Markowitz, Lawrence P. "Local elites, prokurators and extraction in rural Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey, vol.27, no.1 (2008): 1-14.

Markowitz, Lawrence P. "Local elites, prokurators and extraction in rural Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey, vol.27, no.1 (2008): 1-14.

• In many viloyatlar of Uzbekistan there is a power struggle between the governor [hokim] and the prosecutor's office [prokurator]. Many prosecutors remain independent of the governor's office and other local elite groups, there is significant opportunity to engage in political deals with local authorities in return for bribes and kickbacks (1).
• Although the agricultural economy of rural Uzbekistan has changed little since the collapse of the Soviet Union and remains relatively uniform, the strategies of local elites to seek rents from the population varies greatly by district and by the personalities involved. This study examines the differences in rent-seeking techniques between prosecutors in Samarqand and Navoiy viloyat (2).
• Looking at divergencies in regional practices of rent-seeking is important b/c identifying the causes behind more sustainable practices with more limited corruption can guide policy-makers towards strategies for purposefully constructing sustainable and reduced rent-seeking situations (2).
• State policy implementation at the local level in Uzbekistan is defined by concentrations of economic power under leaders of locality-based state-owned enterprises, and the devolution of political power to central-appointed governors -- these were party secretaries [obkom] during the Soviet period and the hokim of contemporary Uzbekistan (3).
• This system matches the systems of control during the Soviet period, when power to implement policy and distribute resources was almost entirely in the hands of chairs of collectivized and state farms Since the collapse of the USSR, they have moved into other provincial political positions where they still wield distributive power with patron-client relationships (3).
• In resource-rich provinces, patron-client networks are already deeply entrenched and prosecutors have trouble breaking into these networks to provide themselves with rents. This tends to result in more sustainable rent-seeking practices on all parties. Conversely, in poor provinces prosecutors do not face significant relationship impediments and engage in more predatory rent-seeking practices at higher rates (3).
• The office of prosecutor is a Soviet-era position designed to serve as a check-and-balance to local party officials. The powers of the office were gradually expanded to include supervision of law-enforcement by all state officials at all levels of republican government, mostly through opening investigations and alerting superiors of dubious practices (4).
• In reality these officials often became involved in local politics and developed patron-client relationships with local officials in return for kickbacks. In these situations they used their powers to intimidate opposition through obtrusive and unnecessary inspections and reopening cases on rivals (4).
• The prosecutor's office was designed with a similar role in contemporary Uzbekistan, with a focus on constraining the powers of governors and provincial executive officials. Its powers have been steadily expanded to include property rights protection in 1998 and economic crimes in 2001. It is now one of the most powerful agencies within Uzbekistan (4).
• The Prosecutor's Office remains a well-staffed and highly educated institution in Uzbekistan. In light of Uzbekistan's highly centralized administrative structure, maintaining effective control over regions and localities is a task of the highest importance (5).
• The Prosecutor's Office is directly subordinated to the President, and represents centralized state control. One prosecutor had this to say on his role: "The prokurator stands apart from other organs of the state. It is not part of the state itself. As you know we have three branches of the state .... In our system of government, the President stands apart from all of these – he stands between them, maintaining a balance between them. Alongside the President is his assistant, the Prokurator General and its local offices" (5).
• Despite these noble intentions, prosecutors in general have only added to local corruption. Rather than promote transparency and good governance, the prosecutors have eagerly participated in local corruption and patronage, often in ways counter to government interests (5). 
• During the Soviet period, Samarqand viloyat was the second wealthiest administrative division after Toshkent, and had a large resource base with extensive patronage networks between economic and political elites. Most of the local governors had held their positions for more than a decade, and represented entrenched corruption and patronage interests. When Erkin Roziev was appointed governor in November 1998 he initiated two series of reforms to drive-out the invested interests of the old guard (5).
• Firstly, Mr. Roziev purged the ranks of regional and local officials, reaching down to heads of state farms. A huge number of corrupt officials were fired and their replacements were drawn from outside of Samarqand (6).
