bureaucrats' conformability with adopted state standards. By the 1960s, new concepts such as Responsive Administration appeared to assess the activities of civil servants, depending not only on the state executive's rules and regulations, but also on their service to society. This criterion was specified later and in the 1980s the concepts and programs of public service reform appeared (New Public Management). At that time, evaluation of civil servants depended on the effectiveness of the services to their citizens. In 2000, in countries with high levels of modernization, the civil service was reformed. The countries involved (Germany, UK, USA and others) named this process differently but the social meaning remained the same and consisted of the humanization of public services, increasing subordination in terms of the public interest, and the growth of public control over government activities.
In my opinion, the outline of public service evolution corresponds to reality. However, can we consider this statement as a universal tendency for the whole world? Absolutely not. This tendency is characteristic of only a narrow circle of law-bound states declaring the rule of law which protects primarily human rights. In these states the activities of all governmental levels, including the supreme power, submit to stable laws or court decisions, and the people, of course, are a source of power (Allan, 1998). According to the WJP Rule of Law Index 2014 only about 30 countries adhere to the rule of law in practice3. At the same time, the UN consists of 194 countries, whereas the total numbers of countries, considering unrecognized states and countries with limited recognition, are estimated at between 262 and 270 countries. Therefore, this trend of public service evolution covers only about 11-12% of the world. Estonia is the only post-soviet state with the rule of law (14th place in the WJP Rule of Law ranking), and Georgia is close to the group of leaders (31th place). Both these countries are objects of this study, as well as Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which received low estimates in the WJP ranking (89th, 93th and 97th respectively). Therefore the objects of our study, excluding Estonia and Georgia, could be attributed to any number of countries with a hybrid political regime. According to Philippe C. Schmitter's definition of a hybrid political regime, it combines some features of democracy (as a rule, a simulated multi-
2 The assumption of the head of the Public and Local Service department A. Barabashev, the seminar in September, 2015(NRU HSE).
3 The international NGO World Justice Project developed the Rule of Law Index in 2010. It measures the countries achievements in terms of legal protection, which is based on the universal rule of law principles. The World Justice Project. 2014 Rule of Law Index (http://worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/files/ wjp_rule_of_law_index_2014_rep ort.p df).
party system, elections, parliamentarism) and real authoritarian management, which means full or partial executive branch control over parliament, judiciary and mass media (Schmitter, 1994).
The hybrid nature of the political regime in Russia is demonstrated by comparing the rules of the main legislative documents with its socio-political reality. For instance, in the first section of the Russian Federation Constitution the country is defined as democratic, federal and law-bound, however many experts believe that the actual system of government is far from the claims of the rule of law in the Russian Federation (Hedlund, 2006, p. 775-80). Well-known political sociologist Timothy Colton, who was constrained by the Russian Presidential Executive Office in a meeting with the leader of the country within the Valdai forum, suggests that in Russia the essence of the rule of law idea, which should reflect the establishment of popular sovereignty as the source of power, were suppressed. Nevertheless Russian people - the citizens, the voters - are actually an object of manipulation by the establishment and bureaucracy (Colton, 2005, pp. 103-117).
Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan could be defined as countries with a multicultural socio-economic system and non-consolidated society. In these countries, the elements of the market economy coexist with vast areas of state monopoly, and post-industrial social institutions are exist in parallel with a premodern society.
If the trend of governance humanization is a characteristic of a limited numbers of countries defined as states with the rule of law, the question about the direction of the evolution of countries with hybrid regimes arises. When speaking about the universal and non universal trends of government it is necessary to keep in mind that thinkers and politicians have their own thoughts on «universalism» and «universal tendencies», thus these words have represented different notions at different times. In Roman times the idea of uni-versalism served to justify imperial rule; during the Crusades (Middle Ages), universalism was interpreted as the idea of the Universal Christian state under the aegis of the Pope. Later, Islam proclaimed a similar idea - a worldwide Islamic community (Ummah). In times of confrontation between two blocs of the world (the second half of the 20th century), each one proclaimed its own universalism: the Soviet Union countered collectivism (proletarian internationalism) with the West's values of individual freedom, the rule of law, universal suffrage, electoral competition between political parties and protection of civil rights. All of the above features characterize liberal-democratic political regime (Jary & Jary, 1999).
