How master frames mislead: the division and eclipse of nationalist movements in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan

Abstract This article examines how a successful master frame in one location can promote mobilization failure in another by misleading movement entrepreneurs. It revisits two cases of low nationalist mobilization in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to demonstrate that a fuller explanation should include the tactical choices – good and bad – of movement leaders. In both cases, a transnational anti-imperial master frame misled separatist nationalists, causing them to undervalue critical shifts in the political environments in their republics. In Uzbekistan, this frame left the Birlik nationalist movement open to division by the state in the aftermath of inter-ethnic violence, while it made Tajikistan's Rastokhez movement susceptible to eclipse by regionalist mobilization in Tajikistan.