Regional resilience without deep integration: adaptive interstate coordination in Central Asia

1 Introduction

Over the past decade, the international environment has become increasingly unpredictable. Geopolitical tensions, disruptions to global supply chains, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other interconnected crises have reshaped the conditions under which states interact.

Against this backdrop, regional resilience has attracted growing scholarly attention. The concept captures the capacity of regional systems to adapt to external shocks while preserving political dialogue, institutional continuity, and interstate cooperation under conditions of uncertainty.

Central Asia has followed a trajectory that is difficult to reconcile with conventional expectations of regional integration theory. Since 2016, cooperation among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan has intensified across political, economic, transport, border, and security domains without a corresponding shift toward supranational governance. The region lacks supranational decision-making bodies, a common legal framework, and institutions endowed with delegated authority. Regional cooperation remains predominantly intergovernmental and consensus-based, with states retaining sovereign control over decision-making and implementation.

This combination of increasing cooperation and weak institutionalization poses an important theoretical question. Why has regional cooperation in Central Asia become more resilient despite the continued absence of deep institutional integration?

Much of the classical integration literature derives its expectations from highly institutionalized regional arrangements, most notably the European Union. Consequently, considerably less attention has been paid to cases in which states steadily expand cooperation without creating supranational structures. As a result, the relationship between limited institutionalization and regional resilience remains insufficiently explained.

This article conceptualizes regional resilience not as a consequence of institutional integration but as an outcome of adaptive interstate coordination. The argument is that resilience emerges through the interaction of pragmatic bilateral problem-solving, flexible multilateral consultation, leadership diplomacy, and institutional diversification.

The analysis is based on interstate agreements, summit declarations, national foreign policy strategies, official government documents and statistical indicators of regional cooperation. These sources make it possible to trace the emergence and operation of the principal mechanisms of regional resilience.

The article makes three contributions to debates on comparative regionalism. First, it distinguishes regional integration from regional resilience rather than treating them as interchangeable outcomes. Second, it develops the concept of adaptive interstate coordination to explain durable cooperation under conditions of limited institutionalization. Third, it shows how regional governance can become more resilient through coordinated interstate practices without necessarily progressing toward deep institutional integration.

The article proceeds as follows. The next section reviews the literature on regional integration, resilience, and Central Asian regionalism. The subsequent sections develop the conceptual framework, explain the research design, present the empirical findings, and discuss their broader theoretical implications.

2 Literature review

2.1 From regional integration to comparative regionalism

Regional integration theory has long provided the dominant framework for explaining sustained cooperation among neighbouring states. Neofunctionalism conceptualizes integration as a cumulative process driven by functional spillover (Haas, 1958), while Balassa (1961) describes a progression from economic cooperation toward deeper institutional and political integration. Liberal intergovernmentalism places greater emphasis on national preferences and interstate bargaining, arguing that governments delegate authority when common institutions help secure negotiated commitments (Moravcsik, 1998).

The subsequent development of comparative regionalism significantly broadened the research agenda. Rather than treating the European Union as a universal model, scholars increasingly emphasized the diversity of institutional forms, governance mechanisms, and cooperation practices across regions (Börzel and Risse, 2016). Research on the “ASEAN Way” similarly demonstrates how consensus, gradualism, and informality can sustain regional order without extensive supranational authority (Acharya, 2014). New regionalism scholarship likewise emphasizes the historical, political, and institutional diversity of regional processes (Söderbaum, 2016).

These approaches broaden the analysis beyond formal integration, yet institutional depth remains a prominent benchmark for assessing regional cooperation. This creates an analytical problem for Central Asia, where cooperation has intensified without substantial delegation of authority.

2.2 Regional resilience: continuity, adaptation, and transformation

Resilience research originated primarily in ecology and was subsequently extended to regional economies and territorial development (Holling, 1973; Gunderson, 2000; Bristow and Healy, 2014; Ezcurra and Rios, 2019). Its application to interstate regions, however, remains comparatively limited.

Applied to international politics, regional resilience can be understood as the ability of states to maintain cooperation even in periods of crisis and high uncertainty. This does not imply institutional continuity in unchanged form. On the contrary, resilient regional systems may adjust their modes of interaction, revise priorities, and combine bilateral and multilateral mechanisms in response to changing conditions while avoiding prolonged fragmentation.

Research on adaptive governance links resilience to institutional flexibility, learning, and decentralized coordination (Vandergert et al., 2016; Akther and Evans, 2024). These characteristics are especially important for Central Asia. Despite limited institutionalization, Central Asian states restored regular political dialogue after 2016, made progress in addressing several interstate disputes, and sustained cooperation through the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical tensions, and other external shocks.

2.3 The limits of institution-centred approaches to Central Asia

Early scholarship on Central Asian regionalism was strongly shaped by the limited institutional outcomes of post-Soviet integration initiatives. The Central Asian Union, the Central Asian Economic Community and the Central Asian Cooperation Organization failed to develop into consolidated regional institutions. This reinforced interpretations emphasizing the gap between formally declared integration goals and their practical implementation (Bohr, 2004).

These outcomes are commonly attributed to strong sovereignty preferences, divergent foreign-policy priorities, interstate asymmetries, and participation in externally oriented regional organizations. Mayer, for example, interprets security regionalism as a process shaped largely by external actors and international organizations rather than by endogenous regional dynamics (Bohr, 2004; Laruelle and Peyrouse, 2013; Mayer, 2021).

More recent scholarship on overlapping regionalism offers a different interpretation. The simultaneous existence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Belt and Road initiative, the C5 + 1 format, and bilateral strategic partnerships does not necessarily indicate the weakness of regional institutions. Rather, it reflects a complex multilevel system in which states use different platforms to address distinct political and economic objectives.

A closely related perspective is provided by the literature on inter-regionalism. Hänggi et al. (2006) conceptualize interregional relations as an additional layer of international governance linking regions and regional organizations through multiple institutional configurations. This perspective is particularly relevant to contexts in which cooperation develops across overlapping institutional settings rather than through a single process of regional integration.

More recently, Karami and Mozaffari Falarti (2026) apply this perspective directly to Central Asia. They argue that inter-regionalism enables Central Asian states to pursue pragmatic and project-based cooperation across overlapping organizations and external partnerships while preserving political autonomy. In their interpretation, institutional overlap and flexible alignment can contribute to geopolitical and economic resilience rather than simply producing fragmentation. This argument is particularly important for the present study because it identifies institutional plurality as a potential source of adaptation rather than institutional weakness.

Nevertheless, institution-centred approaches primarily explain why deep integration has remained limited in Central Asia, while more recent scholarship emphasizes the importance of examining Central Asian regionalism in terms of regional order and locally generated practices (Costa Buranelli, 2021). They say considerably less about how cooperation can persist and become more resilient amid institutional fragmentation and overlapping cooperation formats.

2.4 The Post-2016 reconfiguration of central Asian cooperation

Uzbekistan’s leadership transition in 2016 marked an important turning point in Central Asian regional relations. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, good-neighbourly relations, border cooperation, trade, transport connectivity, and political dialogue became central priorities of Uzbekistan’s regional policy. According to Kobilov, this period marked the transition of Uzbekistan from the role of geopolitical “pendulum” to the position of a more active regional participant (Cornell and Starr, 2018; Kobilov, 2025).

The most visible multilateral expression of this shift was the establishment of the Consultative Meetings of the Heads of State of Central Asia. The first meeting, held in Astana in 2018, brought together the five Central Asian presidents without external participation or the creation of a new international organization (President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2018).

