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Building on recent scholarship, this essay contributes to further developing a conceptual understanding of multivector foreign policy, a term that, despite its frequent use, is still in need of additional refinement. I use the two-pronged concept of diversification as hinging, first, on simultaneous co-alignment with multiple major power providers and, second, as resulting from the interaction of variables at both system and unit levels. The essay then models a causal mechanism to explain Kazakhstan's approach to international infrastructure connectivity, an oft neglected issue-area of interstate collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores issues of citizenship and belonging associated with post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s repatriation programme. Beginning in 1991, Kazakhstan financed the resettlement of over 944,000 diasporic Kazakhs from nearly a dozen countries, including Mongolia, and encouraged repatriates to become naturalised citizens. Using the concept of ‘privileged exclusion’, this article argues that repatriated Kazakhs from Mongolia belong due to their knowledge of Kazakh language and traditions yet, at the same time, do not belong due to their lack of linguistic fluency in Russian, the absence of a shared Soviet experience, and limited comfort with the ‘cosmopolitan’ lifestyle that characterises the new elite in this post-Soviet context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the seat of the Kazakh government and a booming city since 1998, Astana has attracted hundreds of thousands of migrants. As a cultural and financial capital, Almaty has also continued to boom, drawing comparable numbers of migrants from different regions of Kazakhstan. However, varying historical trajectories and historically constructed notions of the urban and rural, as articulated by the cultural elites and policy-makers, as well as different preparedness of the government for migration flows in the 1990s and the 2000s in Almaty and Astana respectively, have resulted in quite diverse attitudes toward mobility and different perceptions about how urban order should be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the concept of political postcolonialism and how political groups appropriate and contest this discourse. Elites and contesting political groups utilise postcolonial rhetoric to legitimate their political goals by projecting that their country, in this case Kazakhstan, was colonised by the Tsarist Russia and then by the Soviet Union. For President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev's nationalising regime the status of Kazakhstan as a colony represented a vital item in post-1991 nation-building projects. Political opposition and Kazakh national- patriots contested this official discourse, blaming the regime for scarce efforts towards 'full decolonisation'. The absence of major intellectual discussion allowed these elites and political players to reappropriate these discourses in the political rather than critical intellectual domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pragmatic interests of Kazakhstan and the European Union have profoundly influenced the relationship between them, preventing the establishment of successful cooperation in the human dimension. This article investigates these dynamics in detail, placing its spotlight on the role assigned to the relationship with the European Union in the most recent technologies of power devised by the Kazakhstani regime. Particular attention here will be devoted to the tension between the regime's search for international legitimacy and its efforts to insulate itself from EU pressures for political liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As opposed to the current literature which argues that informal politics pervades formal institutions in Kazakhstan and Central Asia more widely, this article argues that Nur Otan, the political party of the President of Kazakhstan, acts as a formal institution to counter the instability generated by informal networks competing for access to political and economic resources. This is achieved by consolidating the political parties associated with these networks into Nur Otan and the synchronisation of the party and the state apparatus. However, the extent to which Nur Otan can provide this stabilising function in the long term is dependent upon regime dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Departing from some prominent scholarship on Kazakhstani politics, the author argues that competition between financial-industrial groups over scarce economic and political resources—rather than inter-clan or centre-periphery rivalries—largely determines who gets what, when and how. While clan politics and regional grievances may still influence struggles over the distribution of power and wealth, their importance has diminished in recent years. Instead, observable political conflict has centred around competing financial-industrial groups, which represent the diverse, and at times clashing, interests of Kazakhstan's business and political elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses public relations campaigns undertaken by the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan that aim to establish these countries' national identities among the international community. The political aspects of nation branding in these countries are discussed. Various slogans developed by these campaigns are analyzed.