Nazarbayev: the road to power and success
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Nazarbayev: the road to power and success Shu Yang1 Received: 27 June 2020 / Accepted: 7 July 2020 © The Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), Peking University 2020
Abstract Former Kazakhstani president Nazarbayev started the construction of a new state quite smoothly due to the smooth transition of state power after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the social and economic foundation Kazakhstan inherited from it. He used instruments such as elections and referendums to successfully weaken opposition parties and expand presidential power. In addition, he moved the state capital and redrew the country’s administrative divisions, developing and consolidating the demographic majority of Kazakhs at the national and local levels. Nazarbayev emphasized the cultural and traditional foundation of Kazakhstan’s power politics and developed the idea of “grassland democracy”. Upholding the secularization of the country, he valued Kazakhstan’s special characteristics and rejected the interference of Western democracy and Islamism, achieved rapid social and economic development in Kazakhstan, significantly improved people’s wellbeing, and developed stable relations with other countries. Keywords Capital relocation · Demographic majority of main ethnic group · Elections · Opposition party · Grassland democracy
1 Introduction On March 19, 2019, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Äbishuly Nazarbayev announced his resignation, and Speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev took over as acting president. On June 20, Tokayev was elected as President of Kazakhstan. The smooth power transfer does not mean Nazarbayev is no longer at the apex of Kazakhstan power, as he still serves as Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan and chairman of the ruling Nur Otan party, continuing to play an important role across many aspects of Kazakhstan. It would be helpful in the following paragraphs to give
* Shu Yang [email protected] 1
Professor and President of Institute for Central Asian Studies, Lanzhou University, No. 222, Tianshuinan Road, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China
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a short review of his years in power after he stepped down as the president more than a year ago. Nazarbayev was the last president among the former union republics of the Soviet Union to leave office. His departure seemed somewhat abrupt, but analysis of power transfer processes in Central Asia and some other former union republics suggests that his approach followed these countries’ power transfer model: as long as elites successfully completed the transfer arrangement internally, it did not matter when the arrangement was made public. Nazarbayev’s “semi” power transfer was also a new, and perhaps more stable, approach. After handing over some of his power, Nazarbayev can still legally intervene if something goes wrong, and can also mediate among government institutions when needed. A few years ago, I argued that there are four models of power transfer in Central Asia (Yang 2017). It se
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