At the end of the 20th century, liberal universalism seemingly won the battle against other universalistic projects. As it was thought, the last dictatorships fell between 1970 and 1990 (in Southern Europe, Latin America and Asia), the process of decolonization was completed, and the «Socialist camp» (block of communist countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America) ceased to exist. All these developments have led to the emergence of new democracies. Samuel Huntington thought it was a process of the third and final wave of global democratization (Huntington, 1991). Around this time Francis Fukuy-
ama wrote his famous article «The End of History», which illustrates the end of the pre-liberal history of the humanity (Fukuyama, 1989). Indeed, by the 1990's liberal democracy had gained a leading position in the world, and not only because it provided higher performance in labor productivityas well as the quality and duration of human life. The liberal project was also the most flexible and expansive; it incorporated elements of individualism, collectivism, capitalism and socialism. The most developed countries are both liberal and social; they ensure the development of private initiatives and general social security, especially for the weakest categories of people. However, at the turn of 20th and 21st centuries liberal universalism had a new formidable opponent - anti-globalism, whose followers did not put forward an alternative project of universalism, and disputed the necessity and possibility of a single universal way for the development of humanity. In this case, anti-globalization is understood as a variety of political forces advocating for the protection of cultural identity and cultural traditions (local, religious, ethnic, national, state, and others.).
One of the globalization paradoxes is the simultaneous display of two seemingly mutually exclusive trends from the end of the 20th century. On the one hand, the certain standardization of different cultures is observed, on the other hand, there is growing cultural differentiation and disintegration, defined as a special phenomenon in science and called the «ethnic and religious renaissance» (Comaroff, 1994, pp. 35-70). It refers to the rise in interest in the traditional group, «ascriptive» forms of identity (ethnic, religious, racial, clan and communal) and traditional social practices. Modern traditionalism has many faces and a different nature; it reflects sincere and hypocritical politically motivated concern about the devastating effects of uncontrolled modernization. This process is driven by many factors, but I assume that one of the most important is the «social construction of neotraditionalizm» (artificial traditionalism), which was used by pre-modern societies' elite to resist modernization processes under the pretense of protecting traditional cults and values (Pain, 2011, pp. 118-191). However, there are objective processes of resistance to globalization.
Relationships between the countries and nations of the world expand in a globalization context, but at the same time the cultural heterogeneity of global development grows. Modernization, covering more and more territory, has come into such regions where the inner life is poorly prepared for its inception. In some «third world» countries which have been exposed to modernization under pressure from external forces, this process was accompanied by the destruction of traditional institutions and ways of life, that resulted in an increase in the social disorganization of societies. These events marked one manifestation of a globalization crisis . Another manifestation was the fact that in countries where a nation-state had not developed, tribalism and conflict intensified, splits in tribal, ethnic and religious groups revealed themselves, and there was an explosion of religious fundamentalism and terrorism. A variety of conflicts and terrorism has claimed the lives of thousands of victims. From 1990 to 2010 the number of victims of terrorist attacks were 72,519 people in Iraq;
14,157 people in Pakistan; and 12,649 people in Russia (Belozerov, Suprunchuk, 2012). At the beginning of the 21st century, such conflicts covered not only the former colonial countries and societies with unfinished national unity, but also the nation-states of Europe and the United States. Even in relatively developed countries, such as Russia, in the 1990s attempts at strong but fragmentary modernization caused widespread dissatisfaction among the population which increased due to the propaganda of political forces who were not interested in the modernization of a country, especially not the modernization of its political and legal system.
