Foreign Policy Diversification and Intercontinental Transport Corridors: The Case of Kazakhstan's Railways Diplomacy.

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]