Informal politics and the uncertain context of transition: revisiting early stage non-democratic development in Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article examines the genesis and influence of informal politics on non-democratic outcomes in Central Asia. As opposed to current scholarship which explains the emergence of informal politics as a result of kinship-based cultural legacies, this work uses the broader analytical framework of neopatrimonialism to understand informal political phenomena while emphasizing the role of uncertainty and contingent actor choice in explaining its appearance. The article also assesses how informal political behaviour (patronage and patron-client relations) was used to consolidate authoritarianism. Using Kazakhstan's (1990–95) early transition period as a case study this article notes how three processes central to transition (institutional conflict, emerging pluralism, and electoral competition) elicited a degree of uncertainty which destabilized prior institutional equilibrium. The president of Kazakhstan applied informal forms of politics to manage this uncertainty to re-assert his power and consolidate his personal authoritarian rule at the expense of emerging democratic institutions. The article illustrates how the uncertain and contingent process of transition is instrumental to the emergence of informal politics and the durability of authoritarianism in Kazakhstan, and that informal political relations and behaviour are important to understanding non-democratic and democratic paths in former Soviet states.

Keywords:

• informal politics
• non-democratic transitions
• contingency
• neopatrimonialism
• former Soviet Union
• Kazakhstan

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sarah Whitmore, Togzhan Kassenova, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

Krasner, ‘Approaches to the State’.

Legal-rational institutions are defined as formal institutions which form part of clearly defined bureaucracy, usually contained within a liberal-constitutional framework. Based on Weber's formulation of legal-rational forms of domination where power is exercised impersonally.

In particular famous works influencing scholarship at this time include Linz, ‘Perils of Presidentialism’; Horowitz, ‘Comparing Democratic Systems’; Mainwaring, ‘Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy’; Valenzuela, ‘Presidentialism in Crisis’, Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition; and Elster, Offe, and Preuss, Institutional Design in Post-communist Societies.

See O'Donnell, ‘Illusions about Consolidation’, 34–51.

See, Borocz, ‘Informality Rules’; Way, ‘The Dilemmas of Reform’; Collins, Clan Politics and Regime; Collins, ‘Clans, Pacts, and Politics’; Collins, ‘The Logic of Clan Politics’.

Lauth, ‘Informal Institutions and Democracy’.

Helmke and Levitsky, ‘Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics’.

See Collins, Clan Politics and Regime; Schatz, Modern Clan Politics; Starr, Clans, Authoritarian Rulers.

Collins, Clan Politics and Regime, 7.

Ibid., 17.

Masanov, ‘Kazakhskiaia Politicheskaia i intellektual'naia elita’, 46–50.

Suny, The Revenge of the Past.

See Gleason, ‘Fealty and Loyalty’, 613–15, and Geiss, Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia, chapters 5 & 6.

See Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems, 23.

A Kolkhoz was a form of collectivized farm, legally organized as a production cooperative, which came to prominence during the state-directed collectivization process during the 1930s in the Soviet Union. Korenizatsiya was the Soviet policy of promoting titular nationalities in each Soviet republic through cadre appointment and the promotion of local language through education, culture, and publishing.

Collins, Clan Politics and Regime, chapter 3.

However, it should be noted that the longevity of first secretaries during the Brezhnev period was not unique to the Central Asian Republics. For example, Vladimir Shcherbitskii was first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 1972 to 1989.

Collins, Clan Politics and Regime, chapter 3.

Ibid.

Radnitz, ‘Networks, Localism and Mobilization’, 417–18.

Evraziiskii tsentr politicheskh issledovanii i Agentctvo sotsal'nykh texnologii, Gruppy vliyaniya; Satpayev, Lobbizm.

Author's interview with Dosym Satpayev, political analyst, 28 February 2007, Almaty.

Collins, Clan Politics and Regime, 56.

Masanov, ‘The Role of Clans’.

There have been several influential elite groups in Kazakhstan led by close members of President Nazarbayev's family. Such groups have maintained significant business interests in the banking, energy, and media sectors and have been politically influential. Some noteworthy examples are the group led by Dariga Nazarbayeva and Rakhat Aliev (the president's daughter and son-in-law) and the faction organized around Timur Kulibayev (also the president's son-in-law, married to Nazarbayev's second eldest daughter Dinara).

Gulette, ‘Theories on Central Asian Factionalism’, 373–5.

Junisbai and Junisbai, ‘The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan’, 373–92.

Schatz, Modern Clan Politics, 139.

Collins, Clan Politics and Regime, chapter 1.

Aliev had charges brought against him for his involvement in the kidnapping of two senior directors of Nurbank, one of Kazakhstan's leading banks. Aliev fled abroad while the government tried to extradite him back to Kazakhstan to face trial. Nazarbayeva not only lost her party, Asar (Together), but also lost her place among the Nur Otan party hierarchy after the fall of her husband.

Collins, Clan Politics and Regime, 3.

Isaacs, Between Informal and Formal Politics, chapter 3.