The rise of hybrid political regime
At the turn of the second and third millennia public demand for authoritarian stability was emphasized due to the local establishment and it led to the legitimacy of hybrid political regime. For a time theorists of political transition considered that such regimes were temporary (Huntington, 1990). Nevertheless, life has shown that these regimes are fairly stable and persist for decades. The assumption of a single-line evolution of such regimes in the direction of democracy only was not justified. In contrast, cases of regime movement in the opposite direction and the increase in authoritarian characteristics were common. The most striking example is Russia. According to Timothy Colton, all institutions of democratic government created in the 1990s either became inefficient by the beginning of the 21st century or were frozen (Colton, 2005, p. 103).
One of the most distinctive features of hybrid political regimes is a high susceptibility to corruption, which almost totally defeats the state machine. This corruption has the typological features inherent in all hybrid regimes. It is also characterized by numerous specific properties related to the historical and national-cultural features of different countries; , primarily those that have kept stratification in society.
In our research, we distinguish three types of stratification in society:
1. Societies which have retained some features of tribalism, blood and kinship: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, several autonomous regions of the Russian North Caucasus;
2. Societies which have lost features of tribalism but retain features of patriarchal community relations and territorial clans: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan;
3. Non-traditional society with quasi-traditional institutions and unconsolidated population: Russian, Ukraine, Belarus. Residents of Russia (excluding the populations of the Russian Federation national republics) lead Europeans in terms of their weakness in preserving traditional, family and geographically-neighborly relations. Russian citizens have the lowest values of collectivism, mutual aid and trust (Inglehart, 2005). At the same time, they are highly dependent on the state and its bureaucracy. Such dependence does not implicate protest among most of the people and it is perceived as the norm, or as a national tradition.
The features of a bureaucratic hierarchy and corruption in societies with clan traditions4
There are a lot of corruption definitions but the most suitable for the purpose of this article is the broad interpretation of this concept which was proposed in the 1990s and determines corruption as the abuse of public office for unofficial purposes (Klitgaard, 1998). The The Russian researcher Georgy Sa-tarov was one of the first to single out the specifics of corruption in the rule of law states with hybrid political regimes (Satarov, 2002, p. 42). The first type of corruption was named «Western». In this case, corruption is a market where corrupt services are sold. The blowing stage is characterized by occasional relationships between the actors of a corrupt deal, and an apical one in the presence of intermediaries (agents) who help to communicate to the «sellers» and «buyers». «Eastern corruption» is characterized by stable, non-market patron-client relationships, when an influential patron uses his position to provide people addicted to him (customers) with services to ensure their loyalty or enlist their support. The main channels of patron-client relationship operations of eastern corruption systems are patriarchal family ties and compatriotic and other traditional systems of social relations, which we shall call «clan traditions» in this article. In Central Asian countries, as we will demonstrate, both types of corruption relations are present, but the «eastern» type dominates. However, this type is also heterogeneous, because different nations have different clan traditions. Some of these nations led mainly nomadic lifestyles in the recent past (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan), the others were settled and agricultural in the past (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan).
Leonid Gusev, referring to the opinion of the Kazakhstan Institute of Philosophy Academy of Sciences director Abdumalik Nysanbayeva, wrote about the significant role of tribalism in contemporary life of the republic (Gusev, 2005). According to his works, the political and legal system of modern Kazakhstan is determined by patron-client relationships. The main group of this relationship consists of three traditional tribal associations, called zhuz5: senior - «Uly» (southern and south-eastern Kazakhstan - there make up about 35% of the population); middle - «Orta» (northern, central and eastern Kazakhstan, which includes the largest city Alma-Ata, about 40% of Kazakhstan's population), and younger - «Kishi» (West Kazakhstan - 25% of the population). Some especially revered, although small, groups are not included in the zhuz hierarchy. The members of these groups called «torus», who are the direct descendants of Genghis Khan, and «skin», who are the descendants of the first Arabs to bring Islam to the Kazakh steppe and perform the Hajj. These are a type of alien Vikings of the Kazakh nation and its «blue blood» (Gusev, 2005).
