An (almost) laissez faire party system: how Kyrgyz parties failed and what could be done about it

Kyrgyzstan had a strong multi-party start following independence in 1991, but by the end of the 2010–2020 period, when parties were given the most power to shape politics and government of the country, they generated a deep disenchantment among the public. How did that change happen? Existing explanations of the puzzle have focused on parties’ poor institutionalization, personalistic politics, corruption, and the strength of non-party institutions – formal and informal – in achieving what parties would achieve. This article maintains that party weakness in Kyrgyzstan has been the effect of the highly liberal and permissive Law on Political Parties (LPP), unchanged since its adoption in 1999. When the law functioned amid constitutional and electoral instability and in presence of a political-entrepreneurial class, it all set the basic stage for all other factors to play out. The article shows the interplay of the law and its concomitant factors in a tracing of Kyrgyz parties’ path from independence to the 2021 point of downturn. It then proposes a set of policy approaches to fixing the troubles of parties and to restoring them to a role of key institutions of democratic representation and governance.