Over time, the consultative format evolved from a political initiative into a recurrent mechanism of regional coordination. The process gradually produced joint political documents, national coordinators, road maps, and sector-specific cooperation programmes. Crucially, these developments occurred without delegating authority to supranational bodies or abandoning consensus-based decision-making (Mukasheva and Akhmedyanova, 2024; Costa Buranelli, 2026). This pattern is better understood as incremental institutionalization without supranationalization.

The Consultative Meetings primarily perform political and coordination functions. They create a space for regular dialogue between the leaders of the states, help to agree on common positions and reduce the probability that individual sectoral disagreements will develop into more serious political conflicts. At the same time, the region continues to face restrictions related to the management of water resources, economic asymmetry, issues of sovereignty and differences in foreign policy orientations of individual states.

Developments after 2016 also demonstrate that bilateral and multilateral cooperation in Central Asia can perform complementary rather than competing functions. The normalization of Uzbekistan’s relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan helped address practical issues involving borders, trade, transport, and energy, thereby creating more favourable conditions for regional dialogue. Bilateral negotiations remain the principal means of resolving specific interstate problems, while multilateral consultations facilitate regional agenda-setting and provide broader political legitimacy.

2.5 External actors, overlapping institutions, and regional agency

Russia, China, the European Union, the United States and other external actors significantly influence the development of cooperation in Central Asia through security mechanisms, infrastructure projects, economic initiatives and various diplomatic formats. Although this external environment is well documented, less attention has been paid to how Central Asian states themselves coordinate and adapt regional cooperation.

Recent scholarship has placed increasing emphasis on Central Asian regional agency. Central Asian states pursue multivector foreign policies while participating simultaneously in multiple international cooperation formats. Such a strategy is not reducible to choosing a single external partner. Rather, Central Asian states seek to exploit the opportunities offered by different institutional frameworks while preserving room for foreign-policy manoeuvre. Under these conditions, institutional diversification becomes an important component of regional strategy.

The Consultative Meetings do not replace existing international mechanisms but provide an internally owned platform for regional coordination alongside participation in the SCO, EAEU, CSTO, C5 + 1, and other initiatives. Institutional overlap may generate duplication or conflicting obligations, but it can also enhance flexibility by providing alternative channels when particular organizations are politically constrained or functionally inadequate.

2.6 Bilateral and multilateral cooperation as complementary mechanisms

Bilateral and multilateral cooperation are often treated as alternative modes of international cooperation, although in practice they frequently perform complementary functions. Bilateral agreements may implement principles negotiated at the regional level, while multilateral consultation may depend on compromises reached beforehand between individual states.

This interaction is particularly visible in Central Asia. Issues such as border delimitation, transport connectivity, customs regulation, energy cooperation, and cross-border mobility cannot be addressed exclusively at the multilateral level. They require direct negotiations between interested states. As these issues are settled, the level of political uncertainty decreases, trust is restored, and conditions for wider regional cooperation are created.

Cooperation between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan plays a special role in this process. As the region’s two largest economies and influential political actors, the two states have played a particularly important role in shaping regional dynamics. Greater rapprochement after 2016 reduced the risk of strategic rivalry and created favourable conditions for the expansion of cooperation between all the states of Central Asia (Izteleuova, 2026).

However, bilateral cooperation does not automatically strengthen regional resilience. Its contribution depends on whether bilateral settlements reduce shared barriers, generate transferable practices, and remain compatible with broader regional consultation. Conversely, exclusive coalitions or arrangements that reinforce asymmetries may weaken regional cooperation (Izteleuova, 2026).

2.7 Research gap: explaining resilience without deep integration

Existing scholarship offers detailed accounts of regional integration, comparative regionalism, resilience, Central Asian regional order, and external influence. Several important questions nevertheless remain unresolved.

First, Central Asia is still evaluated mainly through criteria formed on the basis of European experience. Absence of supranational institutions, a common market, and binding regional legislation is usually interpreted as evidence of limited development of regionalism.

Second, studies devoted to the period after 2016 describe in detail the expansion of political dialogue, the growth in the number of joint initiatives and the strengthening of coordination between states. However, much less often they explain why these processes turned out to be quite stable and preserved even in the conditions of external crises.

Third, resilience scholarship has focused primarily on subnational regions, highly institutionalized international organizations, and crisis-management systems. Weakly institutionalized interstate regions remain comparatively understudied.

Finally, bilateral relations and multilateral cooperation are usually considered as independent areas of research. This separation obscures how bilateral problem-solving can create the conditions for regional consultation and how multilateral mechanisms, in turn, can reinforce bilateral commitments.

Existing scholarship therefore leaves a more specific theoretical gap. Inter-regionalism explains how Central Asian states exploit overlapping organizations and external partnerships to preserve autonomy and expand their strategic options (Hänggi et al., 2006; Karami and Mozaffari Falarti, 2026), but it does not fully explain how this external institutional plurality interacts with intra-regional mechanisms of cooperation. In particular, insufficient attention has been paid to the causal sequence through which bilateral problem-solving, recurrent regional consultation, leadership diplomacy, and institutional diversification jointly sustain cooperation under external pressure. The analytical problem is therefore not simply why Central Asia avoids deep integration, but how different levels of interstate coordination interact to produce regional resilience.

Adaptive interstate coordination addresses this gap by treating institutional diversification as only one component of a broader causal architecture. Unlike inter-regionalism, which primarily captures relations across regional and institutional frameworks, the concept proposed here connects three levels of interaction: bilateral problem-solving among neighbouring states, region-wide political consultation, and selective engagement with overlapping external institutions. Its distinctive claim is that resilience emerges from the interaction among these mechanisms rather than from institutional diversification alone.

Accordingly, the article asks: Why has regional cooperation in Central Asia become more resilient since 2016 despite the continued absence of deep institutional integration?

3 Conceptual framework: adaptive interstate coordination and regional resilience

3.1 Distinguishing regional integration from regional resilience

The conceptual framework begins by distinguishing regional integration from regional resilience. Although related, the two capture different dimensions of regional cooperation and should not be treated as interchangeable.

Regional integration refers to the deepening of cooperation among geographically proximate states through common institutions, regulatory coordination, legally binding commitments, and, in some cases, the delegation of authority to supranational bodies (Balassa, 1961; Haas, 1958; Moravcsik, 1998; Börzel, 2016).

Regional resilience captures a different dimension: the capacity of states to sustain cooperation, adapt existing coordination mechanisms, and respond collectively to internal and external pressures. Resilience therefore does not require deep institutional integration. A region may remain predominantly intergovernmental while sustaining political dialogue, containing disagreements, and maintaining cooperation during periods of disruption.

In this article, regional resilience is defined as the capacity of a group of geographically interconnected states to maintain core forms of cooperation, adapt coordination mechanisms, and address shared challenges without allowing disagreements or shocks to produce prolonged regional fragmentation.

Regional resilience is operationalized through four interrelated dimensions: continuity, adaptation, functional maintenance, and containment of fragmentation (Figure 1). Continuity refers to the maintenance of regular political dialogue and interstate interaction; adaptation to changes in cooperation practices in response to new conditions; functional maintenance to the preservation of cooperation in core policy areas; and containment of fragmentation to the prevention of bilateral disputes or external shocks from producing a sustained breakdown of regional interaction.

Together, these four dimensions make it possible to assess regional resilience regardless of the degree of institutional integration. This approach is especially important for the analysis of Central Asia, where cooperation has been significantly intensified without the creation of supranational institutions.

