Party System Formation in Kazakhstan

Between Formal and Informal Politics

Rico Isaacs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781138102347
• eBook ISBN: 9781136791079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

1 Introduction

In-between the informal and formal –
introducing political development in
Kazakhstan and Central Asia

Political parties are considered indispensible to democracy (Lipset, 2000). Their ability to shape and aggregate interests, represent citizens and act as a channel between state and society has made party system formation one of the most fundamental areas of research in developing democracies. This has been particularly the case in the transitions from communism in the former Soviet Union (McAl-lister and White, 1995; McFaul, 2004, 2001; Meleshevich, 2007; Moser, 1998; Spirova, 2008; Whitfield, 2002). This book explores the formation of a party system and the nature of political parties in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state which has received limited interest in academic political science literature. However, it is also a book which examines the underlying political phenomena influencing Kazakhstan's transition from communist rule. It explores the distinctive interactive and dynamic relationship between formal and informal politics which is woven into the fabric of political behaviour, institutions and outcomes in Kazakhstan and wider post-Soviet Central Asia. It examines, in particular, how informal patrimonial politics is shaping party development and at the same time how parties, as formal institutions, are affecting informal political behaviour and relations. As this book argues, Kazakhstan is best understood as a neopatrimonial system where informal patrimonial politics such as personalism of office, patron–client networks and factional elite conflict are interwoven with formal legal-rational institutions. This book addresses this relationship between informal and formal politics and how political parties contribute towards authoritarian consolidation in Kazakhstan. In doing so it develops some conceptual innovations around the dynamic relationship between informal and formal politics and its contribution to authoritarian regime durability in the wider former Soviet Union.

In post-Soviet Central Asia, research on political parties by Western scholars has been limited, with only a few notable exceptions (Ishiyama, 2008; Ishiyama and Kennedy, 2001). This may be entirely appropriate given that the states of Central Asia do not possess democratic systems but instead have remained resolutely authoritarian (Melvin, 2004). The examination of parties, party systems and, in broader terms, the development of democracy in former Soviet states was principally undertaken under the aegis of the democratization literature (Kopecky and Mudde, 2000; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Lipset, 1960; Moore, 1966; O'Donnell and Schmitter, 1986; Rustow, 1970). Given that many post-Soviet states can be considered under varying hybrid rubrics (Diamond, 2002; Levitsky and Way, 2002) – existing somewhere between fully fledged democracies and stringent authoritarianism – the utility of the democratization literature in understanding party system development in Central Asia is questionable, representing as it does a rather faltering starting point for analysis. Instead, scholars pursuing an intellectual and empirical discourse in this strategic and resource-rich region have characterized political development via two approaches. In the first instance, and understandably, there was an initial trend in perceiving political and economic developments through the lens of the formal structural remnants of the Soviet period. Attention was paid to the national and ethnic identities emphasized and engineered by Soviet elites during their 70-year dominance. Analysts and researchers tried to understand and unpack the nation-building efforts of post-Soviet regimes and the impact such labours would have upon ethnic minorities within each republic. Underlying this approach is the implicit assumption that the Soviet Union was successful in transforming and modernizing Central Asia and was able to create nations and identities where none previously existed (Akbarzadeh, 1996, 1999; Akiner, 1995a, 1997; Bremmer and Welt, 1996; Roy, 2000; Suny, 1993). Jones Luong, for example, illustrated in her research the way in which the institutional legacy of Soviet regional boundaries created attachment to regional identities which formed the basis of political competition and which contributed to the establishment of formal institutions (Jones Luong, 2002). Other scholars within this approach have placed emphasis upon the complex patchwork of distinctive ethnic identities within the region and how this lack of ethnic homogeneity within Central Asian states potentially represented a ‘gathering storm’ or an ‘arc of crisis’, particularly in the densely populated Ferghana Valley area of the region (Akiner, 1993, 1997; Rubin and Lubin, 1999; Rumer, 1993).

Conversely, other scholars have worked from the counter-assumption that the Soviet Union failed in transforming Central Asia. They argued that rather than being wiped out by socialist modernization, pre-Soviet and even pre-Tsarist forms of political and social identity resisted and survived the Soviet period, and moreover, the Soviet political system was adapted to fit the traditional peculiarities of the region (Abazov, 1999; Collins 2004; Dellenbrant, 1988; Gleason, 1991; Hagheyeghi, 1995; Hiro, 1994). Rather than constructed Soviet national or regional identities, it is the informal institutions and organizations of tribes and clans which are the dominant political and social forces in the region (Collins, 2006; Schatz, 2004). The clan approach has received wide attention in recent years and as such this focus on informal politics is well judged, especially in relation to the patrimonial politics (personalism, patron–client networks and factionalism) which dominates the region (Isaacs, 2010a).

