Kyrgyz citizens are elite driven and politically manipulated citizens. To see this we don’t look back too far; just take the recent protests, which became the tradition of Kyrgyz people. Too often Kyrgyz people go to protests and meetings. They don’t demand anything themselves, but rather for some several elites.

First of all, let me explain what political socialization and political culture are. A ‘political culture’ is a particular distribution of political attitudes, values, feelings and skills. In other words, the political culture of a particular nation explains or describes the nations’ beliefs, attitudes toward, and expectation from its government. In order to understand the political system of a nation or a country, one should know what kind of political culture the nation has.

A ‘political socialization’ is the way or process children are introduced to the political culture of their society. Shortly saying, this is the way how children or next generation get involved in society and politics. Children are socialized through variety of institutions and agents. Some, like civics courses in schools, deliberately designed for this purpose. Others, like play and work groups, are likely to affect political socialization indirectly. The family, school, religious institutions, peer groups including (childhood play groups, friendship cliques, school and collage fraternizes, and small work groups), occupation, class, status, the Mass Media, the interest groups, and the political parties. Through these institutions and agents the children are influenced and posses particular information and belief about their government. Thus, the map of political culture of a nation is developed.

Both political culture and political socialization aims to describe the ‘legitimacy’ of a nation’s government. If a government possesses high level of legitimacy, it means that its citizens respect and obey the norms and rules, and satisfied with its policy. Level of legitimacy is an important implication to stability and efficiency of the political system.

The citizens should actively participate and get involved in policy making process of its government and influence to its outcome, or decisions. To divide the citizens with regard to their participation intensity, Almond and Verba considered different types of citizens. According to Almond and Verba all citizens fall in 3 types: participants 60 % actively express their demands and giving their support to party leaders) subjects 30% (elite driven citizens, who acts in the interest of narrowly defined elites. Subjective citizens passively obey governmental officials and the law, don’t vote) and parochial 10% (hardly aware of government and politics at all.)

After the general understanding of what political culture is, one can analyze the political culture of any country and make a summary. I myself tried to explain and describe the political socialization and the political culture in Kyrgyzstan. As a citizen of Kyrgyzstan and as a future political analytic, I have something to say about the political culture of Kyrgyz citizens.

Kyrgyz citizens have their own political culture, and it is unnoticeable for the first sight. Kyrgyz political culture can be drawn from different corners. Firstly, Kyrgyz government has very low level of legitimacy. Secondly, Kyrgyz citizens fall in subjective type. Last and the most important aspect is the political socialization of the children and the next generation. It is failed and negative.

Kyrgyzstan was faced number of problems from the outset. Right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the first failed policies of independent Kyrgyzstan was the privatization of public sectors. The problem with the privatization is in the distribution of the public sectors. Some rich and official people grabbed the most they can from the public sectors. They legally and illegally privatized everything they could. Others who couldn’t afford the privatization received very little or nothing. Some people even did not know what privatization was, and how its process was conducted. Today’s rich, VIP elites are the ones who successfully (too successfully) privatized the nations’ wellbeing. They enjoy high level of living standard; having private villas, driving luxury cars, and opening their business. The others, poor ones, who constitute the majority of the population, are somehow and barely surviving.

Another big problem the country has is the corruption, which is very deeply rooted every where around the country. Some say it is because of the culture (nomadic people, clan or tribal ties), others think it is because of the low and unstable economy. They both right to some extend. In Kyrgyzstan, people know each other and have blood, friendship and other ties. Poor people, in order to survive and feed their family, have to bribe and get involved in corruption.

Kyrgyzstan also has a problem of North-South division. A lot of politicians and experts claim that there is no any separation between the people of the North and the people of the South. I don’t agree with them, and there are a lot of evidences, some of them I try to highlight. Take a simple example – the communication. There is lack of connection and communication between North and South. The Mass Media which is the main and the most powerful tool for the unity of the nation, they don’t work. In the North, one cannot watch any TV channel about the South, and vise versa. There are no attempts to unite ore keep Kyrgyz people united by the government and the parliament. North people don’t care about the South and the South neither. Then how can someone talk about the unity or the absence of the separation.

Most of the Kyrgyz citizens fall in subjective type of citizens; who do not care about their government and don’t actively participate in policy making process for them. They are elite driven and politically manipulated citizens. To see this we don’t look back too far; just take the recent protests, which became the tradition of Kyrgyz people. Too often Kyrgyz people go to protests and meetings. They don’t demand anything themselves, but rather for some several elites. People are easily manipulated and used as a tool for the protests to reflect the public will for the interest of these elites. The real purposes of the protests are different from what they shout in the streets and in front of the governmental buildings. Simply, it is the struggle for power.

The ‘legitimacy’ of Kyrgyz government is very low, fact that the three branches: the executive, the legislature and judiciary lost the Kyrgyz peoples’ trusts and beliefs. If you ask any citizen ofKyrgyzstan whether he or she believe and trust any three branches of the Kyrgyz politics, he or she will say NO. This is how political socialization of Kyrgyz citizens is preceded. These are very few factors that could give the answer to the problems Kyrgyzstan faces today. We can see why Kyrgyzstan is underdeveloped, why its economy is stagnated, why there is a big gap between rich and poor, why there is a deeply rooted corruption in Kyrgyzstan.

To sum up, I want to state that the political culture of any nation is the most important and vital component, the basis of the society, political system, and economy. The stability of the country significantly depends on the political culture of its nation. So, Kyrgyzstan needs changes, and especially changes in its political culture.