Regional resilience does not imply the absence of interstate disagreements or conflict. Rather, it captures states’ capacity to sustain cooperation, adjust their modes of interaction when necessary, and prevent emerging tensions from producing prolonged regional fragmentation.

3.2 Adaptive interstate coordination

To explain why regional cooperation can remain stable even with weak institutionalization, the article introduces the concept of adaptive interstate coordination.

Adaptive interstate coordination is defined as a flexible and iterative process through which sovereign states combine bilateral problem-solving, multilateral consultation, leadership diplomacy, and multiple institutional formats to sustain cooperation under changing regional and international conditions.

Adaptive interstate coordination differs from conventional intergovernmental cooperation in that it refers not merely to cooperation among sovereign governments, but to the systematic interaction among multiple coordination mechanisms operating at different levels. It also differs from inter-regionalism: institutional overlap and external platforms constitute only one of its mechanisms, while bilateral problem-solving, internally owned regional consultation, and routinized leadership diplomacy explain how cooperation is generated and reproduced within the region itself. The concept therefore focuses on the causal architecture linking these mechanisms to resilience rather than on institutional plurality alone.

The experience of Central Asia suggests that states can routinize political dialogue without transferring authority to supranational institutions or creating rigid governance mechanisms.

Analytically, adaptive interstate coordination occupies an intermediate position between ad hoc diplomacy and formal regional integration:

Ad hoc interaction → adaptive interstate coordination.

Adaptive interstate coordination may remain a durable mode of regional cooperation rather than serving as a transitional stage toward formal integration.

3.3 Four mechanisms of adaptive interstate coordination

The model identifies four interrelated mechanisms through which adaptive interstate coordination may contribute to regional resilience. Each performs a distinct function, but the argument concerns their interaction rather than their independent effects.

3.3.1 Pragmatic bilateral problem-solving

The first mechanism involves bilateral cooperation aimed at removing specific obstacles to wider regional interaction. Border delimitation, customs regulation, transport connectivity, water allocation, energy cooperation, and cross-border mobility often require direct negotiation between the states concerned. By settling disputes, restoring political dialogue, reducing uncertainty, and building trust, bilateral agreements can create more favourable conditions for subsequent multilateral coordination. Bilateral cooperation thus becomes not an alternative to regionalism but one of its enabling mechanisms.

The effect, however, depends on the character of bilateral cooperation. Settlements that reduce shared barriers and facilitate wider interaction can strengthen regional resilience, whereas exclusive arrangements that reinforce asymmetries or obstruct broader consultation may have the opposite effect.

3.3.2 Flexible multilateral consultations

The second mechanism is represented by flexible multilateral consultations. These involve recurrent political dialogue among all regional states without requiring supranational governing bodies or legally binding decisions.

The main advantage of this format is its flexibility. States can participate without assuming rigid commitments that constrain their freedom of action, allowing consultation to continue even when preferences diverge on particular issues.

This flexibility allows political dialogue to continue during periods of crisis without requiring a complex supranational institutional structure.

3.3.3 Leadership diplomacy and trust-building

The third mechanism is recurrent interaction among heads of state. Where formal institutions remain weak, interpersonal and political trust among leaders can become an important resource for regional cooperation.

Regular high-level meetings can reduce uncertainty about intentions, facilitate the resolution of political and bureaucratic obstacles, and reinforce expectations of continued dialogue. They also reduce the likelihood that local disagreements will develop into more serious political conflicts, and serve as a signal of states’ willingness to maintain cooperation even in a period of increased uncertainty (Kydd, 2005).

When political agreements become embedded in ministries, sectoral agencies, and working groups, leadership diplomacy can contribute to the routinization of cooperation and reduce its dependence on individual political interventions.

3.3.4 Strategic institutional diversification

The fourth mechanism is related to the fact that the states of Central Asia use several platforms for cooperation. Central Asian states participate simultaneously in the Consultative Meetings, externally embedded organizations, bilateral strategic partnerships, “Central Asia Plus” formats, and sector-specific initiatives in transport, trade, environmental policy, and security.

In most studies, such institutional multiplicity is considered mainly as a source of fragmentation. The proposed model interprets this plurality differently. Overlapping mechanisms can indeed create problems if competing obligations arise between them, functions are duplicated, or institutional competition intensifies. However, under certain conditions, they become an additional source of flexibility.

When one platform becomes politically constrained, functionally inadequate, or temporarily ineffective, states may shift particular issues to another venue offering more favourable political or functional conditions. Institutional diversity can therefore reduce dependence on any single cooperation mechanism and expand states’ capacity to match specific policy problems with appropriate institutional settings.

However, the positive effect of institutional diversification does not arise automatically. It is possible only when different mechanisms complement each other and do not enter into competition. Its positive effects depend on states retaining the capacity to shift issues across cooperation formats, preserve regional ownership, and keep overlapping commitments politically manageable.

It is the combination of these conditions that allows institutional diversification to become a source of flexibility rather than fragmentation and, under favourable conditions, a contributor to regional resilience.

Together, these four mechanisms constitute the model of adaptive interstate coordination presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2 summarizes the proposed causal model. External and internal pressures create challenges to existing patterns of cooperation, while adaptive interstate coordination mediates states’ responses through four interrelated mechanisms. Their interaction is expected to contribute to continuity, adaptation, functional maintenance, and the containment of fragmentation without requiring supranational integration.

Table 1 links each mechanism to its analytical function and the empirical evidence used to evaluate it.

Table 1. Mechanisms of adaptive interstate coordination.

3.4 Model of adaptive regional resilience

External and internal crises do not predetermine regional outcomes. Similar shocks may generate greater cooperation or fragmentation depending on how states respond and which coordination mechanisms they mobilize.

Adaptive interstate coordination occupies the central position in the model, linking external and internal pressures to subsequent patterns of regional cooperation. Rather than assuming that crises necessarily produce either deeper integration or fragmentation, the model emphasizes states’ capacity to adapt existing modes of interaction while preserving cooperation without supranational delegation. When these mechanisms operate effectively, they can restore dialogue, reduce uncertainty, contain interstate disagreements, maintain functional cooperation, and generate experience in joint problem-solving. These intermediate outcomes increase the capacity of regional cooperation to withstand subsequent disruption.

3.5 Scope conditions and limits of the model

The model is not intended as a universal explanation of regional cooperation. It is most applicable to regions in which states seek sustained cooperation while remaining unwilling to delegate substantial authority to supranational institutions.

The framework is expected to have greatest explanatory value in regions characterized by strong sovereignty norms, moderate functional interdependence, weak or absent supranational authority, multiple overlapping cooperation formats, and sufficient political dialogue to permit recurrent coordination. The relative importance of the four mechanisms may nevertheless vary across regions, policy domains, and historical periods.

3.6 Propositions and expected empirical manifestations

To evaluate the explanatory potential of the model, the article formulates five propositions and specifies their observable implications for the Central Asian case.

Proposition 1

If pragmatic bilateral problem-solving contributes to regional resilience, the settlement or effective management of bilateral disputes should precede or accompany the expansion of multilateral cooperation. Observable evidence would include border settlements, reopened transport links, expanding bilateral trade, and intensified high-level political contacts.

Proposition 2

If flexible multilateral consultation enhances regional resilience, political dialogue should persist despite the absence of binding enforcement mechanisms and continuing disagreement on individual issues.

Proposition 3

If recurrent leadership diplomacy contributes to trust-building, sustained high-level interaction should gradually generate more routinized coordination mechanisms. Observable evidence would include the establishment of national coordinators, ministerial councils, working groups, road maps, and other implementation mechanisms that extend cooperation beyond presidential interaction.