4 Clan is the word of Celtic origin, meaning "offspring". For Celtic peoples (the Irish, Scots, Welsh, and others) it is defined as tribal communities with common ancestors. Currently, the term is often used as a metaphor for strong informal ties, reminding the family, such as "mafia family".
5 A zhuz (Kazakh: juz also translated as "horde" or "hundred") is one of the three main territorial and tribal divisions in the Kypchak Plain area that covers much of the contemporary Kazakhstan, and represents the main tribal division within the ethnic group of the Kazakhs.
My research (in particular, interviews with representatives of the Kazakh diaspora in Moscow and with government officials in Shymkent region and Almaty, Kazakhstan) has shown that researchers, unprofessional observers and publicists often inadequately assess the role of tribalism. If the publicists are residents of the republic, but not ethnic Kazakhs, they often exaggerate the effect of safety and some traditional structures, such as that of the zhuz. In contrast, Kazakhs are prone to underestimate their influence for various reason, for instance, the fear of being branded as «backward». However, it is difficult to find any Kazakh who would not remember what race, tribe and zhuzu his family belongs to. One of the interviewed Kazakh Diaspora representatives said that her father, a famous Moscow professor, integrated into the Russian cultural environment and did not try to give his children a kazakh education, or even teach them the kazakh language, but, at the same time, he persistently instilled in his sons the knowledge of their ancestry to the seventh generation. Such knowledge is the main thread linking the Kazakhs with their ethnic group. It is natural for members of a nomadic culture, where a person's identification with his family, tribe and Zhuz (union of tribes erstwhile) is more informative than the link with the territory.
Zhuzes. In the past, knowledge of the seven generations was sort of an essential attribute of a nomadic life, because it prevented closely related marriages and violation of genus endogamous prohibitions. In Soviet times, blood and kinship relations have become the most important form of adaptation to the new conditions of life, preserved despite the Soviet program against «tribal vestiges», and forcible bringing nomads to a sedentary lifestyle. In the process of collectivization, the protective function of the whole blood and kinship relations system emerged, and did not allow class xenophobia to develop in Kazakhstan in Russian forms («the poor against the rich»). It saved thousands of lives. In terms of the Soviet economy («shortage economy»), ancestral ties became a convenient form of limited benefits access, primarily because of their flexibility and closeness to the state. The same features in the current circumstances are a convenient tool for corruption channels. At the same time, generic ties compressed and today their highest level, called a zhuz, does not play such a significant role as it did before. A zhuz does not have management institutes and common rituals which should progress communication. As our interviewee in Moscow noted, there is no sense in asking a man for some favor simply because he is the same zhuz. Mutual aid in the form of patronage is usually limited by the levels of one or several genus of a tribe. Belonging to the same zhuz now reflects regional differences in identity, for example, southerners (senior zhuz) are more traditional than the eastern, central and western regions' residents, (middle zhuz). As one of the interviewed Shymkent officials said «Almaty citizens (middle zhuz) are our Europeans. They have a completely different mentality. Shymkent citizens, Southerners, are like residents of Texas in America, we are a rich, not very educated people, but mobile and enterprising «. Some experts see a direct relationship between people belonging to a particular zhuz and their concentration in different state structures of Kazakhstan. According to Rashid Jumaly, «the older zhuz occupy a privileged place in the Presidential Executive Office and Parliament, medium zhuz control the ministries, and the younger (lower) clan manage cities and regions» (Jumaly, 2015). Nevertheless, the
author did not provide any evidence to confirm this conclusion and, in my view, his statements are too categorical. There is a possibility of other explanations for the phenomena. If there is a high concentration of members of the same zhuz in some regional institutions, it may just be the result of the patron selecting candidates from compatriots, and this is a consequence of belonging to one zhuz.
