Introduction

For more than a decade, the Washington Consensus prescription for the reform of national energy sectors has progressively been revealed as excessively idealistic and unsuited to political economy realities. Even the United Kingdom, one of the pioneers in power sector privatisation and market liberalisation, has found that markets do not keep the lights on without judicious state manipulation. The World Bank itself has published systematic surveys of power market reform that show how economic conditions combined with institutional deficiencies can undermine such reforms. Not only may objectives not be achieved, but the reform programme may actually worsen the state of the power sector.

In this carefully researched book, Anatole Boute picks up on this theme but expands it to illustrate how geopolitics can act as an aggravating factor. His focus is on the Central Asian States of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They share the same heritage as post-Soviet republics with the recent overlay of regional and global geopolitics involving Russia, China, the United States and the European Union.

Energy Security Along the New Silk Road. Energy Law and Geopolitics in Central Asia by Anatole Boute. Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-108-49897-5 Hardback