Weapons of the Wealthy

Focusing on the region of post-Soviet Central Asia, Radnitz investigates the causes of elite-led protest in nondemocratic states, where economic and political opportunities create elites who are independent of the regime, yet vulnerable to harassment.

Scott Radnitz is Associate Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington.

In this important study, Radnitz examines the processes of political change in post-Soviet Central Asian states. Based on extensive fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Radnitz sets out to understand the dynamics of mass mobilization in opposition to authoritarian regimes.... He argues that these mass protests, rather than being organized by civil society organizations, result from the incentives created by a system... in which... elite actors are able to provide significant benefits to local communities... [allowing them] to mobilize collective action that challenges the state in order to promote their own interests.

Alexander Cooley, Barnard College, Columbia University:

Many analysts casually comment on the importance of 'informal politics' in Central Asia, but in Weapons of the Wealthy, Scott Radnitz provides an elegant theory of 'subversive clientelism' that explains how vertical and horizontal networks of patronage actually operate. This pioneering book is a major contribution to our understanding of the sources of political mobilization in Central Asia and across other illiberal states where coalition-building and contestation take place outside the formal institutions of the state.

Henry E. Hale, George Washington University, author of Why Not Parties in Russia?:

Weapons of the Wealthy is simply one of the best examples of deep, qualitative, theory-driven research that I have seen. This book is a significant step in building a body of theory on how politics really works in hybrid regimes.