Julia Eckert, Georg Elwert (1996):
Land Tenure in Uzbekistan

1.6 Monitoring

Monitoring of the observance of the laws and of the implementation of the land reform is inhibited by the division of responsibilities between three institutions: the agricultural ministry, the national cartography department and the office for water economy. They are badly co-ordinated and have contradictory regulations.

The monitoring of the implementation of the land reform lies in the hands of the agricultural ministry. Additionally, lawyers assume that there is a secret presidential service to observe the administration. Whether this service delivers information about the success of the land reform or whether it observes specific individuals is not clear.

The various sources of information (official statistics, monitoring reports and secret services) probably lead to a fictitious information surplus at the central level. Since even local arbitration cases reach the ministries and every decision has to be sanctioned from above there is an overload of responsibilities at the top level as describes as the bottleneck-problem. This leads to inefficiency. The central level demands to decide everything but cannot handle the load. Additionally it lacks reliable information. Therefore in reality the decisions are made at the middle level. Since they are made unofficially they are not controlled. The lack of decentralisation of decision-making therefore has an adverse effect: The decisions made at the local and regional level are difficult to monitor. Monitoring becomes a secret service activity and not a tool of policy making, of revision and improvement.

Furthermore, the image of the executive at central level about the situation, the attitudes and expectations of the rural population is based on the interpretations of the local administration. Therefore the complex causes for the difficulties in implementing the land reform are reduced to the factors the local administration is not responsible for. Lacking technology, lacking marketing opportunities and above all a 'deficient mentality' of the farmers are the predominant explanations of the administration at all levels for the slacking progress of the reform.

More research is needed about the flow of information between the different levels of the executive and the administration.