IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sec/worpap/0015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The political economy of Kazakhstan. A case of good economics, bad politics?

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Commander
  • Ruta Prieskienyte

Abstract

Can autocracies and their associated institutions successfully implement economic policies that promote growth and investment? Can ‘good economics’ somehow offset the effects of ‘bad’ politics? Kazakhstan is a case where an autocratic regime has actively projected market-friendly policies and attracted significant amounts of incoming investment. These policies are to some extent reflected in the country’s governance ratings, although there has been a significant amount of investment disputes that question the attachment to the rule of law. Moreover, the political regime remains strongly personalised around the founder President, his family and associates. This is reflected in the economics of the autocracy whereby a large public sector and a set of privately held businesses coexist to mutual benefit. The latter have been formed around a very small number of highly connected individuals whose initial accumulation of assets allows them also to act as necessary gatekeepers for entrants. Competition as a result remains limited in both economic and political domains. Yet, uncertainties over the future leadership, along with latent rivalry over access to resources and markets, make the political equilibrium quite fragile. In short, ‘bad’ politics both squeezes the space for, and distorts the benefits from, ‘good’ economics.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Commander & Ruta Prieskienyte, 2021. "The political economy of Kazakhstan. A case of good economics, bad politics?," CASE Working Papers 0015, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:sec:worpap:0015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.case-research.eu/files/?id_plik=6896
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political networks; autocracy; investment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sec:worpap:0015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anna Budzynska (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/caseepl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.