• The reforms demanded by Mr. Roziev were rarely actually carried out in any effective manner. Many local authorities and tuman governors pretended to carry-out the measures, but in reality moved people around or delayed actions for enormous amounts of time. When replacements did arrive, they became connected to the pre-existing patronage systems as part of the Samarqand clique (6).
• Secondly, Mr. Roziev increased the influence and authority of prosecutors. He increased their scope of inquiry, especially in regards to investigating the misuse of state assets. However, these prosecutors had little supervision or incentive to perform well. Instead, they often found benefits in participating in local corruption and malfeasance (6). 
• None of Mr. Roziev's reforms seemed to make a big difference in the functionality of patronage systems in Samarqand, as elites continually refused to cooperation with his plans to reduce the viloyat's debt and deficit. His threats to prosecute non-compliant officials for corruption were ignored largely b/c the prosecutors and police were more loyal to local patrons than to the governor -- whose does not control their wages nor their career advancement (6).
• Ultimately Mr. Roziev has totally unable to tackle the issues of corruption, deficit, and back-tax collection in Samarqand viloyat. As a result the viloyat had 30% of its expenditures drawn from the national budget in 2001, the same year in which Mr. Roziev has dismissed for his failure (6).
• With the reformist and loyal Mr. Roziev no longer the governor, local elites in Samarqand expanded their opportunities for rent seeking, expanding gas provision to rural areas in a way that allowed them to extort huge rents from its usage. The result was a tripling of the viloyat's deficit with a year -- from 2 billion so'm to 6.5 billion so'm (7).
• The case of Samarqand demonstrates the limitation of rent-seeking by governors by the patronage systems between prosecutors and local elites. When Mr. Roziev's replacement was first appointed, he collected significantly more cotton than he was allowed to as a way to pad the budget or his pockets. However, by 1999 he was forced to decrease this significantly as local elites protested and threatened legal action (7).
• After Mr. Roziev's dismissal the powers of the prosecutor's office were restrained and the effects have been felt at the local level. The ability of prosecutors to effectively inquiry into issues w/o interference has been curtailed and they have become more dependent on local elites and the governor. Often, prosecutors will act against low-level heads of state farms failing to produce up to quotas, but never against local authorities. There are even cases of warning being ignored by tuman governors, with no legal consequences (7).
• This has resulted in a massive decrease in the ease of business for independent farmers. W/o effective protection, they now are subject to land seizure and unfavorable distribution of essential materials and equipment for farming, as local elites take those resources for themselves or state farms. Under Mr. Roziev the prosecutor's office returned 60.8 hectares per month to plaintiffs, where they averaged only 19.9 hectares per month following his dismissal (7). There has also been a marked decrease in successful loan applications, as credit is withheld by local elites or the governor until bribes have been paid (8).
• Although Mr. Roziev's reforms in Samarqand had a limited effect on decrease some forms of corruption, the effects ended immediately following his dismissal. Officials he had removed returned and prosecutors were encouraged to join rather than fight patronage networks now including the provincial governor. If anything, the expanded powers of the prosecutor's office helped deepen elite influence in the contemporary period and institutionalize more 'stationary' rent-seeking behaviors (8).
• Unlike Samarqand, Navoiy viloyat -- aside from gas and mining enterprises -- was poor and had little in the way of established patronage networks. B/c the institutionalized economic leaders such as the heads of state farms had little economic power in the dry steppe, they could not offer the material rewards which build patronage networks in other viloyatlar. Additionally, administrators did not view the viloyat as a permanent position to build connections, but a waypoint towards a more prosperous career in Samarqand or Buxoro (8).
• Because the elites from Navoiy were relatively weak economically -- the province supplied only 1% of Uzbekistan's argicultural output (8) -- and lacked significant political force they bore the brunt of Uzbekistan's anti-corruption purges from the mid-1990s onward. The viloyat hokimi often replaced officials three or four times, and criminal charges were brought against many local elites (9).