A genus, even the largest one, is still a more compact community than a zhuz. The members of the genus know each other, sometimes not personally, but through some close relatives. They may interact with each other at certain celebrations, funerals or in family groups. The entire clan obviously know its most famous and influential representatives.
Big family. Despite the significance of a genus, the main manifestations of Kazakh mutual aid now focus on the level of large patriarchal families. In Shymkent region, it is, as a rule, a three-generational multiline family, which includes not only the descendants of the patriarch (grandfather, great-grandfather) but also the descendants of his brothers. Such families can consist of more than 50 people. Alma-Ata is normally dominated by small nuclear families (parents and children) as the owners or tenants of small urban apartments. However, here, the patriarchal family plays the main role in its consciousness and in the actual socio-economic relations. Members of this family, besides participating in numerous family ceremonies, also provide joint care for their parents and older family members. The most important function of the family today is the career guidance and educational assistance for their youth. If one of the family members is well educated and settled in the city, it motivates the other younger family members to move the parents may even eventually move to the city.
The unique ability to adapt to new territorial conditions always distinguishes nomadic cultures from those of traditionally sedentary peoples. The ability of Kazakhs to move with their origin genus contributed to their tremendous ability for adaptation. In some ways these socio-cultural characteristics explain the «miracle of Astana», which means a double increase in the population of the city in less than a decade (from 1999 to 2007). It happened after a stable decline over decades (Pain, 2014, pp. 73-83). It is also astounding that the city, which is located in a zone with a harsh cold climate and was almost ethnic Russian, has increased its population due to the influx of ethnic Kazakhs, whose number has tripled during the specified time. The scale of this unique growth of inhabitants could not be explained by economic factors (high levels of investment) and administrative measures. All of these factors affected all of the various groups of people in Kazakhstan, but Kazakhs from the far south moved to Astana instead of ethnic Russian, prevailed in the suburbs and previously constituted more than half of its population. They were also noted to have the highest level of survival in Astana, despite the radical climate change when compared with the living conditions in their original places of residence (Pain, 2014).
The observed phenomenon can be considered as one of the principal cultural elements of nomadism and as a system of patron-client relations. However, such relations are not only used to solve domestic problems or for the cities' development. In states with predominance of authoritarian institutions, patron-client relations have an impact on the formation of the entire state service apparatus.
According to D. Sharafutdinova, the presidents of all Central Asian republics surround themselves with trusted people from their clans after taking office. Commissioned officers do the same within their own environs. The chain of civil servants built on this principle runs from top to bottom and ends at municipalities. (Sharafutdinova, 2015). The fact is that such recruitment is rarely made public and commented on, although Uzbekistan is the leader of cover-ups in this area. Only in the case of high-profile scandals, when the government is interested in showing off their fight against corruption, is Uzbek society allowed to know about it. A case of this kind occurred in Uzbekistan in 1989. At that time information about a screening by President Islam Karimov to check information was announced literally everywhere. The president, for some reason, chose Hayot Gaffarov, the hakim (mayor) of Navoiy region, as the object of this demonstration of the fight against corruption. It turned out that Gaffarov had personally selected every employee yet only those who were loyal to him and belonged to his inner circle, the clan. As a result, he replaced 90% of the district and city managers, the entire administrative apparatus, heads of the economic and cultural spheres, and public organizations. Similar facts were revealed a few years later during an inspection of the activities of Samarkand Region hakim, Alisher Mardiev. The inspection surge passed through the law enforcement, judicial and tax authorities, labor exchange, local departments of the Central Bank, municipalities and other institutions (Taksanov, 2002).
Clans in Uzbekistan differ from Kazakh clans because the settled population in Uzbekistan have dominated since ancient times. In Uzbekistan, clan formation was based on territorial features. Members of Uzbek clans are more like compatriots than relatives; they build their clan relations not on age or position in the family system, but by reference to a number of utilitarian features, primarily a man's wealth and his personal achievements in obtaining social and political influence. The most powerful representatives («patrons») are at the higher levels of the clan and always support the dependent members of the community («clients»). Expert evidence indicates that in Uzbekistan the four most influential clans (Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Fergana) compete for political power (Tolipov, 2010, pp. 142-158).