Proposition 4

If institutional diversification enhances adaptability, states should distribute different policy functions across multiple cooperation platforms rather than concentrating them within a single organization. The expected empirical manifestation of such a mechanism will be the distribution of security, trade, transport, environmental and diplomatic issues between several international organizations and forms of cooperation.

Proposition 5

If adaptive interstate coordination contributes to regional resilience, external shocks should lead primarily to adjustments in cooperation mechanisms rather than to their prolonged breakdown. This can be verified by the example of preservation or further development of the regional dialogue during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth of geopolitical tension, economic shocks and changes in the sphere of regional security.

3.7 Theoretical expectations

The conceptual framework generates three broader theoretical expectations. First, limited institutionalization alone does not prevent the emergence of sustainable regional cooperation. In regions where issues of state sovereignty remain particularly sensitive, institutional flexibility can be one factor supporting long-term interaction among states.

Second, bilateral and multilateral arrangements should not be viewed as mutually exclusive. They perform different functions and may therefore reinforce one another. The bilateral format allows for the settlement of specific issues between individual states, while multilateral consultations create conditions for agreeing on a regional agenda, defining common priorities and giving greater political legitimacy to decisions taken.

Third, the existence of several intersecting institutions does not necessarily indicate weak regional cooperation. On the contrary, the diversity of institutional frameworks enhances the ability of states to choose the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing specific challenges and thus increases the region’s capacity to adapt to new challenges.

Taken together, these expectations yield the following overarching hypothesis: Since 2016, regional cooperation in Central Asia has become more resilient through the interaction of pragmatic bilateral problem-solving, flexible multilateral consultation, leadership diplomacy, and strategic institutional diversification, without substantial delegation of authority to supranational institutions.

4 Research design and methodology

4.1 Research design

This study employs a qualitative case-study design aimed at developing a mechanism-based explanation of why regional cooperation in Central Asia has become more resilient since 2016 despite limited institutional integration.

The analysis covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan from 2016 to 2025. The period begins in 2016 because Uzbekistan’s leadership transition marked a major change in regional relations, facilitating bilateral normalization and creating new opportunities for regional cooperation.

Central Asian states strongly uphold sovereignty and have shown little willingness to establish supranational institutions. At the same time, growing interdependence in trade, transport, security, water, and energy creates increasing demand for interstate coordination. This combination makes Central Asia a theoretically relevant case for examining how regional cooperation evolves under conditions of limited institutionalization (George and Bennett, 2005; Gerring, 2017; Yin, 2018). The study therefore seeks not to test existing theories statistically but to identify the mechanisms of adaptive interstate coordination and refine the proposed conceptual model through the Central Asian case.

The unit of analysis is the coordination episode, defined as a sequence of interconnected actions through which states cooperate, establish or adjust coordination mechanisms, or respond jointly to regional challenges.

4.2 Data sources

The study is based on an analysis of official documents, statistical materials, and academic literature, following the principles of documentary analysis proposed by Bowen (2009).

The empirical corpus includes bilateral agreements, declarations and road maps adopted through the Consultative Meetings, foreign-policy concepts, presidential speeches, state strategies, documents of regional organizations, and materials produced by international institutions.

The analysis also draws on quantitative indicators, including bilateral and intraregional trade, transport connectivity, the frequency of high-level meetings, signed agreements, and evidence of project implementation.

Documents were selected on the basis of their relevance to the four mechanisms of adaptive interstate coordination and their observable implications for regional resilience.

Triangulation was particularly important for claims concerning implementation. Official declarations were treated as evidence of political commitment rather than automatically as evidence of policy effectiveness. Where possible, claims about implementation were cross-checked against statistical trends, implementation reports, international organizations’ assessments, and peer-reviewed research. Where independent corroboration was unavailable, the analysis treats the evidence as indicative rather than conclusive.

4.3 Analytical strategy

The analysis combines qualitative document analysis, process tracing, and structured comparison.

Documents were coded using categories derived from the conceptual framework. These categories include bilateral problem solving, multilateral consultations, leadership diplomacy, institutional diversification, and four dimensions of regional resilience: continuity, adaptation, functional maintenance, and containment of fragmentation.

Process tracing was used to reconstruct the sequence linking bilateral normalization, restored political trust, multilateral consultation, the routinization of coordination mechanisms, and the emergence of regional resilience (Beach and Pedersen, 2019; Mahoney, 2012).

Episodes were selected purposively rather than as a comprehensive chronology of regional cooperation. Three criteria guided selection: each episode had to (1) involve at least one of the four proposed coordination mechanisms, (2) generate observable implications for one or more dimensions of regional resilience, and (3) permit examination of either institutional change or cooperation under external pressure. The five episodes therefore provide variation across bilateral, regional and external contexts and allow the proposed causal mechanisms to be traced under different conditions:Each selected coordination episode links an identifiable mechanism to an observable resilience outcome. The bilateral normalization episode primarily evaluates pragmatic problem-solving; the establishment and subsequent evolution of the Consultative Meetings assesses flexible multilateral consultation and institutionalization; leadership interactions provide evidence on routinization; institutional diversification is examined across overlapping regional and external formats; and COVID-19 and subsequent geopolitical disruptions provide stress tests for the resilience of the resulting coordination architecture.

• the normalization of relations between Uzbekistan and the Central Asian states after 2016;
• the establishment of the Consultative Meetings of the Heads of State of Central Asia;
• the development of cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic;
• the evolution of the consultative process in 2023–2025;
• the response of states in the region to geopolitical upheavals.

Structured comparison complements process tracing by examining variation across periods, interstate relationships, coordination mechanisms, and policy domains.

4.4 Operationalization

For the empirical analysis, regional resilience is examined through four interrelated dimensions:

• continuity;
• adaptation;
• functional maintenance;
• containment of fragmentation.

Continuity reflects the preservation of regular political dialogue and other forms of interstate interaction.

Adaptation refers to the extent to which states modify cooperation mechanisms or policy priorities in response to changing domestic or external conditions.

Functional maintenance refers to the continuation of cooperation in key policy areas even when the instruments or formats through which it is organized change.

Containment of fragmentation refers to states’ capacity to prevent bilateral disputes or external shocks from escalating into a sustained breakdown of region-wide cooperation.

These dimensions are evaluated through observable indicators. Continuity is indicated by the recurrence of political consultations and interstate coordination despite periods of disruption. Adaptation requires evidence that states altered the format, instruments, priorities, or institutional venue of cooperation in response to changing conditions. Functional maintenance is identified when cooperation in core areas such as transport, trade, border management, security, or energy continues despite changes in the mechanisms through which it is organized. Containment of fragmentation is indicated when bilateral disputes or external shocks do not produce a sustained breakdown of region-wide political dialogue.

Importantly, resilience is not treated as synonymous with an increase in the volume of cooperation. Rising trade, a larger number of meetings, or additional agreements may indicate intensification, but they constitute evidence of resilience only when cooperation persists, adapts, or remains functional under conditions that could plausibly disrupt it. This distinction allows the analysis to separate the expansion of cooperation from its capacity to withstand and adjust to shocks.

The five propositions are evaluated by comparing their expected empirical implications with evidence from the selected coordination episodes.

4.5 Research reliability and limitations

Reliability was strengthened through predefined coding categories, systematic document selection, process tracing, structured comparison, and triangulation across multiple sources. Official statements were cross-checked, where possible, against legal and policy documents, implementation reports, statistical indicators, and peer-reviewed research to reduce the risk of one-sided interpretation.

