SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Structural transformation is widely recognized for being instrumental to the betterment of socio-economic conditions of low and middle-income countries. Yet, its transformative outcome is often conditional on the creation and distribution of surplus value realized by the state. By expanding the understanding of state-led systems of accumulation in Uzbekistan, the article offers a three-fold contribution. First, it strengthens the theoretical linkages between the debate on primitive socialist accumulation and state-led accumulation to understand today’s strategies of structural transformation. Second, it argues for the need to look at the inter-temporal and contextual structures in which social agents and interests interact within the dominant logic of state-led accumulation. Finally, it uses the case of Uzbekistan to show how pre- and neoliberal forms of state-led accumulation led to distinctive social and economic outcomes of structural transformation.