D. Sharafutdinova identifies the following common features of bureaucracy functioning in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, leading to corruption (Sharafutidi-nova, 2015):
- State hierarchical structure reflects signs of cronyism due to the system of patronclient relations formed by lower and higher links;
- Positions of officials are secured due to inclusion in the specified system of relationships and the accumulated resources in terms of social ties;
- Appointment of civil servants is perceived as the possibility of privileged access to limited resources;
- A public servant continuing the tradition of patron-client relations uses an official position for unofficial purposes; corruption (in its classical sense) becomes a systematic and inevitable phenomenon in such a relation system;
- Society puts up with corruption and accepts it as an inevitable and normal phenomenon.
In addition to these common properties, the essential features of the bureaucratic organization of the clan system and the manifestations of corrupt relations are preserved in both countries. In Kazakhstan the clan system is more closed, exclusive, and focused only on relatives with varying degrees of kinship. In Uzbekistan a member of the clan and bureaucratic system can be almost anyone with accumulated economic capital and significant resources in social connections. However, the Kazakh clans are put on display and are known because kinship cannot be kept secret. The Uzbek system of territorial clans is classified, or even conspired. The restriction is maintained by the authorities. Information about this issue is off-limits to the public except in occasional campaigns against corruption. The interviewing of the public about the crime situation in the country, which took place at the behest of law enforcement agencies for two years (from 2008) has not been formally published, and stopped entirely in 2010 (Uzbekistan: Assessment and Recommendations, 2010).
Another feature of Kazakhstan clan traditions and related forms of corruption is the limited spread of these traditions due to the fact that according to the last population census (2009) only 63% are Kazakhs (their share in the total population was lower than before). According to the previous Soviet population census of 1989, the Kazakhs were a minority (39% of the population)6. That part of population, which is not included in the Kazakh clan and tribal structure, is also included in the system of corrupt relations, but it is a different type of corruption. G. Satarov determined it as Western corruption; a market of corruption services that are open to any person in need. In the first (lowest) level an official takes a bribe to solve the everyday problems of a customer, at the second level (the highest) bribes are taken as «commission» related to the conclusion of major contracts, money laundering abroad, permits to conduct banking operations with budgetary funds, providing loans, preferential export quotas, etc. (Chebotarev, 2004).
In spite of the seemingly archaic clan traditions in Kazakhstan retaining features of tribalism, the state generally is more advanced in the development of its legal system and less corrupt than Uzbekistan. According to research by the Heritage Foundation, administrative corruption in Uzbekistan is the highest in the Central Asian region, significantly surpassing Kazakhstan (http://www.heritage. org/index/excel/2014/index2014_data.xls)7.
In the ranking of corruption risks by Transparency International in 2014, Kazakhstan is in 126th place, outrunning Uzbekistan (166th) and Russia (136th). This fact has many explanations. In my opinion, the most important condition for the greater advancement of Kazakhstan in the sphere of fighting against corruption is intensive involvement in the global division of labor, including communication with foreign investors (closer than in Uzbekistan and in Russia, in recent years), and greater openness to international law and inspection by advisors in line with the abovementioned countries. Kazakhstan, for example, actively cooperates
6 Statistics Agency of RK. The population of the Republic of Kazakhstan, updated 1.09.2015 (http://www. stat.gov.kz/)
7 2014 Index of economic freedom, The Heritage foundation.
with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which consults Central Asia countries on corruption. While Kazakhstan took the advice of the OECD and started to improve its anti-corruption program, Uzbekistan participated only in the monitoring (Sharafutdinova, 2015).