The study nevertheless has several limitations.

First, official documents necessarily reflect governmental perspectives and tend to emphasize achievements while providing less information on implementation failures and persistent disagreements.

Furthermore, the volume and quality of available information vary significantly among the Central Asian states. This affects the level of detail available for analysis of individual countries and events.

Another limitation is related to the focus of the study. The primary focus is on interstate cooperation, so the role of businesses, the expert community, civil society, and other non-state actors is considered only where reflected in the documents used.

Finally, because the conclusions are derived from a single regional case, comparative research is needed to assess the applicability of adaptive interstate coordination beyond Central Asia.

5 Results

5.1 From normalization of bilateral relations to regional coordination

Regional cooperation did not initially revive through the creation of a new multilateral institution. Instead, the process began with the gradual normalization of Uzbekistan’s relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, which created political and practical conditions for broader regional coordination (Figure 3).

Kazakhstan–Uzbekistan relations illustrate this sequence particularly clearly (Kobilov, 2025). During the state visit of the President of Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan in March 2017, the parties agreed to give their strategic partnership a more practical dimension. Priority was given to the development of trade, transport, transit, interregional cooperation, and humanitarian ties. At the same time, a goal was set to increase mutual trade turnover to USD 5 billion.

The significance of this rapprochement extended beyond the bilateral relationship. As Central Asia’s two largest economies, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan exert substantial influence on the region’s political dynamics. Their improved relationship reduced a major source of strategic uncertainty and created a more favourable environment for wider regional initiatives without constituting an exclusive regional “core.”

Similar changes have occurred in relations between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Following high-level meetings in 2017, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan resumed efforts to address long-standing bilateral disputes. The delimitation of the state border continued, checkpoints were reopened, transport links were restored, water cooperation was expanded and cross-border connections were developed more actively. The simplification of border crossings was an important step. Since September 2023, citizens of both countries have been able to cross it on their national identity cards, which has noticeably simplified population movement and promoted cross-border cooperation.

Uzbekistan–Tajikistan relations followed a comparable pattern. After the mutual visits of the presidents in 2018, a visa-free regime was introduced between the two countries, border crossings were reopened, transport services resumed and contacts between border regions significantly expanded. These measures helped reduce long-standing tensions that had constrained bilateral cooperation.

Across these cases, a similar sequence is visible: political dialogue was restored, practical disputes were addressed, and cooperation subsequently expanded into additional areas. This pattern is consistent with the argument that bilateral normalization created enabling conditions for wider regional coordination.

Taken together, these cases provide evidence consistent with the first theoretical proposition. Bilateral normalization preceded the institutionalization of region-wide consultation and reduced several political and practical barriers that had previously constrained wider cooperation. The temporal sequence alone does not establish causality; however, the restoration of high-level contacts, reopening of transport and border links, and settlement of contentious bilateral issues created more favourable conditions for broader regional coordination. The first Consultative Meeting in 2018 therefore followed a broader process of bilateral normalization rather than initiating it.

At the same time, the normalization of bilateral relations alone did not guarantee the formation of sustainable regional cooperation. The agreements reached could have remained within the framework of separate bilateral relations. Their significance became much broader thanks to the emergence of a new consultative format uniting all five Central Asian states.

5.2 Flexible multilateral format and consultative meetings

The development of the Consultative Meetings of the Heads of State of Central Asia provides evidence for evaluating the second theoretical proposition: whether flexible multilateral consultation can sustain regional cooperation without supranational authority or binding enforcement mechanisms.

Since their establishment in 2018, the Consultative Meetings have become the principal internally owned platform for multilateral political coordination in Central Asia.

The initiative launched by Uzbekistan in 2017 quickly developed into a regular mechanism of regional political dialogue (President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, 2017). The first Consultative Meeting of the Heads of State of Central Asia was held in Astana in 2018, followed by summits in Tashkent and Awaz. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted but did not terminate this process. Although the meeting scheduled for 2020 had to be postponed, consultations were resumed in 2021. The resumption of meetings in 2021 provides evidence of continuity despite the absence of permanent institutions or formal enforcement mechanisms.

Over time, the Consultative Meetings have evolved beyond recurrent presidential dialogue. They became a forum for identifying common priorities, discussing key regional issues, and developing policy responses. Their practical implementation was then carried out mainly at the bilateral level.

The format’s durability partly reflects its institutional flexibility. Participation does not require the delegation of sovereign authority, majority voting, or a common foreign policy, enabling states with different external alignments to sustain consultation without revising their national foreign-policy priorities.

5.3 Leadership diplomacy and gradual institutionalization

The third proposition concerns whether recurrent leadership interaction contributes to the routinization of regional cooperation. This question is particularly important in Central Asia, where formal regional institutions remain limited and presidential diplomacy continues to shape the pace and direction of interstate coordination.

As Table 2 shows, after 2016, contacts between the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan became regular. Official visits, meetings on the margins of multilateral events, telephone conversations, and numerous joint documents have become established features of bilateral interaction. Leadership diplomacy thus evolved from an episodic instrument into a recurrent mechanism for maintaining political dialogue.

Table 2. Institutionalization of leadership diplomacy between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (2016–2025).

Compiled by the author based on official materials of the Presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of both states, and the Treaty on Allied Relations (2022).

The evidence nevertheless provides only partial support for the third proposition. Repeated leadership interaction is clearly associated with greater regularity of political communication and with the development of additional coordination mechanisms. However, the available evidence does not demonstrate that these mechanisms have become fully independent of presidential involvement. Leadership diplomacy should therefore be interpreted as a mechanism that facilitates routinization rather than as sufficient evidence of complete institutionalization.

5.4 Institutional diversity as an adaptive resource

The fourth proposition examines whether institutional diversification increases adaptive capacity by allowing states to distribute functions across multiple cooperation formats. Central Asian states use different venues for security, economic cooperation, infrastructure, political dialogue, and engagement with external partners.

Institutional diversity in Central Asia is often viewed as a sign of fragmentation. The region’s states participate in economic and military-political associations in different ways, have different international commitments, and manage their own relations with external partners. For example, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, while Uzbekistan retains observer status. Similar differences exist in the security sphere. Therefore, many researchers believe that this heterogeneity hinders deeper regional integration.

However, the research findings suggest a different perspective. The overlap of various institutional formats can indeed create problems. These arise when commitments made within different organizations contradict each other, external actors promote competing initiatives, the same projects are duplicated without coordination, or states begin to focus more on external platforms than on their own regional interactions. Unequal access between countries to financial, political, and institutional resources also creates additional difficulties.

Institutional plurality can nevertheless provide adaptive advantages when different platforms perform complementary functions. States can then select the venue best suited to a particular task and shift issues to alternative formats when one mechanism proves constrained. Security, transport, trade, environmental, and foreign-policy issues can therefore be distributed across multiple platforms rather than concentrated within a single organization.

This is particularly evident in the “Central Asia Plus” formats. Rather than replacing existing mechanisms, “Central Asia Plus” formats have expanded opportunities for engagement with external partners.

In practice, the Central Asian states combine internal regional mechanisms with participation in international formats. The Consultative Meetings provide a forum for coordinating common regional priorities, while collaboration with external organizations provides access to investment, financial resources, foreign markets, security cooperation mechanisms and infrastructure development. In addition, such venues enhance the capacity of countries in the region to advance their interests internationally.

