WORK WITH CITIZENS’ APPEALS AND PUBLIC CONTROL IN THE HISTORY OF UZBEK STATEHOOD: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS FROM THE TEMURID ERA TO THE STATE-LEGAL IDEAS OF THE JADIDS

Abstract

Research gap: despite a substantial body of historical-legal work on individual institutions of citizens’ appeals in Uzbek history (Temur’s Tuzuk, the Arzbegi Institute, the Jadid programmes), no comprehensive theoretical synthesis explains these institutions as successive stages in the legitimation of state power. Methodology: historical-institutional analysis, comparative constitutional method, legal hermeneutics and elements of critical legal studies, applied to primary sources and the historiography of three periods. Novelty: for the first time, the three historical stages are treated not as a chronological narrative but as a change in types of legitimation of power, for which the author proposes an original model — the Petition Institution Evolution Model (“moral justice → administrative justice → constitutional justice”). Main results: the historical effectiveness of appeals systems was determined not by the scope of the receiving body’s powers but by its procedural independence and the legal guarantee of officials’ responsibility. Theoretical contribution: the model is tested not only on its founding material but on an independent case (the bi institute of the Kazakh steppe), which delineates its scope conditions; comparison with recent international historiography of the right of petition (Miller, 2019; Huzzey & Miller, 2022; Rumbold, 2026) and with foreign institutions (the English Petition of Right, the Ottoman Divan, Islamic mazalim, the Chinese Censorate, German Verwaltungsrecht) situates the Uzbek material within the global discussion of the genesis of administrative justice.