About the convergent approach in the development of the theory and practice of public administration
At least two-thirds of all countries year on year are recognized as archaic and backward from the norm, judging by the rating of the rule of law and corruption security (Index of corruption risks). The first reason is that reference samples rather than average value (when the anomaly is a deviation from the extremes) are taken as the norm. Secondly, the features of reference, «normative» states, are based only on the model of liberal democracies. This approach is in conflict with common sense and modern concepts of political philosophy and sociology experts. The contradiction between the West's uniqueness as a special cultural area and its role as a model for the rest of the world became visible to many researchers in the 1970s. This contradiction was not seen in the early stages of the modernization spread beyond Europe (for example, at the time of Max Weber), but it became obvious after decolonization, the emergence of new states and their involvement in the process of modernization. This period witnessed huge differences in the shape, pace and sequence of modernization steps in different countries. It was subsequently discovered that several local models of modernization were successful and competitive. This allowed the advancement of the idea of Multiple Modernities (Eisenstaedt, 2000).
Within the framework of this theory, phenomena such as clan traditions cannot be determined as archaic, or as negative as deviant behavior. We have tried to show that these traditions are not only deeply rooted, but justified because in modern conditions they have important social functions in relation to the disabled population, provision of territorial mobility and maintaining the stability of a society split into tribal, ethnic and religious groups. Many nations of the former Soviet Union have kept their social traditions in spite of the Soviet totalitarian policy of combating «traditional vestiges.» At the same time, the example of modern Russia shows what can happen to a country where traditional relationships are destroyed and new civic ones do not appear.
The traditional mechanisms of social control together with the institutions that kept these traditions has been almost completely dismantled on most of the Russian territory. Rural communities have been firmly forgotten and left in the middle of the last century. Religious communities (orthodox parishes) were destroyed during the Soviet era and their role is unlikely to be restored today (Dubin, 2006). What about family relationships? Their destruction in the Russian environment, bringing close contacts to the level of occasional communication is a universally recognized fact. The complete oblivion of basic kinship terms denoting relatives outside the small nuclear family points to the weakening of family and kinship ties in Russian.
Neighbor relations in the cities are filled with real content only within the entrances of the multistory apartment buildings. At the boundaries of a single entrance, they will be limited, shaped as an occasional greeting to each other. In addition, it is difficult to find general agreement of all the residents of the apartment building. Sociologists highlight that in modern Russian cities «Neighbors are perceived partly as a forced, imposed element of the environment» (Shmerlina, 2006).
Fifteen years of the Levada Center's sociological monitoring of post-Soviet Russian society life revealed the monotonic weakening of all kinds of social connections and the compression of the interpersonal communication sphere to the level of person's apartment. Two-thirds of all respondents consistently limit their weekly contacts during off-hours, communicating only with family members and relatives. More or less regularly in off-hours outside the apartment individuals communicate with colleagues at work (20% of respondents), members of a voluntary social or cultural organization or sports club (5% of respondents), and people from the same church (2% of respondents) (Dubin, 2006).
There is no doubt that the idea of Russian society as a collectivist, cathedral and communal is a myth. On the contrary, today this society is one of the most authoritarian in the modern world. This fact creates conditions for various forms of authoritarian manipulation of the mass consciousness. Francis Fukuyama, highlights the negative assessment of fragmented intergroup relations in Russia and the low level of trust in society, believes that a «familistic society is where the overriding ways of social instinct implementation in the family or the wider kinship structure (clans and tribes) have a higher level of socialization than in modern Russia. In Russia members of the public are not able to unite with each other» (Fukuyama, 2004, p. 57). Everyday life in Russia gives many examples of how, through a shortage of citizens' legal protection on the part of state, competitive advantages are obtained by representatives of the ethnic communities (such as the peoples of the North Caucasus republics of Russia), who keep close traditional ties. These connections provide an intra-zone of confidence, which is necessary to conduct business and provide various forms of collective protection. In this regard, evaluation of these types of informal relations within the framework of the Multiple Modernities theory are justified as an appropriate response to the current norm.