This distribution of responsibilities is not only political. According to the World Bank, Central Asia’s transport system still faces serious constraints, including long border crossings, weak multimodal connectivity, and relatively low efficiency of infrastructure (World Bank, 2023). Meeting these challenges requires the participation of a wide range of actors, not just one organization: national governments, international financial institutions, regional programmes, and development organizations. In this context, institutional diversity reflects the region’s practical needs rather than its institutional disunity.

The evidence provides conditional support for the fourth proposition. Institutional diversity does not in itself increase regional resilience and may contribute to fragmentation when institutional commitments compete or overlap without coordination. Its adaptive effect emerges only when different platforms perform complementary functions and states retain sufficient agency to shift issues between them. Institutional diversification should therefore be understood as an enabling condition for adaptation rather than as an inherently resilience-enhancing feature.

5.5 Regional cooperation in the context of external shocks

Major crises provide an opportunity to assess the resilience of established mechanisms for regional cooperation. For Central Asia, these challenges include the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions to global supply chains, the situation in Afghanistan, the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, and intensifying competition for Eurasian transport corridors.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided the first major stress test for the emerging regional coordination architecture. Although the Consultative Meeting scheduled for 2020 was postponed, regional cooperation continued through bilateral and sectoral channels, including humanitarian assistance, health coordination, and discussions of medical supplies. Consultative Meetings resumed in 2021, indicating that the interruption altered the form of cooperation without ending political commitment to regional dialogue.

Russia’s war against Ukraine generated a different set of pressures, including the reorientation of trade and transport routes, inflationary pressures, and heightened food-security risks. According to World Bank estimates, intraregional agricultural trade and economic ties with Russia remain important for Central Asian economies, while the pandemic and the war have compounded existing supply-chain disruptions and price pressures.

These disruptions also increased the strategic importance of alternative transport routes. Despite common external challenges, countries in the region did not seek to develop a common foreign policy. Each country maintained its own foreign-policy priorities and established its own relations with external partners. However, this has not hindered regional cooperation. The Consultative Meetings have continued, and their agenda has gradually expanded to include transport, economic interconnectedness, safety and security, and joint regional risk assessment. In this context, the adoption in 2025 of the Concept of Regional Security and Stability in Central Asia, as well as the Catalogue of Security Risks for Central Asia for 2026–2028, is particularly important (President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, 2025a,b). These documents indicate an effort to develop shared approaches to emerging security challenges, including developments in Afghanistan. Their practical effectiveness, however, will depend on the consistency of national-level implementation and therefore cannot yet be assessed conclusively.

Experience in recent years shows that external crises have led neither to the end of regional cooperation nor to a move toward deeper institutional integration. States continued political dialogue, used bilateral mechanisms to address practical challenges, re-established multilateral consultations after the pandemic, expanded the regional agenda, and engaged more actively with various international platforms depending on specific objectives.

The external-shock evidence is consistent with the fifth proposition, but the strength of support differs across the dimensions of resilience. The strongest evidence concerns continuity and functional maintenance: regional dialogue resumed after the interruption of 2020, while bilateral and sectoral cooperation continued during periods of disruption. Evidence of adaptation is more limited and is visible mainly in the use of alternative channels of cooperation, changes in policy priorities, and the distribution of issues across different institutional formats. The findings therefore support resilience more strongly in terms of continuity than in terms of institutional transformation.

5.6 Limits and negative evidence

The empirical record also contains evidence that qualifies the proposed model. Regional coordination has not eliminated persistent disagreements over water management, environmental issues, economic asymmetries, implementation gaps, or divergent foreign-policy priorities. These cases are analytically important because they demonstrate that adaptive interstate coordination does not imply convergence of state interests or automatic implementation of political commitments.

Leadership diplomacy illustrates this limitation particularly clearly. High-level political contacts can accelerate bargaining and overcome temporary political obstacles, but their effects are less durable when agreements are not translated into ministerial procedures, budgetary commitments, monitoring arrangements, or implementation mechanisms. The evidence for Proposition 3 therefore points to an important distinction between political activation and institutional routinization.

These limitations also provide a useful counterfactual benchmark. If bilateral normalization and recurrent consultation were sufficient on their own, implementation gaps and persistent sectoral disagreements should progressively disappear. They have not. The evidence instead suggests that adaptive coordination is better understood as a mechanism for containing fragmentation and preserving cooperation despite unresolved disagreements than as a mechanism for eliminating those disagreements.

5.7 How the four mechanisms interact

Taken together, the evidence suggests a sequential but non-linear relationship among the four mechanisms. Bilateral settlements reduce immediate sources of interstate friction, creating more favourable conditions for region-wide consultation. Recurrent consultation, in turn, provides a regional agenda within which leadership diplomacy can sustain political momentum and facilitate the routinization of cooperation. Institutional diversification complements these mechanisms by providing alternative functional channels when particular formats are constrained. The mechanisms are therefore neither interchangeable nor independently sufficient: their explanatory value lies primarily in their interaction.

The interaction of the four mechanisms provides the basis for assessing the five theoretical propositions formulated in the conceptual framework. Table 3 summarizes the strength and limits of the empirical evidence for each proposition.

Table 3. Assessment of the theoretical propositions.

Taken together, the evidence supports different components of the proposed model to varying degrees rather than confirming it uniformly. The strongest evidence concerns the sequencing of bilateral normalization and multilateral consultation, as well as the continuity of political dialogue. Evidence for leadership-induced institutionalization and institutional diversification is more conditional, while the external-shock episodes demonstrate continuity more clearly than institutional adaptation.

6 Discussion

6.1 Regional resilience does not necessarily require deep integration

The findings qualify integration-centred interpretations of regional cooperation in an important respect. Central Asia suggests that institutional depth and regional resilience should be treated as analytically distinct dimensions. The region has not developed supranational authority comparable to highly institutionalized regional organizations, yet cooperation has acquired greater continuity and capacity to absorb disruption. The theoretical implication is therefore not that institutions are unimportant, but that resilience may emerge from the configuration of coordination mechanisms rather than from the depth of authority delegated to a single regional institution.

Costa Buranelli (2025) offers a compatible interpretation: although the Consultative Meetings do not constitute an international organization in the conventional sense, repeated practices, shared expectations, and routinized procedures have gradually endowed the format with institutional characteristics.

6.2 Adaptive interstate coordination in relation to inter-regionalism

The concept of adaptive interstate coordination overlaps with, but is not reducible to, existing accounts of inter-regionalism and overlapping regionalism. Inter-regionalism draws attention to relations among regional organizations and to the growing importance of institutional arrangements that connect different regional spaces (Hänggi et al., 2006). Applied to Central Asia, Karami and Mozaffari Falarti (2026) demonstrate how overlapping memberships and project-based cooperation across organizations such as the SCO, EAEU and ECO allow states to diversify partnerships and adapt strategically without sacrificing autonomy. The present findings support this insight but identify institutional diversification as only one component of a wider coordination system.

Adaptive interstate coordination extends this literature in two respects. First, it incorporates intra-regional bilateral problem-solving and leadership diplomacy into the explanation of regional resilience. These mechanisms operate below the level normally emphasized by inter-regionalism but can determine whether wider institutional cooperation becomes politically feasible. Second, it specifies interaction among levels: bilateral settlements reduce immediate sources of friction; regional consultation converts improved relations into shared political agendas; leadership diplomacy sustains political momentum and may generate routinized coordination; and institutional diversification provides alternative functional channels when individual formats are constrained.

