Larry Markowitz: In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the local resources in question were cash crops, such as cotton and grain. These crops constitute “immobile capital,” since they cannot be extracted, moved, or sold without government involvement; bales of cotton or loads of grain are simply too large and too heavy to harvest and sell in secret. Land-owning elites thus face a fundamental problem: how to generate and divert illicit profits from the sale of these crops into their pockets. So they have had to seek out political patrons, which in turn has promoted corruption, favoritism, and competition among them... Countries with immobile capital are their own class of weak states, with unique challenges in how they oversee resources and dole out economic favors to keep themselves together.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 17:40:30 +0000
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