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This paper contributes to this special issue by studying power from the perspective of the ability of actors to induce compliance with international norms. Presenting a case study of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative implementation in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the paper explores how states get involved with and comply with the initiative. This case study shows that Central Asian states are socialized through a multiplicity of actors. Also, the power of inducing compliance with a norm is attained by various actors throughout the norm-implementation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Kazakhstan today, overt dissent is not typically tolerated. However, recent large-scale citizen protests over land use and the environment have resulted in significant concessions by the government. This paper examines the discourses and slogans of protests spaces, which invoke the (inter)national legal frameworks of the United Nations, the legacy of land and bio-species conservation in the former Soviet Union, and a nationalized moral paradigm of respect for ancestral lands, cultural heritage, and sovereignty. Protesters not only call upon government leaders to respect these existing structures of authority, but also position themselves pragmatically as agents of social and political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After two violent episodes in the cities of Aktobe and Almaty during the summer of 2016, Islamic extremism resurfaced forcibly as an object of securitization in Kazakhstan. By focusing on anti-terror simulations and the performance of a theater play in the city of Aqtau, in this paper I argue that encounters with security measures and performances are formative moments for people's sensual apprehension of "the threat" and "the state" through the circulation of affects and emotions, lending a visceral dimension to the understanding of (in)security. Rather than uncritically enhancing the need for further securitization, the affective encounters were constitutive of wider political assessments, and of the very sense and meaning of "security". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Kazakhstan's relations with Southeast Asia, an area of study which has been given little attention so far. It firstly analyzes Kazakhstan's multivector foreign policy, arguing that Kazakhstan has been trying to pursue an omnidirectional hedging strategy by diversifying its partners to enhance its strategic space. Secondly, it looks at how Southeast Asia is seen as part of this strategy, particularly as alternative economic partners for Kazakhstan. It argues that there are greater opportunities for enhanced economic interaction due to Kazakhstan's central role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), membership of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) that is shifting toward Asia, and reinvigorated economic diplomacy. Thirdly, it examines Kazakhstan's relations with five key Southeast Asian states – Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand – which are Kazakhstan's largest trading partners in the region and arguably viewed as the Southeast Asian countries with the most potential to play a role in Kazakhstan's omnidirectional hedging strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illiberal policy innovation has grown in post-Soviet Eurasia over the 2010s, especially regarding controversial moral and cultural issues. These have often been developed by illiberal entrepreneur states and then taken up elsewhere. This article reviews the case of the Russian "homosexual propaganda" law, situating the particular domestic context for its legislative development and then turning to the partial diffusion of "copycat" versions debated in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. Although Russian illiberal innovation can be understood through domestic drivers of policy development, attempts to pass illiberal laws elsewhere are better explained by the interaction of domestic political incentives and international factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While taboos against frank discussion of interethnic issues prevail in the predominantly Russian-language media at the national level in Kazakhstan, especially in television and radio, the Kazakh-language press is more likely to frame local conflicts in ethnic terms and stoke tensions between Kazakhs and non-Kazakhs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, the draft of the law on patriotic education was submitted to the State Duma. The document clearly signaled that Russian authorities were starting to prepare for long-term resistance to external threats, both military and cultural. This development follows the adoption of five decrees with a similar focus. Exploring this "patriotic turn," our research will focus on how power shapes collective memory and how the Russian patriotic campaign is perceived elsewhere in the post-Soviet space, namely in Kazakhstan. In this way, we want to shed new light on the nexus between historical memory, anti-Western resistance, and the foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian leaders face a dilemma in choosing whether to fund higher education: risk promoting educated students who are more likely to protest, or increase human capital and promote economic growth? We argue that autocrats invest in higher education to gain the support of those in the middle and upper-classes when there is a large public sector. Panel data analysis confirms this hypothesis, but offers limited insight into why. We examine the Kazakh case to better understand the causal mechanisms at play. The evidence is strongly suggestive that higher education can be an important part of the authoritarian toolbox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions conventional interpretations of the nature of power in authoritarian regimes that treat the political position of the ruler as hierarchical and