• Law enforcement agencies and the prosecutor's office in Navoiy both experience significant independence from local and regional patronage networks. They uncovered 24% more criminal activity than average and carried out investigations against powerful local elites. Prosecutors also managed to effectively enforce debt collection and refused the provincial debt by 230 million so'm (9).
• While cracking down on the corruption of local and regional administrators, the prosecutor's office and other law enforcement bodies began to build their own rent-seeking behaviors, by tightening control over grain and cotton production and using public funds to buy cool shit, like horses. Prosecutors specifically targeted entrepreneurs and private business to extract extra taxes and debts -- real or fabricated (9).
• The capacity of the governor's office or any other regional agency to punish corruption among the prosecutors is limited to nonexistent. In areas with influence, the interpersonal and informal connections of the governor can help fight corruption among prosecutors, but the political leadership in Navoiy does not have these connections. Effectively, the governor has no ability to stop the predatory behavior of the regional prosecutor's office (9).
• Whereas in wealthier provinces like Farg'ona, Andijon, or Samarqand the powers and independence of the prosecutor's office have been limited by local elites and the position has been largely absorbed within pre-existing patronage structures, in Navoiy the same rewards could not be offered to law enforcement bodies like the prosecutors, leading them to develop their own separate systems of rent-seeking. The additional powers of those law enforcement bodies can also be used to punish local administrations trying to limit or prevent their predatory behavior (10).
• The forms of rent-seeking exemplified by the prosecutor's office in Navoiy is also more destructive than the patronage networks in Samarqand viloyat. Since the prosecutors do not depend on economic growth or reciprocal relations, they will extract rents w/o regard for the sustainability of their activities or the well-being of the local populations, fitting the 'roving' bandit conception of rent-seeking (10).
• The excessive taxation of local businesses and farms by the prosecutor's office led to a considerably worst economic outlook in Navoiy compared to other viloyat, as entrepreneurs were literally taxed into bankruptcy by corrupt law enforcement bodies (11).
• The roving banditry of the prosecutor's office in Navoiy is extremely ominous were that behavior to be replicated in a more populous or important region. The kind of immunity currently enjoyed by law enforcement bodies in Navoiy is similar to that of law enforcement in Tajikistan, where security forces took advantage of the situation to form criminal connections w/o threat of consequences (10).
• Both cases demonstrate the powerful influence of local elites on the implementation of policy at the sub-national level. In both Samarqand and Navoiy the nature of politics was determined by the strength of patronage networks and power struggles between sub-national actors. This shows the importance of economic power in effecting politics in contemporary Uzbekistan (10).
• Reforms to the function of the Prosecutor's Office at the national level do not guarantee uniform changes in implementation. Such initiatives to expand the power of law enforcement bodies can either fail as prosecutors are absorbed into patronage networks in Samarqand or backfire like the creation of virtual immunity for corrupt prosecutors in Navoiy. The effects of politics at the centre greatly depend on the situation of local elites for their implementation at the sub-national level (10).
• "Specific initiatives were designed to strike at the resource base of district and regional elites by subjecting the distribution of public goods – business licenses obtained from district hokim offices, loans distributed to entrepreneurs by local banks, and access to land and minerals allocated by collective farm chairmen – to more effective surveillance and control by the Prokuratura. In practice, however, the ability of local prokurators to carry out those expanded responsibilities hinged upon their position vis-a`-vis local elites" (10).
• "Since independence, the cohesion of Uzbekistan’s state infrastructure has depended heavily upon the provision of benefits to regional and local elites. The use of patronage to rule its regions, however, has promoted different patterns of rent seeking within the country, which in some localities further entrench the authority of local elites while in other localities facilitate predation by state officials. As local patterns of rent seeking multiply and become embedded within the state’s territorial infrastructure, their diversity may pose a significant challenge to the central state’s command over resources in the future" (11).