Download or read book Kazakhstan written by Martha Brill Olcott and published by Carnegie Endowment. This book was released on 2010-09 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outset of independence 18 years ago, Kazakhstan's leaders promised that the country's rich natural resources, with oil and gas reserves among the largest in the world, would soon bring economic prosperity. It appeared that democracy was beginning to take hold in this newly independent state. Nearly two decades later, Kazakhstan has achieved the World Bank's ranking of a "middle economic country," but its economy is straining from the global economic crisis. The country's political system still needs fundamental reform before Kazakhstan can be considered a democracy. Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise examines the development of this ethnically diverse and strategically vital nation, which seeks to play an influential role on the international stage. Praise for the previous edition of Kazakhstan: "This detailed but accessible work will be the definitive work on the newly independent state of Kazakhstan."— Choice "[Olcott]... knows more about Kazakhstan than anyone else in the West."— New York Review of Books "Not only shares the lucid insights and depth of a seasoned observer, it greatly enriches the literature on post-Soviet transitions." —Foreign Affairs

Download or read book The Domestic Regional and Global Security Stakes in Kazakhstan written by Igor Mukhamedov and published by . This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of Kazakhstan's security policies since independence, and particularly after September 11, 2001, indicates that the country has chosen to plan an active role in regional and international security as a means to security its own national interest. It has opened to the West, and played an active role in the War on Terrorism. It has also worked to maintain Central Asia's regional security architecture. These policies have had some demonstrable affect on national, regional and international security, but as a young state in a trouble region, Kazakhstan will require increased Western assistance if it is to become the force for stability that it seeks to be. Kazakhstan has a very important geopolitical location, and can play a role of a regional leader in Central Asia, but it is still a very young state and needs a strong support. "perhaps nowhere was the granting of independence more bittersweet and the challenges of sustaining it more complex than in the case of Kazakhstan." (Mathews, Jessica T. Foreword in "Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise" by Olcott, Martha Brill, Washington D. C. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002)

Download or read book The Triumph of Broken Promises written by Fritz Bartel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communist and capitalist states alike were scarred by the economic shocks of the 1970s. Why did only communist governments fall in their wake? Fritz Bartel argues that Western democracies were insulated by neoliberalism. While austerity was fatal to the legitimacy of communism, democratic politicians could win votes by pushing market discipline.

Download or read book Kazakhstan and the Soviet Legacy written by Jean-François Caron and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Kazakhstan’s struggle to distance itself from its Soviet past over 25 years after its independence. To a very large extent, the affirmation of its sovereignty and a unique Kazakhstani way remain largely a matter of rhetoric. This book looks to explain the various aspects that show the continuity of Kazakhstan’s political system and governance with its colonial legacy, namely through its foreign policy, the country’s environmental policies, the judicial system, the management of religious diversity, the way youth organizations are structured and administered or how those who were born after the collapse of Soviet Union are still showing a typical Soviet behavioral attitude towards the political sphere. What are the reasons for this reluctance or incapacity to break away from these ties of the past? Will the unavoidable political transition that will bring new individuals to the head of the state contribute to a real change? Will this lead to a break with the country’s past and a radical shift in the country’s policies or will things remain as they have been since 1991? This book provides some valuable insights on what may happen in the near future to the biggest country of Central Asia.

Download or read book Kazakhstan Ethnicity Language and Power written by Bhavna Dave and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-13 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kazakhstan is emerging as the most dynamic economic and political actor in Central Asia. It is the second largest country of the former Soviet Union, after the Russian Federation, and has rich natural resources, particularly oil, which is being exploited through massive US investment. Kazakhstan has an impressive record of economic growth under the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbaev, and has ambitions to project itself as a modern, wealthy civic state, with a developed market economy. At the same time, Kazakhstan is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the region, with very substantial non-Kazakh and non-Muslim minorities. Its political regime has used elements of political clientelism and neo-traditional practices to bolster its rule. Drawing from extensive ethnographic research, interviews, and archival materials this book traces the development of national identity and statehood in Kazakhstan, focusing in particular on the attempts to build a national state. It argues that Russification and Sovietization were not simply 'top-down' processes, that they provide considerable scope for local initiatives, and that Soviet ethnically-based affirmative action policies have had a lasting impact on ethnic élite formation and the rise of a distinct brand of national consciousness.

