The OSCE ODIHR and Regional Organisations as Norm Entrepreneurs: The Case of Post-pandemic Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the illiberal trends already witnessed by experts and civil society in the OSCE region through increased corruption and lack of transparency in emergency response, as well as through abuses in terms of human rights and restricting civic participation. Building upon the existing literature on protective integration (Alexander Libman) and virtual regionalism (Roy Allison) in Central Asia, which argues that authoritarian leaders pursue various forms of regional cooperation in order to ensure regime survival, we intend to assess the place of the OSCE among the other regional organisations in which the Central Asian states are currently participating, as well as to evaluate how the OSCE Human Dimension has been transformed over the past few years. In this chapter, we intend to discuss the impact of the public health crisis on the democratic normative agenda. In this sense, we aim to analyse the OSCE-ODIHR Human Dimension agenda in Central Asia, specifically in Kyrgyzstan, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the capacity of the OSCE to determine the respect for democratic standards in a contested area where multiple norm entrepreneurs are active.