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Democratization processes in Central Asia have not yet reached their result. The states are still

authoritarian, though to different extents. The degree of authoritarianism varies from Turkmen

isolation and Kyrgyz quasidemocratic government. The states vary in a num!er of properties,

including the distri!ution of natural resources and the level of economic development as "ell as

the intensity of presence of international democracypromoters. To find the factors that influence

the intensity of authoritarianism is the purpose of this research. The theory that most scholars

use to explain this phenomenon is that the amount of natural resources present in the

countries is in a positive correlation with the degree of authoritarianism. 1However, such a

theory cannot account for the relative softness of the regime in Kazakhstan. What follows

is an attempt to prove that the presence of international actors that have gained extensive

access to Kyrgyz population made the softness of regime possile. !n addition to presenting

arguments aout the influence of external actors on the Kyrgyz regime, the research is

focused on finding the reason why the actors had such extensive access to the Kyrgyz

population. !t is clear that such a situation could not e the result of an intentional

government decision. The Kyrgyz authoritarian regime would not allow the existence, let

alone, extensive influence of pro"democratic actors within the state.#Therefore, there must

e another reason why such presence and influence did occur. The hypothetical answer to

this $uestion that the research is focused on attempting to answer is that this access was the

result of the way the Kyrgyz governing elite legitimized itself at the time of shortly after the

state%s independence. That is, the government of Kyrgyzstan tried to portray the state

under the government of the time as a legitimate international actor, recognized y other

states and accepted into the international community. &ne of the multiple results of such

legitimization was the need to invite international pro"democratic non"governmental

1Dank"art #usto" $%&'(). *Transitions to Democracy+ To"ard a Dynamic odel,* Comparative Politics -+ /(.2Kirill 0ourzhanov and Amin 1aikal $%&&/). 2The 0e" Kazakhstan+ 3as 1omething 4one 5rong67 The World

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organizations and grant them access to the state%s population. !t is clear that a lot more

factors affected the Kyrgyz regime. However, with the resources and time availale at the

moment only one factor mentioned aove will e highlighted.

A num!er of different concepts must !e defined in !efore the research results can !e presented.

:ne can easily see that "hen dealing "ith variations of degrees of authoritarianism, one cannot

ignore the factors that make one regime softer than the other. A num!er of measures should !e

used in measuring the intensity of authoritarianism. :ne of these is the proportion of mem!ers of

ruling party in the parliament to the num!er of those from other parties. Another, could !e the

statistics on violation of human rights "ithin the country. ;t is clear that democratization "ill

increase parliament representation and decrease human rights violations. Another process that

needs to !e defined is the process of framing 'oert (enford and )avid *now Talked of this

process extensively and defined it as a process of changing the way the society sees a certain

aspect of reality y presenting to it only the information that serves the cause, and

downplaying or completely ignoring facts that are opposed.+egitimization is another term

used in the research. This is used to refer to the process of the government, legitimizing its

power in the eyes of its population and other states. astly, the term -civil society- is used

to represent a social layer within the state that would serve as an internal democracy

promoter and communicator etween the rest of the population, the state%s government

and international actors. The importance of such a society was extensively discussed y

'oert utnam in his ook /0aking democracy work-.

3 #o!ert