As democracy recedes globally and regimes with questionable governance records continue to proliferate in virtually every corner of the planet, the advance of authoritarian politics needs to be recognized as one of the most severe challenges to international peace and prosperity. The region at the core of Slavic Review’s editorial remit has made a decisive contribution to the authoritarian backlash we are currently experiencing. From the inexorable decline experienced by the post-transitional democracies of central Europe and the swift personalization of Russian politics to the establishment of dynasticism and more idiosyncratic forms of non-democratic rule in the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia, the post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia have often acted as true laboratories of authoritarian innovation.

Barbara Junisbai’s intriguing new book—The Pitfalls of Family Rule—focuses on a most particular facet of Eurasia’s persistently authoritarian politics, namely the role that the immediate family members of personalist dictators have played vis-à-vis regime stability across the former Soviet Union (and beyond). At its core, this is a book about the unwritten norms that regulate patronage as an institution, a study of the “obligations and expectations of reciprocity that regulate relationships, guide decision making and compel behavior” (151) in neo-patrimonial settings.

From a Central Asian Studies vantage point—the perspective from which this reviewer has approached the book—The Pitfalls of Family Rule is quite a revealing read: Junisbai builds on her remarkable knowledge of the region’s politics and societies to articulate a very convincing argument about the complex influences that family overreach exerted upon the stability of different regimes in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The author understands family overreach as the prevarication of informal patronage rules by immediate members of the ruler’s family: Junisbai uses the Russian word reiderstvo—from the English verb, to raid—to encapsulate the predatory endeavors perpetrated by close relatives of Nursultan Nazarbayev, Islam Karimov, and Kurmanbek Bakiev. It is in different ways at different junctures that the three regimes in question addressed the stability implications of family overreach, normally manifested through the backlash whereby non-familial élite members reacted to reiderstvo. The author outlines a rather compelling framework to illuminate regime responses, offering an impressive amount of evidence when explaining why violation of patronage norms can lead, in some cases (Kyrgyzstan in 2005 [90–97] and Kazakhstan in 2022 [105–10] for instance) to regimes overthrown while, in others (and here reference is to Kazakhstan in 2001–2 and 2007 [Chapter 2], and Uzbekistan in 2005 and 2012–14 [Chapter 3]), the rulers have successfully managed to avert the crises sparked by family overreach. The core of this book, centered on the analytical continuum that spans across Chs. 2 to 4 (34–114) is a true gem: here The Pitfalls of Family Rule shows its true potential, as Junisbai brings forward an argument that is beautifully written, deeply rooted into excellent fieldwork research, and articulated through a very sophisticated framework.

The same, alas, cannot be said for the ensuing chapter, namely that in which the author, perhaps in pursuit of some elusive generalizability, shifts their gaze beyond Central Asia and engages with cases of family overreach as emerged in the Middle East (Tunisia, Egypt) or other parts of the former Soviet Union (Moldova). Here, the overall relevance of the book drops: Ch. 5 (115–31) does not generate any new data: it only features three endnotes, failing to showcase any fieldwork. Its argument, as a consequence, does not expand in any significant way on the conclusions reached by Junisbai elsewhere in the book. The inclusion of these case studies constitutes a very puzzling editorial choice: Ch. 5 features a study that is underdeveloped and cursory, one that pales in comparison to the deeply sophisticated analysis of Central Asia’s family overreach presented in the core chapters of the book.

In the latter part of the book, Junisbai returns to form. Chapter 6 (132–48) in particular problematizes family rule in post-Soviet Eurasia, offering a very compelling political science study that interrogates the triangular relationship between rulers, family members, and non-family élites in a wider set of neo-patrimonial regimes. Here, the author convincingly demonstrates that patronage norms are, ultimately, a very important institutional check and a key determinant vis-à-vis the onset of regime crises (147–48). The latter point zeroes in on the key contribution made by The Pitfalls of Family Rule: even non-democratic regimes have norms and their systematic violation can lead, in extreme cases, to regime withering and fall. A (mostly) revealing read, Barbara Junisbai’s new book will certainly attract the interest of general and more specialized readers willing to understand more about this particular aspect of contemporary authoritarian politics.