Political institutions in Central Asia

With limited literature on political parties in Central Asia to draw upon, it is appropriate to ground any discussion on political parties in Kazakhstan in the broader context of political institutions and their formal and informal variants. While much literature on Central Asia has emerged with an understandable focus on agency due to the pre-eminent role of presidential actors (Colton and Tucker, 1995), recent studies have recognized the importance of exploring political structures, in particular, institutions and organizations (Collins, 2006; Jones Luong, 2002). These studies have been influenced by the two opposing approaches noted above. On the one hand there is a focus on the role of formal Soviet institutional legacies, and, on the other, informal organizations such as clans and tribes are centre of attention.

Soviet institutional legacies

Soviet institutional legacies are evident across Central Asia and to an extent can be found in many other former Soviet republics in a form of ‘Leninist legacy’ (Jowitt, 1992). One particularly noticeable case is institutionalized Soviet regional identities. Pauline Jones Luong has explored the impact of this formal Soviet institutional legacy on elite preferences during transition and the role they played in affecting the establishment of new electoral systems in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. As she argues, the negotiating process in the establishment of new electoral systems in Kazakhstan was characterized and influenced by elite power perceptions which stem from ‘the predominance of regional political identities among political leaders and activists within each state as a result of their shared Soviet institutional legacy’. Accordingly, ‘the entire process by which Central Asian states adopted new political institutions indicated the enduring strength of the Soviet system’ (Jones Luong, 2002: 2). It confirmed that ‘far from a decisive break with the past, the design of electoral systems in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan clearly demonstrates that these Central Asian states continued to embrace certain features of a shared Soviet legacy following independence’ (Jones Luong, 2002: 253).

That Soviet institutional legacies are evident across Central Asia is, of course, unsurprising. The five Central Asian states had no prior experience of modern nation statehood or modern political institutions other than those created by the Soviet regime, and as such, formal Soviet institutional legacies are apparent and ubiquitous across the region. First, the form of presidential rule and hierarchical institutionalization of power is analogous to the distribution of power under Communist Party rule. The powers afforded to many of the former first secretaries of the regional communist parties reflects the amount of power and authority held by those same figures who went on to become first presidents of the newly independent states of Central Asia. Nursultan Nazarbaev (Kazakhstan), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan) and Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan) were all leaders of their respective states’ communist parties at the time of Soviet collapse and all went on to become long-serving presidents of their independent republics.

Second, a Soviet institutional legacy is evident in the reconstitution of political elites. There is overwhelming evidence that the Soviet near-past is crucial in ‘determining the make-up and fortunes of the post-Soviet elite’ (Murphy, 2006: 552). There is a debate within the study of elite transition in the former Soviet Union between those who argue an acquisition class emerged in the early transition and those who suggest that in fact any new capitalist elite is still drawn from the former Soviet nomenklatura (Kryshtanovskaya and White, 1996; Lane and Ross, 1999). The case of Central Asia suggests continuity rather than change, as the transition from Soviet to nationalist elite was ‘mainly a matter of changing the names on the office doors’ (Gleason, 1997a: 118).

Third, it is unsurprising that political parties should also be a major source of Soviet institutional continuity. In Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, both regional communist parties undertook a rapid and smooth transition into two new ‘democratic’ parties, the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan and the People's Democratic Party (Uzbekistan). The internal structures and composition of the parties remained relatively unchanged, although with less of the power and influence of their predecessors within the state apparatus. Even in Kazakhstan, where the Communist Party was originally banned by the president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, the idea of a monolithic party in the structure and shape of the Communist Party has been the type of party Nazarbaev has aspired to create since independence. This was finally achieved at the end of 2006 when he was able to consolidate various regime-sympathetic parties into the mega pro-presidential party, Nur Otan (Light of Fatherland).

