Thanks to Mark D. Steinberg, whose enthusiasm for this thematic cluster has not wavered, despite what often felt like a gruelling and lengthy review process. The incomparable staff at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., offered years of support for the project from which these articles stemmed. Two international workshops, generously funded by die Department of State's Tide VIII Program, took place under the auspices of the Kennan Institute. I would like to mention particularly Renata Kosc-Harmatiy, Will Pomeranz, Blair Ruble, and Maggie Paxson, who helped insure the success of fhese workshops. I would also like to acknowledge the numerous interlocutors, from the Department of State, USAID, and nongovernmental organizations, who generously shared dieir ideas and perspectives with the workshop participants, providing useful feedback. Though the papers of some of the workshop participants are not included here, their contributions to die synergy diat emerged from our discussions has surely percolated through the cluster. The critical insights of Michael Borowitz, Alexander Danilenko, Bhavna Dave, and Scott Newton have incalculably enhanced my understanding of the multifaceted world of Central Asia and postsocialist development. I thank them for many years of enlightening conversations.

1. Chief of Party of a USAID program, interviews, 2003-2008.

2. The title of this section is inspired by Dani Rodrik's superb article, “Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion? A Review of the World Bank's Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, “Journal of Economic Literature 44, no. 4 (December 2006): 973-87.

3. Ibid., 974.

4. Williamson, John, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” in Williamson, John, ed., Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened (Washington, D.C., 1990).Google Scholar These ten commandments are: 1. Fiscal discipline; 2. Reorientation of public expenditures; 3. Tax reform; 4. Financial liberalization; 5. Unified and competitive exchange rates; 6. Trade liberalization; 7. Openness to direct foreign investment; 8. Privatization; 9. Deregulation; and 10. Secure property rights.

5. Elster, Jon, Offe, Claus, and Preuss, Ulrich K., Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (Cambridge, Eng., 1998).Google Scholar

6. See Rodrik, “Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?” for extensive analysis of diis document. For the original report, see World Bank, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform (Washington, D.C., 2005).

7. World Bank, Economic Growth in the 1990s, 978. The ten augmentations were: 1. Corporate governance; 2. Anti-corruption; 3. Flexible labor markets; 4. World Trade Organization agreements; 5. Financial codes and standards; 6. “Prudent” capital-account opening; 7. Nonintermediate exchange rate regimes; 8. Independent central banks/inflation targeting; 9. Social safety nets; 10. Targeted poverty reduction.

8. What was popularly coined “shock therapy” was first theorized by economist Milton Friedman and applied to Chile in the 1970s with neoliberal market reforms. Later Jeffrey Sachs adapted the theory and process, applying it first to Bolivia in 1985 and then to recently socialist states. Sachs's understanding of the process assumes liberalization is a critical step on the road to developing a stable economy.

9. Mandel, Ruth, “A Marshall Plan of the Mind: The Political Economy of a Kazakh Soap Opera,” in Ginsburg, Faye D., Abu-Lughod, Lila, and Larkin, Brian, eds., Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (Berkeley, 2002), 201-28.Google Scholar

10. Puckett, Blake, “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, OPIC, and the Retreat from Transparency,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 15, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 149-76.Google Scholar

11. Ledeneva, Alena, Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge, Eng., 1998).Google Scholar

12. Janine R. Wedel, “How the Chubais Clan, Harvard Fed Corruption,” Los Angeles Times, 12 September 1999; Wedel, , Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; Wedel, , Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (New York, 2009)Google Scholar; Wedel, Janine R., Dumas, Lloyd J., and Callman, Greg, Confronting Corruption, Building Accountability: Lessons from the World of International Development Advising (New York, 2010).Google Scholar

13. See Scott Newton, ‘Judicial Reform as Ideology: MCC and Déj à vu in Kyrgyzstan” (unpublished manuscript, 2008).

14. Ibid., 15.

15. Ibid. Newton's article brilliandy expounds on these ideas.

16. See, in particular, Dahl, Robert, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, 1971)Google Scholar, and Dahl, , Who Governs?Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, 1961).Google Scholar

17. Dahl's theory was notably criticized by C. Wright Mills, who countered the polyarchic theory of democracy and civil society by claiming tliat the United States was instead ruled by a demographically consolidated power elite; notions of the “military-industrial complex” arose from this idea. See C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford, 1956).

18. Putnam, Robert D., Boiuling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, 2000).Google Scholar

19. See Armine Ishkanian for an elaboration of this idea. Her discussion of die role of the culture concept in the aid landscape is a slice of the civil society debate in die former Soviet Union that has hitherto not been examined, and one diat reveals fascinating insights into how these problems are worked out on die ground. Ishkanian, “From the Embryos of Civil Society to the NGOs: Managing Culture in die Context of Democracy Building in Post-Soviet Armenia” (unpublished manuscript, 2010).

20. Verdery, Katherine, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, 1996).Google Scholar

21. See also Julie Hemment's discussion of Thomas Carothers, “The Backlash against Democracy Promotion,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (March/April 2006): 55-68.

22. For an insightful analysis of this history of U.S. aid to Russia and Kyrgyzstan, see Sada Aksartova, “Promoting Civil Society or Diffusing NGOs? U.S. Donors in the Former Soviet Union,” in David C. Hammack and Steven Heydemann, eds., Globalization, Philanthropy, and Civil Society: Projecting Institutional Logics Abroad (Bloomington, 2009), 160-91.

23. Melissa Caldwell, “Placing Faith in Development: FBOs and Russia's Development Narrative” (unpublished paper, 2006), 3.

24. Stirrat, Roderick L., “Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Representations of Development Personnel,” Critique of Anthropology 28, no. 4 (December 2008): 416.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., 417; cf. Mandel, Ruth, “Seeding Civil Society,” in Hann, Chris M., ed., Post- Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices (London, 2001).Google Scholar

26. Rodrik, “Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?” 979.

27. Green, Maia, “Globalizing Development in Tanzania: Policy Franchising through Participatory Project Management,” Critique ofAnthropology 23, no. 2 (June 2003): 123-43Google Scholar; Yarrow, Thomas, “Paired Opposites: Dualism in Development and Anthropology,” Critique of Anthropology 28, no. 4 (December 2008): 426-45.Google Scholar

28. Chief of Party of a USAID program, interviews, 2003-2008.

29. For trenchant political-economic analyses of this period in Central Asia, as well as critical examples of development and restructuring, see Deniz Kandiyoti's work “Modernization without the Market? The Case of the Soviet East,” Economy and Society, 25, no. 4 (1996): 529-42; Kandiyoti, , “Pathways of Farm Restructuring in Uzbekistan: Pressures and Outcomes,” in Spoor, M., ed., Transition, Institutions and the Rural Sector (Lanham, Md., 2003), 143-62Google Scholar; Kandiyoti, , “How Far Do Analyses of Postsocialism Travel? The Case of Central Asia,” in Hann, C. M., ed., Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia (London, 2002), 238-57Google Scholar; Kandiyoti, , “The Cry for Land: Agrarian Reform, Gender and Land Rights in Uzbekistan,” Journal of Agrarian Change 3, nos. 1-2 (2003): 225-56Google Scholar; Kandiyod, , “Postcolonialism Compared: Potentials and Limitations in the Middle East and Central Asia,” InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 279-97.Google Scholar