DEPENDENCY, HIERARCHY AND INSTITUTIONAL PERSISTENCE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY FOUNDATIONS OF DUAL DEPENDENCE IN CENTRAL ASIA

Abstract

Why do repeated shocks fail to generate diversification in Central
Asia? Existing theories of dependency, hierarchy, and regional institutionalism
generally assume that vulnerability triggers exit, partner substitution, or strategic
hedging. Drawing on comparative evidence from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Uzbekistan, this article shows that these expectations do not hold. Instead, Central
Asian states exhibit a stable pattern of dual dependence, in which Russian-led
institutional and infrastructural hierarchies and Chinese-centered market and
financial ties operate in parallel and reinforce one another. Using qualitative
process tracing, trade and debt data, institutional membership records, and shockbased diagnostics, including Russia-related sanctions, China’s overseas lending
contraction, and the COVID-19 supply-chain crisis, the article demonstrates
that efforts to reduce dependence on one external actor systematically intensify
reliance on the other. Rather than enabling diversification, shocks redistribute
exposure within the dual structure. The findings challenge unidirectional models
of dependence, hedging frameworks, and regime complexity theories, and
advance a political economy account of how functionally differentiated external
hierarchies can generate persistent, non-substitutable forms of dependence under
multipolar conditions.