On 25 May 2026, the OSCE Academy in Bishkek hosted an online Work-in-Progress Seminar, bringing together international scholars and faculty to discuss contemporary issues in comparative political economy, institutional accountability, and regional governance structures. The academic session featured three ongoing research projects that examined political trust dynamics, the sustainability of anti-corruption reforms, and how regional organizations in Central Asia and Africa adapt to the global surge in economic sanctions.
Dr. Vytautas Kuokštis from Vilnius University opened the seminar by challenging traditional performance theories with his research on political trust. Using data from the Life in Transition Survey across 34 countries, he revealed a counterintuitive negative correlation between corruption control and trust in parliament, noting that non-democratic countries often report higher institutional trust despite lower objective corruption control.
Next, Ms. Aşkım Beste Özdoğan, a visiting researcher at the OSCE Academy from Marmara University, Türkiye, introduced the concept of the ‘sustainability gap’ to explain why externally supported accountability reforms may lose their function after formal adoption and partial institutionalisation. Focusing on anti-corruption reform in Kyrgyzstan, her presentation highlighted how technical and donor-supported reforms can remain fragile when political conditions shift, especially in the absence of sustained public demand and protection for civic accountability actors such as investigative journalists.
Finally, Ms. Iana Ovsiannikova from Ghent University and UNU-CRIS shifted the focus to regional sanctions governance, analyzing how Central Asia and Africa navigate a global 17% annual increase in economic sanctions. Drawing on 60 field interviews in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, her preliminary findings show that European sanctions create heavy de facto secondary compliance effects on local banking sectors due to reputational risks. The study reveals highly divergent national responses, noting that while Kazakhstan maintains greater economic autonomy, Kyrgyzstan has adjusted by leveraging its traditional re-export role to Russia.
