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Resource Dependency and Political Opportunity: Explaining the Transformation from Excluded Political Opposition Parties to Human Rights Organizations in Post-Communist Uzbekistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Brian Grodsky
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Abstract

While there is significant anecdotal evidence that excluded political opposition parties in repressive states adopt the form of human rights organizations, there is little systematic research into this phenomenon. What does exist tends to be descriptive rather than theoretical in nature. This paper draws from collective action and resource mobilization literatures, arguing that excluded political elites respond to repression by searching for political opportunities both domestically and internationally, and then transform their organizations into units better able to take advantage of those opportunities. The politics of external funding push these organizations towards a human rights and democratization orientation. The article evaluates this argument through an analysis of human rights movements in politically repressive, post-Communist Uzbekistan and considers the impact of this phenomenon on democratization and civil society development.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , 2007 , pp. 96 - 120
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2007

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50 I attempted to locate members on several occasions, primarily asking my local contacts in the human rights, diplomatic and banned opposition communities who was still in Uzbekistan. None of my contacts could give me such information. Members of Hizb ut-Tahrir may or may not exist in significant numbers, but the threat of repression makes them inaccessible, at least to a foreign interviewer.Google Scholar

51 This research is based on elite interviews carried out in Tashkent in winter 2004, funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad award. Approximately 63 interviews were conducted with the heads of local political opposition parties and human rights organizations, international human rights and pro-democracy non-governmental organizations, as well as Western diplomats.Google Scholar

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