The implication of Jones Luong's research is that it indicates emphasis should be placed on formal institutions, especially with her focus on electoral design. For Jones Luong, a formal institutional perspective, that of the structural legacies of Soviet rule, and the regional factionalism underpinning political competition which derives from it, explains authoritarian consolidation in the region. Nevertheless, this emphasis on formal institutions has been subject to a critique from those who adopt a more informal and traditional approach to political development.

Clan politics

By the turn of the millennium it became apparent that Central Asian governments’ efforts of engendering national and civic identities were secondary to those of clan and tribal identities (Collins, 2006; Schatz, 2004; Starr, 2006). Thus, scholars took the premise that pre-Russian history characterized by tribal political alliances and clan-based social organization were as important, if not more so, than any Soviet legacy. Kathleen Collins has criticized the formal institutional approach, as in her opinion it leads to two fundamental faulty assumptions: that regions are the equivalent to identities and, maybe more importantly, that the Soviets were successful in creating those regional identities. For Collins ‘regions are not given any meaning, bonds, networks and staying power of an identity group’. Clans, on the other hand, ‘have an intrinsic meaning, identity, and legitimacy and cannot merely change their social constituency (Collins, 2006: 58). A clan approach, therefore, works from the assumption that the Soviet Union was unsuccessful in eradicating traditional forms of identity and politics. Traditional relationships did not disappear or erode under Soviet dominance’ (Schatz, 2004: xxi).

Accordingly, from this perspective, ‘clans are the critical informal organizations that we must conceptualise and theorise in order to understand politics in Central Asia’ (Collins, 2006: 7). Clan, in this particular literature, is defined roughly as ‘an informal organisation comprising a network of individuals linked by kin and fictive kin identities’ (Collins, 2006: 17). They are the dominant social structures and political players responsible for the transformation of the political system, rather than formal institutions such as elected officials (Masanov, 1996). The evidence, at times, seems overwhelming for the case of the ‘clan’ approach to Central Asian politics. In Kyrgyzstan, the Northern clan groups (encompassing the Chui, Kemin, Talas and Issyk-Kul regions) are seen as always traditionally competing with the Southern clan groups (the Osh, Naryn and Jalalabat regions) for political power (Khanin, 2004). Historically, in Kazakhstan society has been divided into three social organizations the Ulu Zhuz (Great Hundred), Orta Zhuz (Middle Hundred) and Kichi Zhuz (Small Hundred). Western scholars have often referred to them as the three different ‘hordes’ (Olcott, 1987). These social divisions are seen as powerful and imperative, in that authority and senior public positions reside mainly with figures from the Great and Middle Zhuzs and that membership of a Zhuz can determine the power and authority a person can have, as well as influence their career prospects. In Uzbekistan there are the Tashkent, Ferghana and Samarkand clans, while in Tajikistan there are the Kohdjent, Pamiri and Dangharin clans. All are seen as important organizations that during both the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods provided cadre and political leadership in both countries.

Conceptually and analytically, the clan literature has proven hugely informative in pushing forward our collective understanding of post-Soviet Central Asian political, social and economic development. Yet, it remains both theoretically and empirically limiting as an approach, particularly with regards to party system formation. There are four particular limitations within the clan approach. First, there is a tendency in the approach, and understandably so, to over-state the case for the causal power of kinship-based identities. Consequently, the clan approach does not account for alternative forms of linkages and identities which can shape political outcomes. In particular, as observed in the work of Scott Radnitz, broader-based community networks are just as important, if not more so, in producing political outcomes. Radnitz's (2005) work examined the social forces behind the political uprising in Aksy in Kyrgyzstan in 2002. In this case, political mobilization, which occurred after an allegedly politically motivated arrest of a local politician, was observed to have been organized around a wider community network and not specific tribal or clan affiliation (Radnitz, 2005: 417–18). What this suggests is that a myopic focus on kinship-based clan and tribal identities, in an effort to explain political outcomes, overlooks the more subtle and complex character of social and political development in Central Asia. The emphasis on kinship-based tribal and clan identities runs the risk of inadvertently labelling Central Asian countries as traditional societies and leaving the whole approach open to accusations of orientalism.

