The elite-level demonstration effect of the Arab Spring in Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

What impact has the ‘Arab Spring’ had upon Kazakhstan's approach to regime security? Short of the possibility of a ‘Central Asian Spring’, if and how the Arab Spring reshaped this authoritarian regime has not been addressed. A longitudinal narrative analysis of Kazakhstan's presidential rhetoric from 2005 to 2015 and fieldwork interviews indicated that the Arab Spring uprisings brought about an elite-level demonstration effect. That is, the regime perceived a heightened threat to its security as a result of instability and regime responses elsewhere, and it sought to shore-up its position and forestall the emergence of local challenges as a consequence of this, whether through discourse, behaviour or policy. This suggests that uprisings elsewhere, including those outside of a state's immediate region, can affect perceptions of regime security in the medium term, despite the absence of domestic unrest at home and a lack of close social and cultural ties between regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab Spring
• Kazakhstan
• demonstration effect
• learning
• regime security
• authoritarianism

Acknowledgements

The author thanks three anonymous reviewers and Edward Newman, Kingsley Edney and Petra Desatova for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article. The author also thanks the people in Kazakhstan and the anonymous interviewees who took the time to speak with her about this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I acknowledge that the Arab Spring uprisings were heterogeneous. Each country that saw an uprising experienced a different trajectory. For the purpose of this article, the Arab Spring is treated homogenously as protest elsewhere. It is thus the fact that widespread mobilization occurred and rapidly spread across the MENA, and not its end result, that is of interest to the argument at hand.

2 All translations from Russian to English are by the author. All transliterations utilize the Library of Congress system. President Nazarbayev's name does not correspond to this system but uses the established transliteration.

3 For example, see Dave (2012, 265-66) and Radnitz (2011, 2) for two very different interpretations on the holding of early presidential elections in 2011 in Kazakhstan.

4 At the time of this meeting, Nur-Sultan was known by its former name, Astana.

5 For further discussion of the CSTO's strategic planning in reaction to the Arab Spring uprisings and the President of Kazakhstan's perspective, see Koesel (2018, 263–64).

6 For further discussion of Nazarbayev learning from the mobilizing role attributed to the Internet in Egypt and Tunisia's uprisings, see Anceschi (2015, 278).

7 See Urdal (2004) for a discussion of the relationship between a youth bulge, economic inertia and violent conflict.

8 For example, see Toktomushev (2017) for an examination between regime security and foreign policy in Kyrgyzstan.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Postgraduate Research and Development Grant from the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies.