On Thursday, 14th of October, 2021, the Central Asian Law project team participated in a panel session of the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s (CESS) annual conference. CESS Annual Conferences have been held at universities around North America since 2000, currently offering up to 70 panels and attracting approximately 300 participants from all over the world. The 21st CESS Annual Conference was held virtually, with support from the Ohio State University and took place between 14-17th of October, 2021.
The Central Asian Law project panel was titled “Informality, Business Climate and Legal Cultures in Central Asia” and consisted of 4 papers by the project participants. The panel focused on the challenging environment of Central Asia in navigating and understanding its legal culture and business and economic context. Hence, the project panel touched upon with the way national and international laws, norms, and (written and unwritten) rules come to shape the business environment and governance in Central Asian countries.
The panel, which fully consisted of Central Asian Law project members, consisted of the following papers:
- “Informal rules behind the formal laws: Foreign Investment Conditions and Business Environment in Uzbekistan” by Mr. Erhan Dogan, professor at the Faculty of Political Science of Marmara University, Turkey;
- “Analyzing legal informality in Uzbekistan: the case of agrarian management and clusters”, co-authored by Mr. Rustamjon Urinboyev, principal investigator of the Central Asian Law project and associate professor at Sociology of Law Department of Lund University, and Mr. Tolibjon Mustafoev, a PhD candidate at the Academy of the General Prosecutors Office of Uzbekistan;
- “Chances and challenges for economic entrepreneurship in Central Asia: An institutional perspective”, by Mr. Peter Finke, a professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich;
- “The Assessment of the Investment Climate in Turkmenistan”, by Mr. Slavomir Horak, associate professor Department of Russian and East European Studies at the Charles University of Prague.
The discussant of the panel was Mr Matthias Baier, senior lecture, associate professor at Sociology of Law Department of Lund University.