Regional Organisations in Central Asia: Patterns of Interaction, Dilemmas of Efficiency

The topic of regional organisations in Central Asia is one of the most hotly debated in the policy and scholarly community, and the conclusions are often greatly contrasting.

This paper describes the main organisations and programmes at work in the region, their membership, status and objectives. It discusses the criteria used to judge their efficiency and analyses several cases of actual ‘success’ and ‘failure’.

It also focuses on the economic and geopolitical patterns, both internal and external to the region, that impede the activities of such organisations in Central Asia.