More and more professionals of political philosophy and sociology conclude that cultural differences will continue to grow, and the area of universalism will shrink to a narrow set of modern institutions and values. The list variability depends on the author. Thus, according to Habermas, universal features of modernity are characterized primarily by the development of civil rights and freedoms (Habermas, 1985). Another well-known philosopher and sociologist, A. Martinelli, sees universal features in modern societies' pursuit of innovation, as well as in «the increasing structural differentiation of society and the formation of independent national states» (Martinelli, 2006). Specific features of universal values may also vary depending on the thinker's point of view, but the main principle for differentiation of the narrow scope of versatility and the wide diversity of modern national models becomes a basis for social sciences. I will try to formulate a hypothesis about possible mutual convergence in the development of public administration theory of various national states, based on the above-mentioned theoretical materials.
Hypothesis formulation
It is assumed that the convergence may occur in two opposite directions.
1. From national to universal («from bottom to top»). This statement refers to the evolutionary adaptation of national states and hybrid political regimes to the reference samples of public administration. This is the classic scheme of modernization, but we need to clarify that there is the possibility of development only in the narrow sphere of universal trends, namely:
- The sphere of human and life values, health, safety and comfort development. As international comparative sociological research has shown, this development leads to the changes of the social values structure: the transition from the desire of mere survival to the values of self-expression. (Inglehart, 2005). This trend corresponds to the main direction in the development of public administration towards more humanization;
- The sphere of technological development, including the implementation of new technologies in public administration. For example, computerized government (e-Government) is an electronic document management system of government, based on the total automation of administrative processes, simplification of procedures for citizens' communication with the authorities (facilitation of property and business registration, tax payments etc.) This practices are perceived positively all over the world; only bureaucracy could react negatively;
- In addition, there is a high possibility of the release of post-Soviet authoritarian societies from those stereotype minds that have a relatively short historical basis, formed only in the Soviet times. The experience of Estonia, other Baltic States and Georgia gives quite good examples of how, in just a few years after democratic reform, the mass consciousness changed and led to the efficiency of public administration reform, including reforms in the area of fighting against corruption (Borovs-kikh, 2015).
2. From universal to national («from top to bottom»). Adaptation of the theory and practice of public administration to the diversity of regional, cultural and national countries' characteristics. Not only must the country with hybrid political regimes adapt to the advanced models of public administration, but also the theoretical materials of public administration have to change, become more flexible for adjusting to the various conditions of more than half the countries of the world.
- Firstly, it is necessary to find a new approach to accounting for deep-rooted social traditions remaining in the national culture and the mass consciousness for a long time, sometimes for centuries. In my opinion, it is advisable to consider clan traditions differentially, to legalize nepotism in some cases, to emphasize the cases when these phenomena do not interfere (or sometimes contribute to) the socio-economic modernization of the state. In this article, these positive examples were presented based on Kazakhstan analysis. At the same time, Uzbekistan's example points to another trend when nepotism and patron-client
relations are factors which are freezing the archaic political regime and socio-economic regression;
- In a number of possible changes to the theory of public administration in the direction of consideration of national specificity are the suggestions of a differentiated approach to the definition of bribery and the emphasizing of its forms which could be legalized (Oak, 2015, pp. 580-604). When the government will understand that certain phenomena are so rooted that the classical legal methods to counteract it are powerless, then perhaps the authority would find Brazil's experience very useful, where bribes are legal and called «zheyto». Besides, for every action or inaction of state officials there is a clear price list. Bribes to officials are passed through specially certified couriers, called «despachante.» This form of legalization of bribes allows citizens to understand what exactly the authorities, can do, at what time and for what money8.
Conclusion
My study is still at the initial stage, so the majority of ideas expressed in this article are preliminary; they are only hypothesizes which need to be tested. However, I have high confidence that the productive idea of Multiple Modernities must be considered in public administration theory in recognition of the need for improving the national diversity integration of the modern world.
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