In the existing literature informal practices (such as clientelistic forms of exchange which occur outside of formally sanctioned channels) and informal organizations (tribes, economic clans, and informal elite factions) are separated at the conceptual and analytical level. However, it is clear that informal practices and informal organizations are inter-linked. Informal forms of political behaviour such as patronage and clientelistic exchange are generally embedded within informal organizations such as factional patronage networks. Therefore, there is much to be gained from conceptually combining these phenomena to understand the more systemic and inter-related nature of their occurrence. Otherwise there is a tendency to fragment our understanding of informal political relations and behaviour as opposed to understanding its broader relationship with political development, institutional change, and actors' choices.

Erdmann and Engel, ‘Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered’, 95–119.

Weber, Economy and Society, 1006.

Roth, ‘Personal Rulership’, 195.

Erdmann and Engel, ‘Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered’, 102.

Bratton and Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa, 62.

Turkmenistan is the one exception where officially only one party is allowed to operate.

See Ilkhamov, ‘Neopatrimonialism, Interest Groups and Patronage’; Temirkulov, ‘Informal Actors and Institutions’, 317.

Jowitt, New World Disorder.

Gel'man, ‘The Unrule of Law’, 1023

Ibid., 1026.

A critical juncture can be defined as ‘a period of significant change … which is hypothesized to produce distinct legacies’. Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena, 29. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the following new institutional settlement in the former Soviet Republics, that is, they were required to establish new institutional frameworks for governance, certainly represents a critical juncture from the prior Soviet institutional equilibrium.

Gelman, The Unrule of Law', 1028.

Ibid.

See, Rustow, ‘Transitions to Democracy’; O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions From Authoritarian Rule; and Di Palma, To Craft Democracies.

Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena.

Anderson, ‘Constitutional Development’.

Cummings, ‘Turkmenistan: Saparmurat Niyazov's Inglorious Isolation’.

Anderson, Kyrgyzstan.

Rubin, ‘The Fragmentation of Tajikistan’.

In the case of Akaev in Kyrgyzstan, in the latter years of his presidency his democratic credentials eroded as he became accused of personalising politics by favouring his family in the distribution of economic and state goods.

Taras, Post Communist Presidents, 106–29.

This article is only paying attention to political factors. It could be argued that economic factors too represented a challenge to institutional equilibrium. The sell-off of state resources, the creation of market mechanisms, and the emergence of new business elites represent additional institutions and players which alter the political and economic playing field. However, in the case of most Central Asian presidents, market reforms were either limited in enactment (as in the case of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) or did not occur until after presidential power had been consolidated using informal means (Kazakhstan). The case of Kyrgyzstan is different in that economic liberalism was introduced prior to presidential consolidation and centralisation. However, Akaev was ousted by economic and political forces over which he had little control.

Konstitutsiia Respubliki Kazakhstan ot 28 Yanvaria 1993 Goda.

Burkhanov, Sultanov, and Ayagan, Sovremennaia Politicheskaia, 68.

Anderson, ‘Constitutional Development’, 307.

Aitkhozhin and Buluktaev, Rol' Parlamenta.

Abdil'din, Stanovlenie Parlamentarizma, 4.

Gleason, The Central Asian States.

Olcott, Kazakhstan Unfulfilled Promise, 101.

Pomfret, ‘Kazakhstan's Economy Since Independence’.

A law regarding de-statification was passed by parliament as early as June 1991; however, it was not active until March 1993.

For an excellent overview of Kazakhstan's economy since independence see Kalyuzhnova, The Kazakhstani Economy.

Cummings, Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite.

Abdil'din, Kazakhstan: ot demokratii k avtokratii.

Ponomarev, Obshchestvennye organizatsii, 13–14.

Ibid., 14–15.

Zaslavskaya, Politicheskie partii i obshchestvennye, 6–7.

For example, the Alash party was established in April 1990 on the principles of pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism; the Azat (Freedom) Civil Movement was committed to an independent and sovereign Kazakhstan; the Slav movement Lad was created on the basis of representing Russian and Slavic ethnicities; the Social Democratic Party was founded on the principles of Scandinavian socialist democratic systems; and Edinstvo (Unity) emerged in response to ethnic tensions between Kazakhs and other European populations regarding land seizures in Alma-Ata, committed to inter-ethnic harmony and ‘arresting the problems of chauvinism and nationalism’. For information on early parties and movements, see Ponomarev, Obshchestvennye organizatsii; Zaslavskaya, Politicheskie partii i obshchestvennye; and Babak, Vaisman, and Wasserman, Political Organization in Central Asia.

Socialist Party of Kazakhstan, Programma.

Ayaganov et al., Politicheskie partii, 24–6.

Babak, Vaisman, and Wasserman, Political Organisation in Central Asia, 146–7.

Olcott, Kazakhstan Unfulfilled Promise, 91.

See Masanov, ‘Political Development of Sovereign Kazakhstan’.

See Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1994 Parliamentary Election.

Dzhani, ‘Kontr-evoliuotsiya parlamenta’.

Olcott, Unfulfilled Promise.

Only 139 deputies were present at the vote.

Olcott, Unfulfilled Promise, 103–4.

Olcott, ‘Nursultan Nazarbayev’, 113.

Olcott, Unfulfilled Promise, 92.

Ibid.

Sheretov, Politicheskaia istoriia Kazakhstana, 61.

Olcott, Unfulfilled Promise, 110–11.

Boris Kagarlitsky, ‘The Rigged Parliament’.