Twenty-five years after the collapse of the USSR, scholars and policymakers still endeavor to fully understand the post-Soviet state. Johan Engvall's political ethnography of Kyrgyzstan's state provides penetrating insight into the neopatrimonial practices that permeate these national offices of state. His study of politics from within the state offers a compelling logic that explains why people enter public service, why they pay for their positions, what returns they expect to garner, and how this affects the practice of politics in the region. Based on over 100 interviews with politicians, civil servants, and a range of non-state experts familiar with Kyrgyzstan's political economy, Engvall's twenty months of field research have clearly enabled him to immerse himself in the subject as well as the political, economic, and social milieu that defines public service in this fledgling democracy.

As Engvall notes early on, the book adds to an emerging literature on post-Soviet states that explores the diverse ways in which corruption and other informal practices underpin politics in the region even as it erodes state institutions and generates dramatic upheavals in the public sphere. Few studies have so far fully elaborated on the inner logic driving the purchase and misuse of public office, which Engvall persuasively shows is that of an investment market: “would-be officials invest in officialdom, expecting to make a return on their initial investment” and the office itself becomes a “‘marketable’ asset” (6). After situating his approach within comparative and post-Soviet state literatures in the Introduction, Chapter 1 succinctly elaborates his analytical framework. The next three chapters meticulously trace the logic of his argument through three major steps: the personal ties critical in gaining access to public office (Chapter 2); the financial investment made to purchase a position (Chapter 3); and the norms and methods that ensure remuneration for that initial investment (Chapter 4). These chapters explore these steps inductively. Each chapter first demonstrates how recruitment, investment, and remuneration play out in various parts of Kyrgyzstan's state and then makes careful inferences from the data on a range of secondary questions (how money relates to personal ties, short vs. long time horizons, and how power and market access shape investment strategies by insiders). Chapter 5 examines the implications of these practices for Kyrgyzstan's tumultuous political changes, neatly weaving his investment market logic approach into the other studies pointing to corruption and patronage as major drivers of the 2005 and 2010 uprisings. Chapter 6 provides a short comparative survey that extends the argument to Georgia (and the region generally).

In addition to unearthing this hidden logic animating post-Soviet politics, the book makes a series of other contributions. By applying his argument to spheres of taxation, law enforcement, and the courts, Engvall provides us with further insight into how these critically important institutions operate, preserving political order while profiting from it. Indeed, the book provides an excellent and very readable analysis of these important aspects of Kyrgyzstan's governance. Moreover, his finding that financial investment is necessary to secure political position also adds important nuance to existing studies emphasizing informal structures (such as clan, regional, or ethnic identity) as an orienting state logic in Central Asia. The book also unpacks a distinct way in which formal institutions interface with informal modes of governance—a theme frequently heard but rarely explored so extensively as here.

Social scientists seeking a causal explanation of this phenomenon, however, may find themselves with several questions unaddressed. What has caused people to view the state as an investment market? Is the logic of an investment market uniform across the state or does it vary (and if so, how and why does this variation occur)? How do formal institutions, regional or ethnic identities, or varying time periods shape how the investment market logic animates public officials? Or, alternatively, what specific outcomes of statehood (that is, types of state capacity) does this investment market logic produce? Area studies specialists seeking insight into Kyrgyzstan may be left wondering why, after so many political changes and elite turnovers, this logic of an investment market endures. Despite these shortcomings, Johan Engvall's study of Kyrgyzstan has unpacked and examined extensively the logic and motives behind the sale of public office in post-Soviet states.