Download or read book Images of the Post Soviet Kazakhstan written by Suchandana Chatterjee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study revolves round the relationship between space and transitional identity in Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet period. Emergent discourses about cosmopolitanism suggest multiple interactions in a transitional space. The cosmopolitanism of our times implies the dynamic responses of communities in transition. The diversities and heterogeneities instead of the specifics, the encounters, the networks, the challenges, the ways of living, the multitude of fates need to be considered. The picture is far bigger as there are infinite ways of being and belonging. The images are of the many, and as suggested here, relate to the Kazakh conscience. The Kazakh conscience represents a repertoire of diverse opinions regarding Eurasianism, intellectuals’ reformist agenda, zhuz legacy, people’s histories. What stands out is the wider milieu of a cosmopolitan Almaty which is the home of a cultural elite or a citified Astana that has been showcased as the “appropriate site” of the Kazakhs’ steppe identity. The variety is also seen in the case of Uyghur neighbourhoods of Almaty, in the frontiers of Akmolinsk oblast reminiscent of Tsarist Russia’s Cossack military fortresses, in gulag memorials near Astana and in the Caspian hub Atyrau that is iconised as the oil fountain of the present century. Kazakh borderlands have a completely different profile—that of shared spaces. The Kazakhs’ attachment to their homeland is a constant—but the question is whether that territorial reality fits into other paradigms of identity and belonging. Such questions arise in the case of Mongolian Kazakhs and Uyghurs of Semirechie—in both cases the sentiment of place is strong compared to the overwhelming global experiences of the mainland Kazakhs. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Download or read book Politics and Oil in Kazakhstan written by Wojciech Ostrowski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Kazakhstan, the oil industry plays a crucial role in its economic and political life due to the country’s considerable oil revenues and accompanying conflicting interests. As an arena of political struggle, this industry provides a good test case for uncovering regime maintenance techniques. This book examines the ways in which the post-Soviet Kazakh regime has managed to sustain itself in power, and the regime maintenance techniques it has used in the process of establishing and upholding its position. It scrutinizes the tools that the Kazakh regime employed in order to bring the country’s oil industry under its control and, while doing so, shifts the emphasis from the prevalent zhuz-horde, tribe, and clan-based approaches to Kazakh politics towards corporatism and patron-client mechanisms of control. Based on extensive field work in Kazakhstan and in-depth interviews with high ranking representatives of companies working in Kazakhstan’s oil and gas industry, both local and foreign, the National Oil Company and its subsidiaries, government agencies, foreign diplomats, journalists and representatives of oppositional parties and NGOs, this book provides a comprehensive study of the issues of politics of oil and state-business relationships in Kazakhstan.

Download or read book Party System Formation in Kazakhstan written by Rico Isaacs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian states have developed liberal-constitutional formal institutions. However, at the same time, political phenomena in Central Asia are shaped by informal political behaviour and relations. This relationship is now a critical issue affecting democratization and regime consolidation processes in former Soviet Central Asia, and this book provides an account of the interactive and dynamic relationship between informal and formal politics through the case of party-system formation in Kazakhstan. Based on extensive interviews with political actors and a wide range of historical and contemporary documentary sources, the book utilises and develops neopatrimonialism as an analytical concept for studying post-Soviet authoritarian consolidation and failed democratisation. It illustrates how personalism of political office, patronage and patron-client networks and factional elite conflict have influenced and shaped the institutional constraints affecting party development, the type of emerging parties and parties’ relationship with society. The case of Kazakhstan, however, also demonstrates how in the former Soviet space political parties emerge as central to the legitimization of informal political behavior, the structuring of factional competition and the consolidation of authoritarianism. The book represents an important contribution to the study of Central Asian Politics.