top-down. Instead, it applies the principal–agent problem to information asymmetry in a single case study, Nursultan Nazarbayev's Kazakhstan, to analyze the inability of the ruler to conduct effective oversight when officials engage in elaborate personality cults, depoliticization, and informal patronal practices that threaten the market and the legitimacy of the ruler. Data for this article came from local mass media and in-depth interviews with mid-level bureaucrats in Kazakhstan collected in 2011–2017 on a confidential basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role do political parties play in Central Asian authoritarianism? Typically understood as being irrelevant, this article argues to the contrary that parties play an important role in the mosaic of authoritarian rule via the articulation of private interests. Examining Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan this study identifies two models of party interest articulation: a leveraging model where a party is utilized to protect the financial and political interests of elites; and a coordinating model where a party serves to integrate presidential assets. Neither model is uniform and party dynamics are dependent upon the specific nature of each personalist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines different stages of the development of China–Kazakhstan cooperation and identifies major factors that have facilitated the advancement of close links between them. It explains China's role in Kazakhstan's multi-vectored foreign policy and demonstrates major milestones in the expansion of bilateral political and economic ties. It also addresses the current developments of China–Kazakhstan cooperation, particularly as related to the implementation of the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) initiative. In conclusion, the article argues that the China–Kazakhstan cooperation may promote the implementation of the SREB initiative, while also contributing to the consolidation of authoritarian regimes in the wider region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of the political and economic attitudes of the "Nazarbayev generation" (aged 18-29) reveal the ways that young Kazakhstanis are distinct from older generations. Young people are more accepting of material inequality and less likely to make demands on the welfare state in favor of the poor and unemployed. They are also less likely to be troubled by nepotism and family rule. When compared to those who were socialized prior to the consolidation of presidential power, the Nazarbayev generation more closely reflects the values that underlie Kazakhstan's personalist regime and the practices and policies associated with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Kazakhstan, the exchange of favors for money is an embedded practice in schools and universities. Grades, examination scores, admissions to educational institutions, and theses are frequently traded for cash. Based on in-depth interviews during fieldwork, this article describes the monetization of informal exchanges after market reforms, and examines how the use of personal contacts, kinship connections in particular, has changed from the socialist period. This article also demonstrates how the exchange of informal payments at educational institutions is related to vertical corruption in the education sector by highlighting the stream of illicit financial resources within the bureaucratic hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Western pundits have embraced a "domino" logic to suggest that Kazakhstan might share the fate of Ukraine, with its Russian minority being used as the pretext for Russian intervention and irredentism. In this article I explore several reasons that invalidate this simplistic and mechanical parallel. Russia's policy toward Kazakhstan aims at remaining the main political and cultural yardstick for the whole of Kazakhstani society, not merely the protector of Russian minorities. Perceived historical and demographic similarities between Kazakhstan and Ukraine are narrower than it seems at first glance. Defining a potential "Kazakh Novorossiya" is not an easy task, even for Russian nationalists. Moreover, current demographic and economic trends do not favor Kazakhstan's Russianmajority regions, and local political activism and grievances have remained limited since Crimea's annexation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of Western experts and policy makers on China and Russia may distort their understanding of how the Shanghai Cooperation Organization operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan faced greater within-regime opposition than did Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan when their countries began to reap oil revenues. This difference affected the expected tenure in office of each president and helps account for Azerbaijan's lower foreign savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Kazakhstan, food processors are pursuing vertical integration strategies to deal with chronic supply-chain problems. In Kyrgyzstan, by contrast, fruit and vegetable suppliers and processors have been able to develop commercial practices that support a transformation from managerial transactions to bargaining transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that the September 2004 parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan were not expected to be a serious contest, nor did the results prove surprising. The few observers who had harbored hopes--or fears--of a repeat of the Georgian "Rose Revolution" in the oil-rich state felt either a mild pang of disappointment or a rush of relief. Capitalizing on their control over strategic resources, administrative structures, election commissions and the media, the three major pro-regime parties, Otan, Asar, and the AIST bloc, won three-quarters of the seventy-seven seats in the lower house, conceding just one to the moderate opposition group Ak Zhol. Independent or "self-nominated" candidates bagged eighteen seats.