Political Parties

General Characteristics of the Political Parties

Kyrgyzstan has a multi-party system that can be considered both "floating" given the huge variations between the main parties from one election to the next, and "fragmented" in view of the high level of dispersion of votes and seats among parties. It is also a clientelist party system. The parties are hierarchical and personalistic, and the majority depend on rich business men. Although there are some differences, the interests they channel are mostly private or, are linked with informal networks with local rather than regional bases. The informal local networks and business elite have deeply penetrated the party structures in all of the four main dimensions to analyze a political party model (Membership background an recruitment, organization, electoral dimension and goals). Finally, to understand the interrelation among networks into parties is worth to mention that the original territorial scope of the local informal networks refers to a small number of municipalities, although they are unable to lead a patronage system in a macro-region or oblast without controlling the state administration. Also as they are not organized in a pyramidal structure and frequently dispute between themselves the predominance over compelled to join forces to shape powerful state parties.