Second, the term ‘clan’ itself is not often used by scholars from the region. Instead they use the more economic-oriented terms ‘influence group’ and ‘lobby group’ (Eurasian Centre of Political Research, 2005; Satpaev, 1999). The reason for this particular turn of semantics is that for analysts in the regions, ‘economics and not tribal loyalty’ are fundamental to explaining factional elite competition (interview, Satpaev, 2007). It is worth noting too that there is a distinction between the concepts of ‘clan’ as an economic-based factional and clientelistic group and ‘clan’ as a tribal grouping based on kinship identities, and Collins has made this clear in her work (Collins, 2006: 56). As Kazakh political scientist Nurbulat Masanov (1998) has argued, tribal kinship-based groupings are not

functional organizational structures such as existed in medieval Scotland and still exist in some African and Asian countries . . . [rather they] are more a way of thinking, a way of interpreting ongoing processes through the prism of the genealogy of the individual or group.

Consequently, ‘clan’ as a concept should not be automatically associated with kinship-based tribal identity, nor should it be assumed that clans are the imperative functional and organizational structures we should look to when seeking answers about political events, outcomes and trajectories in the region. In Kazakhstan, we can make a clear distinction between kinship-based relations (those of President Nazarbaev's family) and general clientelistic networks (reciprocal relations between a patron and a client, in other words Nazarbaev's power to appoint state officials). Yet, in Kazakhstan kinship is not the instrumental factor, rather it is the different elite factional groups which are important, and the economic resources they possess even more so. So while some of these groups can be organized around kinship-based identities, many are not. Therefore, it reveals the extent to which the clan approach over-plays the association between the term ‘clan’ and kinship-and familial-based relations.

Third, the clan politics approach has difficulties in responding to and accounting for political change. The terminal focus on kinship and familial relations leads analysis down a rather static and deterministic path. Having said that, scholars such as Schatz and Collins are seemingly aware of the problematic nature of accounting for change, however, in their work there remains a tendency to view informal politics within modern Central Asia as part of a ‘vicious cycle’ (Schatz, 2004: 139). Moreover, Collins persistent over-emphasis on familial ties and kinship-based identities leads to an analysis which views the informal practices within clans as a consequence of tradition and path-dependent cultural legacies (Collins, 2006: ch. 1). Consequently, an analysis from a clan perspective cannot ultimately account for when events change and patterns of political conduct shift over time. For instance, since 2007 there has been a considerable decline in the influence and power of key Nazarbaev family members – which would suggest a weakening of the power of kinship and familial ties. The president's ex-son-in-law Rakhat Aliev and daughter Dariga Nazarbaeva found themselves politically marginalized, having previously held significant power and influence.¹ Nazarbaev moved against them due to their growing independent political power and their potential to challenge him in the future. Clan politics, as an approach, is unable to account for this shift in political behaviour on the part of Nazarbaev because from the clan perspective we would expect both Nazarbaeva and Aliev to maintain their positions and power on the strength of their familial connection with the president.

Finally, the clan politics approach also lacks an analytical association with the institutional processes which produce and shape informal organizations, such as clans and practices. Within the clan politics literature, kinship-based clan politics are viewed as impacting and influencing formal political structures with little recompense (Collins, 2006: 3). This emphasis, however, does not enlighten us as to how factors external to informal practices and organizations (newly emerging formal institutions, for instance) might influence either the emergence of, or the continuation of, informal political phenomena. One aim of this book, as highlighted earlier, is to examine the extent to which formal institutions can shape and affect informal institutions, organizations and practices, and a clan approach would not be conducive to that aim.

For these reasons, the approach of clan politics is not necessarily the most appropriate framework within which to explore party development in Kazakhstan. While both the regional (formal Soviet institutional legacies) and clan approaches are based on opposing understanding of what underlies political competition in Central Asia, they essentially explain the same phenomena, which is factionalism (Gulette, 2007). Nonetheless, the clan perspective is crucial in bringing to the fore the relevance and considerable importance of informal politics not just in Central Asia but also the wider former Soviet Union. For instance, Collins and Schatz...

Table of contents

• Frontcover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Note on transliteration
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and key terms
• 1 Introduction: in- between the informal and formal – introducing party development in Kazakhstan and Central Asia
• 2 Neopatrimonialism and party development: a framework for analysis
• 3 Uncertain transition: the development of neopatrimonialism in Kazakhstan
• 4 The institutional constraints on political parties: presidency, elections and the law on political parties
• 5 What type of parties? Membership, organization, ideology and behavioural norms
• 6 Passiveness and disconnection: parties and society in Kazakhstan
• 7 Conclusion: patrimonial politics and party development in Kazakhstan and beyond
• Glossary of main political parties
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index