Testing the theory of the penetrated political system in Central Asia

The penetrated political system theory has been applied to small states and the Middle East region in order to explain the effects that global powers have had on these countries. Various scholars of the penetrated political system theory argued that this theory could not apply to any of the Central Asian states, but the data and research that I present in this paper contradicts this argument. This paper takes the penetrated political system theory and applies it the three of the five Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. To test the theory, I examined and analyzed the statistical data and various case studies covering economic, military, social, and geographical aspects of these three countries from 1998 to 2008, which allowed for a thorough portrait of the political interactions of these three countries with global powers well after their independence was established.