Download or read book The Creation of Kazakh National Identity written by Dmitry V. Shlapentokh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph utilizes three theoretical models to explain Kazakhstan’s emergence as an independent state and its changing relationships with the broader world, particularly Russia, since the beginning of the twentieth century. The book first explores the construction of Kazakh national identity and the ways in which intellectuals appealed to history to substantiate their claims about Kazakhstan’s future. Secondly, the narrative demonstrates that not all segments of totalitarian machinery work in unison. While terror reached its peak in the 1930s, cultural and ideological control was not as rigid as it would become in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Most importantly, the work is grounded in the study of the social universe. The book introduces the notion of “cosmos,” the peculiar connections between social, economic, and political forces. While not necessarily directly dependent on each other, they nevertheless created a unique interplay among the segments of societal structures and the state’s relationship with the wider universe. Taking this framework as the point of departure, this research analyzes Kazakhstan’s “multi-vectorism” as uniquely fit to contemporary global arrangements, when no global power dominates, and the lines between friend and foe are blurred. This compelling approach to Kazakhstan’s history will appeal to postgraduate students and scholars in Russian history and world history.

Download or read book The Kazakh Spring written by Diana T. Kudaibergen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed review of the political developments and pro-democracy movements leading to the mass protests of Bloody January in Kazakhstan.

Download or read book Central Asia s Second Chance written by Martha Brill Olcott and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading authority on Central Asia offers a sweeping review of the region's path from independence to the post-9/11 world. The first decade of Central Asian independence was disappointing for those who envisioned a straightforward transition from Soviet republics to independent states with market economies and democratic political systems. Leaders excused political failures by pointing to security risks, including the presence of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The situation changed dramatically after 9/11, when the camps were largely destroyed and the United States introduced a military presence. More importantly the international community engaged with these states to give them a "second chance" to address social and economic problems. But neither the aid-givers nor the recipients were willing to approach problems in new ways. Now, terrorists groups are once again making their presence felt and some states may be becoming global security risks. This book explores how the region squandered its second chance and what might happen next.

Download or read book The Politics of Presidential Term Limits written by Alexander Baturo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presidential term limits restrict the maximum length of time that presidents can serve in office. They stipulate the length of term the presidents can serve between elections and the number of terms that presidents are permitted to serve. While comparative scholarship has long studied important institutions such presidentialism vs. parliamentarism and the effects of different electoral systems, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the role and effects of presidential term limits. Yet presidential term limits and term lengths are one of the most fundamental institutions of democracy. By ensuring compulsory rotation in office, they are at the heart of a democratic dilemma. What is the appropriate trade-off between allowing the unrestricted selection of candidates at presidential elections vs. restricting selection procedures to prevent the possibility of dictatorial takeover by presidents who are unwilling to step down? In the context of a long and on-going history of changes to presidential term limits and the many and varied ways in which term limits have been both applied and avoided, this book explains the factors behind the introduction, stability, abolition, and avoidance of presidential term limits, as well as the consequences of changes to presidential term limits, and it does so in the context of non-democracies, third-wave countries, and consolidated democracies. It includes comparative, theoretical, and practitioner-oriented chapters, as well as detailed country case studies of presidential term limits across the world and over time.

Download or read book Internet in the Post Soviet Area written by Sergey Davydov and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comparative perspective on the technological, economic, and political aspects of Internet development in the post-Soviet countries. In doing so, international experts analyze similarities and differences in various countries throughout the chapters. The volume consists of two parts. The chapters of the first part examine the post-Soviet area as a whole. The second part includes specific case studies on the development of the Internet, either in individual countries or in groups of countries. Countries analyzed are Estonia, Ukraine, Russia as well as three Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Topics covered in the volume include, but are not limited to measurement, dynamics, and structure of each national Internet audience; the history of the Internet in the post-Soviet countries; development of infrastructure; Internet regulation and institutional aspects; online markets such as telecommunications, online advertising, e-commerce, and digital content; social and cultural aspects; as well as the transformation of the national media systems. This book is a must-read for students, researchers, and scholars of political science and economics, as well as policymakers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of Internet development in the post-Soviet area.

