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Drawing on comparisons with cooperative and competitive non-state health care provision around the world, this article analyses non-state provision of health services in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It explores the conditions in which non-state provisions remain cooperative or become politicised and contrasts the relations between NGOs and the state in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and the way they became politicised in the Middle East. In contrast to Western conceptions of NGOs, Central Asia's health NGOs cooperate with state agencies to serve their constituencies. In contrast to the perceptions of Central Asian governments, health-oriented NGOs do not aim to politicise health care. Donor support to Central Asia's health NGOs has created civically oriented actors that fill gaps in the state's capacity and enable governments to better serve their populations.

This paper asks why Central Asian governments, though equally repressive of their traditional media, pursue diverging policies toward the Internet. Ultimately we find Internet regulatory policy in the Central Asian states varies according to who provides financial capital for ICT. Where international aid organizations and NGOs provide capital and assistance for ICT infrastructure, such as in Kyrgyzstan and, to a lesser extent, in Uzbekistan, the formal regulatory environment is more open, clearly articulated, and permissive of electronic media. In contrast, where domestic actors fund the development of ICT infrastructure, as in Kazakhstan, regulation is vague and government control and interference more extensive.

This article illustrates some of the transitions in the Russian media from authoritarianism to democracy within a new information order. The goal is to outline the general trends in mass media transitions across the media industry in Russia. The outcomes of perestroika and glasnost policies and the changes in media policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union are examined. As it is much easier to discuss the elements of Soviet control that have been removed, but much harder to define that which has replaced the old ways, a projection of the future role of the mass media in securing democracy and in the forming a new national order is also discussed.