THREE GENERATIONS OF REFORM: GOVERNANCE PARADIGMS AND THE MEASUREMENT GAP IN UZBEKISTAN’S SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TRANSITION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21936606Abstract
Studies of sustainable development in transition economies typically evaluate reform outcomes
against target values, treating governance capacity as a background condition. An alternative interpretation
is advanced through a three-generation periodisation of Uzbekistan’s reform process: liberalisation and
openness (2017–2022), productivity and green transition (2022–2030), and the innovation economy (2030 and
beyond). Each generation is defined less by its policy content than by the governance paradigm it presupposes:
governance by objectives, governance by data, and anticipatory governance, respectively. The transition
between generations is therefore an informational transition before it becomes an economic one. Drawing
on documentary analysis of national strategic and legal instruments, the analysis demonstrates that the
measurement infrastructure required by the second generation has been constructed but was attached to the
strategic planning contour rather than to the national Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator system.
The two contours are separated within a single legal act adopted by a single body on a single date, limiting
explanations based solely on administrative capacity or elapsed time. Interpreted through the institutional
literature on means–ends decoupling, this configuration suggests that the key constraint on second-generation
reform is not the availability of data but the allocation of institutional attention among competing measurement
systems.
Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals, governance paradigms, data-driven governance, institutional decoupling, policy measurement, transition economies, UzbekistanReferences
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