Download or read book International Organizations and Internal Conditionality written by R. Fawn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how norms-based international organizations, namely the Council of Europe and the OSCE, are still able to win in world politics. Fawn uses the concept of internal conditionality to explain how these organizations have been able to respond to members with a lack of material incentives or instruments of coercion.

Download or read book Presidents Oligarchs and Bureaucrats written by Margarete Klein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade the "transition paradigm", which is based on the conviction that authoritarian political systems would over time necessarily develop into democracies, has been subjected to serious criticism. The complex political and societal developments in the post-Soviet region in particular have exposed flaws in the claim that a shift from authoritarianism to democracy is inevitable. Using case studies from the post-Soviet region, a broad range of international contributors present an original and innovative contribution to the debate. They explore the character of post-Soviet regimes and review the political transformations they have experienced since the end of the Cold War. Through a combination of theoretical approaches and detailed, empirical analysis the authors highlight the difficulties and benefits of applying the concepts of hybrid regimes, competitive authoritarianism and neopatrimonialism to the countries of the post-Soviet space. Through this in-depth approach the authors demonstrate how "Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats" in the region lead their countries, examine the sources of their legitimacy and their relationship to the societies they govern and advance the general theoretical debate on regime change and transition paths.

Download or read book Political Regimes and Neopatrimonialism in Central Asia written by Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is aimed both at researchers and advanced students of Central Asia, the space of the former USSR, and the foreign policy of Russia and China. The authors adopt a sociological approach in understanding how power structures emerged in the wake of the Soviet collapse. The independencies in Central Asia did not happen as a consequence of a nationalist struggle, but because the USSR imploded. Thus, instead of the elites being replaced, the same Soviet elites who had competed for power in the previous system continued to do so in the new one, which they had to build, adapting themselves and the system to their needs. Additionally, unlike in the immense majority of the independent states that emerged from decolonization, the social movements and capacity to mobilize the people were very weak in the new Central Asian states. For this reason, the configuration of the new systems was the product of a competition for power between a very small number of elites who did not have to answer to the people and their demands. Thus, the new power regimes acquired a strong neopatrimonial component. Analyzing the structure of societies, economies and polities of post-socialist states, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Central Asia, to sociologists, and to scholars of China's rise.

Download or read book Transformation and Development written by Anja Mihr and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book features various studies on democratization, transformation, political and economic development, and security issues in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) geographical region and beyond. Written by experts and academics in the fields of human rights, security, transformation and development, particularly in post-soviet and communist countries, it examines the status quo of regime development in various member states of the OSCE; their economic, security and human rights performance; institutional reforms and transformations and the challenges that these countries and their societies face, including the USA, Canada, Germany, Macedonia, Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. This is the 2019 edition of this Compilation Series of the OSCE Academy. The OSCE works to promote Minority Protection, Security, Democratic Development and Human Rights guided by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and to enhance securitization and development policies in Eurasia, Europe, Central Asia and North America. Since being founded in 1993, the OSCE and its agencies and departments have attracted a wealth of academic research in various fields and disciplines, ranging from economic development and election monitoring to enhancing global principles of human rights and securitization. About the OSCE Academy in Bishkek: Founded in 2004, the Academy offers post-Doc research fellowships and runs two Master Degrees, one in Economic Governance and Development and one in Politics and Security in Central Asia. The Academy"s regular academic programs and conference contributes to developing human professional capital in the sectors of particular importance for Central Asian states and societies. The Academy's graduates and visiting researchers contribute to economic development, governance and policy-making in Central Asia and beyond the OSCE region. Website: http://www.osce-academy.net/en/about/