Does bureaucratic performance vary across authoritarian regimes?

ABSTRACT

This article considers the performance of bureaucracies in two authoritarian states located in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The former has been a consolidated authoritarian regime since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter has oscillated between a form of parliamentary democracy and authoritarianism. We examine how the countries’ bureaucracies perform under different systems of governance and find that Kazakhstan is more effective given its relatively stable political context, higher level of professionalism, and greater policy capacity amongst its officials, notwithstanding its consistent authoritarian leadership. When politicians interfere in the work of officials, it results in lower impartiality and constitutional uncertainty. This finding reaffirms previous research (using Quality of Government survey data) which calls for the separation of political and bureaucratic roles as a way of improving government effectiveness and reducing corruption.

KEYWORDS:

• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• authoritarian
• bureaucracy
• post-Soviet states

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Expert opinion was drawn from more than 550 participants who are scholars from those with a record of peer-reviewed publication on public bureaucracy matters; professionals from donor organisations or international organisations working on administrative reforms, international and national non-governmental organisations; and government officials with proven knowledge on their country’s bureaucratic structure and behaviour (Nistotskaya et al., 2021, p. 7).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colin Knox

Colin Knox is Professor of Public Policy in Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Public Administration at Ulster University, UK.

Saltanat Janenova

Saltanat Janenova is a Lecturer in University of Bristol, School for Policy Studies.