Authoritarian succession, rules, and conflicts: Tokayev’s gambit and Kazakhstan’s bloody January of 2022 (Qandy Qantar)

ABSTRACT

The authoritarian succession literature indicates that non-democratic regimes install rules and institutions that supposedly ensure a smooth transition from ruler to a chosen successor. However, this scholarship cannot explain why some authoritarian successions happen as planned while others end in surprising violence. This article unpacks the puzzle of the transition of power from Nursultan Nazarbayev (1991–2019) to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (2019–present) in autocratic Kazakhstan. Based on in-depth interviews with more than 15 informants and the analysis of media and secondary sources, we explore why and how the planned succession in Kazakhstan resulted in the bloodshed known as the 2022 Bloody January (Qandy Qantar). We demonstrate that two factors derailed the succession plan: the configuration of authoritarian rules and the presence of political ambitions of Tokayev. Our main argument is that the Nazarbayev succession plan led to elite disunity, escalating the political conflict into the violent 2022 Bloody January.

KEYWORDS:

• Succession
• authoritarian regimes
• Kazakhstan
• authoritarian rules
• post-soviet autocracies

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Raushan Abylkassymova, Dr. Colin Knox, Dr. Ariell Ahearn, Dr. Ikboljon Qoraboyev, and Dr. Ablay Dosmaganbetov for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments on this article and the editor (Dr. Timothy Frye) for excellent work. Factual mistakes or controversial interpretations are ours.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2024.2377929

Notes

1. See the “crown prince problem” identified in Herz (1952) for more information.

2. Personal conversation with an employee of Samruk Kazyna JSC (National Welfare Fund), 2 February 2024.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan under Grant [BR21882266] “The Study of the Historical Memory of the Population and the Policy of Nation-Building in Kazakhstan during the Years of Independence.”