The consultative meetings of heads of state of Central Asia: local norms, institutions, and the fundamentals of regional order

Since 2018, the presidents of the five central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have gathered annually to participate in the Consultative Meetings of Heads of States of the region. This institutional development has been hailed as a new step towards integration and cooperation in central Asia. Yet several scholars and commentators describe this format as mostly a ‘talking shop’ that pays lip service to the idea of regional integration. To challenge this view, this article offers an emic and idiographic analysis of the Consultative Meetings from the analytical perspective of the English School, positing a twofold argument. First, it considers such meetings as an institution, i.e., a durable practice imbued with normativity and a sense of legitimacy and appropriateness that serves specific functions. Second, it maintains that the Consultative Meetings embody a regional cultural code in which consensus and informality are structuring elements of order, as opposed to representing weaknesses or failure thereof; and by which specific indigenous and political norms such as personal connections between presidents, seniority, respect and prestige affect the operations of fundamental regional primary institutions such as sovereignty, international law and diplomacy. The analysis relies on official materials and news items available online, unpublished documents provided to the author by central Asian diplomats, and interviews with foreign ministry staff members and officials from the region familiar with the workings of the meetings. The arguments offered in this article have implications for understanding processes of central Asian regionalism and non-western logics of order and legitimacy.