The theoretical contribution is therefore not the claim that institutional overlap produces flexibility, which is already established in the inter-regionalism literature. Rather, it is the proposition that resilience in weakly institutionalized regions may emerge from the interaction of bilateral, regional, leadership-driven, and inter-institutional mechanisms without these mechanisms converging into a single supranational structure.

An important alternative explanation for the post-2016 intensification of regional cooperation is Uzbekistan’s foreign-policy reorientation. The leadership transition clearly acted as a critical enabling condition by reducing bilateral tensions and reopening channels of regional cooperation (Kobilov, 2025). The argument advanced here does not treat adaptive interstate coordination as an alternative to this explanation. Rather, it distinguishes between the initial political trigger and the mechanisms through which renewed cooperation became more durable. Uzbekistan’s policy change helps explain why regional cooperation accelerated after 2016; it does not by itself explain why bilateral normalization was followed by recurring five-state consultations, why political dialogue persisted through external shocks, or why cooperation became distributed across multiple institutional levels. Adaptive interstate coordination therefore explains the reproduction and resilience of cooperation after the initial political opening rather than the opening itself.

A second alternative explanation concerns changing geopolitical and economic conditions. Growing connectivity needs, developments in Afghanistan, the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and increasing engagement by external powers created incentives for greater coordination among Central Asian states. These pressures undoubtedly increased the demand for cooperation. Yet external pressure does not determine the institutional form of the response: similar pressures may generate competition, fragmentation, or alignment with external actors rather than stronger intra-regional coordination. The explanatory role of adaptive interstate coordination therefore lies in specifying the mechanisms through which states translated changing external incentives into sustained regional interaction.

6.3 From lack of institutions to institutional flexibility

Scholarship on Central Asian regionalism has long treated the absence of strong regional organizations as evidence of limited integration. Early integration initiatives failed to develop into durable regional institutions, while strong sovereignty preferences and external influence constrained deeper institutionalization.

More recent scholarship offers a different interpretation. Costa Buranelli (2025) argues that the regional initiatives of the 1990s should not be regarded as failures merely because they did not produce supranational institutions. These projects laid the foundations of regional cooperation, formed the expectations of states and accumulated practical experience of cooperation between newly independent republics.

The findings of this study are consistent with this interpretation. The modern development of Central Asia is difficult to describe as completely informal cooperation, but it also does not correspond to the classical model of regional integration. The pattern is better characterized as the gradual development and routinization of coordination mechanisms without supranational delegation.

Institutional flexibility is central to this pattern. It allows states to participate in regional cooperation without the need to limit their own sovereignty or pursue a common foreign policy. This keeps the political costs of participation relatively low and allows coordination mechanisms to develop incrementally without redesigning the region’s institutional architecture.

However, such a model has its limitations. Decisions made within the framework of consultative mechanisms are not always implemented equally quickly. Political agreements are not always translated promptly into national legislation, government programmes, or administrative practice. In addition, the effectiveness of many initiatives still largely depends on the political will of the state leaders.

Therefore, institutional flexibility should not be considered as a universal alternative to deep integration. Its principal advantage is that it permits cooperation to deepen in settings where supranational institutions remain politically infeasible or inconsistent with states’ sovereignty preferences. In Central Asia, institutional flexibility has therefore functioned not simply as a temporary compromise but as a viable mode of regional coordination.

6.4 Rethinking the relationship between bilateral and multilateral cooperation

Changes in the regional policy of Uzbekistan after 2016 are difficult to explain through classical neo-functionalist logic. This shift resulted less from sectoral spillover than from leadership change, revised domestic priorities, and a reorientation of relations with neighbouring states.

Neofunctionalism expects sectoral cooperation to generate spillover pressures that encourage deeper integration and, eventually, greater delegation of authority. Central Asia followed a different sequence: bilateral relations improved and political trust was restored before regular multilateral consultation emerged, while decision-making authority remained firmly at the national level. Cooperation thus expanded horizontally across relationships and policy areas without a corresponding vertical transfer of authority to supranational institutions.

In other words, cooperation expanded primarily horizontally across policy areas and relationships without a corresponding vertical transfer of authority to supranational institutions.

The Central Asian experience also refines intergovernmentalist expectations. Intergovernmentalism correctly emphasizes national interests, interstate bargaining, and the continuing centrality of governments. Yet the regional experience demonstrates that recurrent intergovernmental coordination can deepen and stabilize cooperation even when states do not seek supranational integration.

Bilateral and multilateral mechanisms of cooperation.

Table 4.

Regional cooperation becomes more sustainable when bilateral and multilateral arrangements do not compete, but rather perform complementary functions. Bilateral arrangements allow for specific issues to be addressed between states, and multilateral consultations create the conditions for aligning these solutions with the broader regional agenda.

However, this model is not universal. In the absence of overall coordination, bilateral ties can reinforce regional fragmentation, foster closed coalitions, increase asymmetries among states, and entrench unequal patterns of interaction. The impact of bilateral cooperation therefore depends not so much on the intensity of contacts as on how well they fit into the overall logic of regional development.

6.5 Leadership diplomacy as a source of development and vulnerability

Since 2016, recurrent presidential diplomacy has helped restore interstate trust, address long-standing disputes, and sustain momentum behind bilateral and regional initiatives.

This model nevertheless remains vulnerable because cooperation continues to depend heavily on leaders’ political commitment and personal engagement. Leadership changes, domestic political crises, or shifts in foreign-policy priorities may therefore disrupt cooperation, particularly where agreements remain weakly institutionalized.

At the same time, the emergence of national coordinators, sectoral councils, ministerial meetings, road maps, and working groups indicates a gradual extension of cooperation beyond presidential diplomacy. The durability of this process will depend on the extent to which high-level agreements become embedded in ministerial procedures, national legislation, implementation mechanisms, and regular monitoring.

6.6 Institutional diversity: fragmentation or a source of adaptability?

From the perspective of traditional integration theories, Central Asia’s institutional diversity is often viewed as a sign of regionalism’s weakness. The region lacks a single organization that would encompass all areas of cooperation and possess powers binding on all participants.

Bourdais Park proposes a different approach. Using the concept of competitive institutionalized cooperation, he demonstrates that regionalism can develop not around a single organization, but through several interconnected institutional platforms, each with its own objectives and resources (Bourdais Park, 2025).

The Central Asian case is broadly consistent with this perspective: different institutional platforms perform different security, economic, transport, investment, cultural, and diplomatic functions. Institutional plurality therefore need not signal regional weakness.

Its contribution to resilience, however, is conditional. Multiple platforms enhance adaptability only when their functions remain sufficiently complementary, overlapping commitments are politically manageable, and Central Asian states retain the agency to define regional priorities and shift issues across venues. Where organizations duplicate functions, compete for resources, or impose incompatible commitments, institutional diversity may instead reinforce fragmentation.

Institutional pluralism is therefore neither inherently beneficial nor inherently detrimental. Its effect depends on how states coordinate their participation across overlapping formats.

6.7 Regional agency under external competition

The empirical findings indicate that regional agency in Central Asia operates simultaneously at several interconnected levels. These dimensions of agency are summarized in Table 4.

Table 4. Levels of regional agency in Central Asia.

The interaction of bilateral and multilateral mechanisms expands the range of options available for regional coordination. States can pursue their own foreign policies without foregoing joint work on issues of common interest. Regional influence nevertheless remains unevenly distributed. Given their economic weight and political influence, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are particularly well positioned to initiate regional processes. The legitimacy and durability of this model nevertheless depend on inclusive participation by all five states and continued respect for sovereign equality.

6.8 Comparison with ASEAN: similar principles, different regional conditions

Central Asia’s emerging approach to regional cooperation shares several features with ASEAN’s intergovernmental model, particularly an emphasis on sovereignty, consensus, non-interference, gradualism, and limited supranational delegation. Southeast Asian regionalism demonstrates that regional order may be sustained not only through formal institutions but also through shared norms, flexible practices, and accumulated experience of cooperation. Acharya’s concept of norm localization further illustrates how external norms can be adapted to local political conditions and gradually embedded in regional practice (Acharya, 2004).

The comparison is useful because both regions privilege intergovernmental cooperation and remain cautious about constraints on state sovereignty. The ASEAN experience shows that using informal mechanisms does not preclude gradual institutional development (Acharya, 2014; Deinla, 2017). Moreover, even after establishing an extensive institutional framework, ASEAN has remained committed to consensus, respect for state sovereignty, and a cautious approach to centralization of decision-making (Acharya, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2023).

The two regions differ substantially in their historical trajectories, levels of institutionalization and economic integration, security architectures, membership structures, and relationships with external actors. ASEAN has developed an extensive institutional framework since its establishment in 1967, whereas the Central Asian consultative process remains comparatively recent and strongly centred on political dialogue among national leaders (Acharya, 2014). The comparison is therefore analytical rather than developmental: it highlights common principles without implying a shared institutional trajectory.

6.9 Flexibility as an advantage and a limitation

The study shows that institutional flexibility has both strengths and weaknesses. It makes it easier for states to participate in regional initiatives, as cooperation does not require the transfer of authority to supranational structures or restrict their freedom of action. However, this same characteristic often complicates the implementation of decisions already made.

The analytical question is therefore not whether Central Asia will move toward supranational integration, but how existing mechanisms can become more effective without sacrificing the flexibility on which they depend.

Further institutional development may therefore depend less on creating new supranational structures than on strengthening implementation through clearer procedures, technical coordination, monitoring, and regular review of existing commitments.

Such reforms would not require abandoning the existing model; rather, they could strengthen implementation while preserving the flexibility on which regional cooperation depends.

6.10 Theoretical contribution: adaptive interstate coordination

The principal theoretical contribution of this study is the concept of adaptive interstate coordination, which explains how regional cooperation may remain resilient without deep institutional integration.

In this respect, the proposed concept is at odds with the logic of neo-functionalism. According to the neo-functional approach, increased cooperation in individual areas gradually generates spillover pressures that encourage deeper institutionalization and further delegation of authority. The experience of Central Asia shows a different development trajectory. Despite increased cooperation, major policy decisions are still made at the national level, and supranational institutions have never become part of the regional architecture.

The concept is also only partly consistent with liberal intergovernmentalism. Like liberal intergovernmentalism, it treats national interests and interstate bargaining as central to regional cooperation. Its distinctive emphasis, however, lies in how recurrent political dialogue, accumulated experience, and routinized coordination practices increase the durability of cooperation over time.

The concept also differs from accounts centred on informal regionalism. Its analytical focus is not informality itself, but the process through which repeated interactions become routinized political practices. As these practices accumulate, they generate expectations of continued cooperation and facilitate coordination across policy domains. Regional resilience is therefore located not in the durability of a single organization but in states’ capacity to combine bilateral, multilateral, leadership-driven, and institutionally diversified forms of coordination.

Finally, external actors remain important to Central Asian regionalism, but external influence alone cannot explain the observed pattern. Domestic and intra-regional dynamics—including converging interests, shared practical problems, and states’ willingness to seek joint solutions—are equally important. Adaptive interstate coordination captures how these internal dynamics interact with external opportunities and constraints through bilateral problem-solving, multilateral consultation, leadership diplomacy, and institutional diversification.

6.11 Scope and potential applicability of the concept

Although developed from the Central Asian case, the concept is not necessarily limited to this region. The framework may also be useful for regions in which states maintain strong sovereignty preferences, resist substantial delegation to supranational institutions, engage simultaneously with multiple external partners, and organize cooperation around practical tasks.

It is most applicable where there is regular political dialogue between states, high political or economic costs of non-cooperation, and at least some overlap in interests. Equally important, bilateral and multilateral arrangements should complement each other rather than compete. Multiple institutional frameworks across which states can distribute different functions are also important.

Its explanatory scope is nevertheless limited. The framework is unlikely to explain regions in which armed conflict has effectively precluded political dialogue, regional order is dominated by a single hegemonic state, or supranational institutions already exercise extensive authority.

Central Asia is therefore treated not as a universal model of regional development but as a theory-building case for refining our understanding of regional cooperation. Comparative research is needed to determine the extent to which adaptive interstate coordination applies elsewhere.

6.12 Limitations of the emerging regional order

The findings do not imply that regional cooperation in Central Asia is irreversible or equally advanced across policy domains. Despite notable progress in recent years, a number of factors remain that may constrain further cooperation.

Above all, political agreements are not always translated into practical results. The proliferation of agreements and recurrent high-level dialogue indicates greater interaction among states but does not guarantee implementation.

The development of individual areas of cooperation also remains uneven. While policy dialogue and transport connectivity have made significant progress, changes in water management, energy, environmental protection and regulatory convergence have been much slower.

Domestic political dynamics also remain influential. Leadership changes, shifts in national priorities, or competition among state institutions may either accelerate regional cooperation or weaken commitment to it.

The expanding institutional architecture likewise has ambiguous effects: it creates new opportunities for cooperation while increasing the risk of functional duplication and institutional fragmentation. Finally, the accumulation of environmental, water, border, and socioeconomic problems may require closer coordination than existing flexible consultation mechanisms can provide.

Azerbaijan’s admission to the consultative format in 2025 raises an additional question about the future geographical and institutional boundaries of the process. While the decision expands opportunities for transregional cooperation between Central Asia and the South Caucasus, it may also alter the format’s original Central Asian focus. As Costa Buranelli notes, the accompanying change in the forum’s name reflects the gradual evolution of its institutional character.

These limitations reinforce the argument that regional resilience should be understood as an ongoing and contingent process rather than an achieved end state.

7 Conclusion

Despite the absence of supranational authority, a common legal framework, or centralized enforcement mechanisms, Central Asian states have established more regular political dialogue, reduced several sources of bilateral tension, and developed coordination mechanisms extending beyond presidential diplomacy to ministerial and sectoral levels.

The findings suggest that this resilience is better explained by the development of flexible coordination mechanisms than by institutional deepening. Adaptive interstate coordination combines pragmatic bilateral problem-solving, multilateral consultation, recurrent leadership diplomacy, and institutional diversification, enabling states to sustain cooperation and respond to shared challenges without substantial delegation of sovereign authority.

The broader theoretical implication is that institutional depth does not by itself determine regional resilience: integration and resilience may follow distinct trajectories.

This perspective avoids two analytical extremes: the absence of an EU-like institution should not be treated as evidence of regional failure, while individual summits or joint declarations should not be taken as automatic evidence of resilience. The relevant question is instead whether existing mechanisms sustain cooperation, adapt to changing conditions, maintain key regional functions, and contain long-term fragmentation.

Comparative research beyond Central Asia is needed to determine whether similar configurations of flexible interstate coordination generate resilience in other weakly institutionalized regions.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Footnotes

Edited by: Peter Rada, University of Applied Science Budapest, Hungary

Reviewed by: Maziar Mozaffari Falarti, University of Tehran, Iran

Muhammad Arsy Ash Shiddiqy, Islamic University of Riau, Indonesia