Doing the democracy dance in Kazakhstan: Democracy development as cultural encounter

Slavic Review

Volumn 71, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 308-330

  Roberts, Sean R ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84864252664     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5612/slavicreview.71.2.0308     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Throughout this article, the term former Soviet Union refers to all the states that have emerged from the Soviet Republics with the exception of the Baltic states (i.e., Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). These states' different histories and subsequent entry into the European Union make them a separate case.
2. Michael McFaul, "Political Transitions: Democracy and the Former Soviet Union," Harvard International Review 28, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 42.
3. Stephen Blank, "For a Transition to Democracy in Central Asia," in Birgit N. Schlyter, ed., Prospects for Democracy in Central Asia (Istanbul, 2005), 3-20.
4. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge, Eng., 2006).
5. Evgeny A. Zhovtis, "Freedom of Association and the Question of Its Realization in Kazakhstan," in M. Holt Ruffin and David Clarke Waugh, eds., Civil Society in Central Asia (Seattle, 1999), 57-70.
6. Andrew Wilson, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (New Haven, 2005);
7. McFaul, "Political Transitions."
8. David M. Abramson, "A Critical Look at NGOs and Civil Society as Means to an End in Uzbekistan," Human Organization 58, no. 3 (1999): 240-250.
9. Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal, "The NGO Paradox: Democratic Goals and Non-Democratic Outcomes in Kazakhstan," Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 7 (November 1999): 1267- 1284.
10. Sarah L. Henderson, Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Support for Grassroots Organizations (Ithaca, 2003).
11. Chris Seiple, "Uzbekistan: Civil Society in the Heartland," Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs 49, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 245-259.
12. Morgan Liu, "Post-Soviet Paternalism and Personhood: Why Culture Matters to Democratization in Central Asia," in Schlyter, ed., Prospects for Democracy in Central Asia, 225-237.
13. Although a variety of scholars studying democracy development have provided us with definitions of democracy, by the authors' own admission these definitions are generally unsatisfactory for universal use, being either too broad or too narrow. Michael McFaul uses Joseph Schumpeter's definition, which is "the institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle."
14. Michael McFaul, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can (New York, 2010), 28.
15. This very broad definition, however, applies to China's inter-party competition as much as it does to the United States's citizen-centric electoral democracy. By contrast, Larry Diamond provides an expansive ten-point descriptive definition of "Liberal Democracy" that is so restrictive that one could argue that no state truly fulfills its criteria.
16. Larry J. Diamond, Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation, (Baltimore, 1999), 11-12.
17. This has long been noted of U.S. policy in the Arab world, which plays critical roles in both America's energy and security interests. The United States has generally been mild in its criticism of Arab states for their lack of democratization and has even been very careful in its embrace of the pro-democracy protest movement that has recently spread throughout the Arab world. Many other examples exist, including in Central Asia, where the United States has been cautious in its criticism of the region's lack of democracy in the last decade, during which time the Central Asian states have been critical allies in the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
18. In his study of a community development project in India, anthropologist David Mosse demonstrates that the success of a given development project is usually more beholden to the projects' relevance to prevailing policy than to the performance of project implementation.
19. David Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice (New York, 2005), 10.
20. Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory, 2d ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2010), 65.
21. Thomas Carothers, for example, makes this point when he notes that a major problem with existing democracy assistance is a shallow understanding of the society being assisted" among practitioners. Although this certainly is a problem, it still posits the local culture as the object that must be better understood, suggesting that culture in the developing world creates a puzzle for external producers of assistance to figure out. It does not suggest that the culture of the democracy assistance producers also poses an obstacle to development in this context.
22. Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, D.C., 1999), 261.
23. Some anthropological studies that do examine the cultural contestations between development workers and those they intend to assist include:
24. James Ferguson, The Anti- Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis, 1994).
25. Armine Ishkanian, "From the Embryos of Civil Society to the NGOs: Managing Culture in the Context of Democracy Building in Post-Soviet Armenia" (unpublished manuscript, 2005),
26. Mosse, Cultivating Development;
27. Tania Murray Li, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Durham, 2007).
28. Wilson, Virtual Politics.
29. The commonalities and continuity between these two historical processes have been discussed at length elsewhere and are not central to the argument of this article.
30. Gilbert Rist, The History of Development from Western Origins to Global Faith, 3d ed. (London, 2009).
31. Marshall D. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985).
32. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, Eng., 1977).
33. Although a variety of European donors, as well as the United Nations, also provide democracy assistance to Kazakhstan, the focus here is only on U.S.-funded democracy promotion projects, which constitute the majority of democracy assistance to the country. 18. The Russian word for "simple" (prostoi) indicates a certain child-like naivety thatusually has positive connotations but is a slightly "backhanded" compliment. Although citizens in Kazakhstan tend to view Americans' faith in their government as naive given the realities of power, they also admire the fact that Americans can maintain this belief in the same way one envies a child who believes in Santa Claus.
34. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America (1840; reprint, New York, 2003), 290.
35. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, Eng., 1977), 291.
36. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National Interest (Summer 1989), 4.
37. USAID Central Asia Regional Mission, "Kazakhstan: Results, Review and Resource Request" (Almaty, February 1998), 24-28, at pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABQ237.pdf(last accessed 2 March 2012).
38. Oazu Nantoi, Institute of Public Policy, interview, Chişinǎu, Moldova, 20 May 2008.
39. Alena V. Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business (Ithaca, 2006), 1.
40. Virginia Martin, Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2001)
41. Nurbolat Masanov, Kochevaia Tsivilizatsiia Kazakhov (Almaty, 1995).
42. Kathleen Collins, The Logic of Clan Politics in Central Asia: Its Impact on Regime Transformation (Cambridge, Eng., 2006);
43. Sally N. Cummings, Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite (London, 2005).
44. Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of "Blood" in Kazakhstan and Beyond (Seattle, 2004).
45. Edward Schatz's research on clan affiliations in Kazakhstan during the 1990s suggested that while such affiliations did not influence political allegiances, they did serve instrumentally to help people obtain employment and other resources. Still, the reliance on immediate kin networks proved more salient in these cases than did fictive kin "clans" such as the Kazakh zhuzhes.
46. Schatz, Modern Clan Politics.
47. Oliver Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York, 2000).
48. Collins, Logic of Clan Politics.
49. Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2006).
50. This point has been made by Bruce Grant for Sakhalin and by Yuri Slezkine for the indigenous populations of Siberia.
51. Bruce Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas (Princeton, 1995)
52. Yuri Slezkine, Russia and the Small Peoples of the North: Arctic Mirrors (Ithaca, 1994).
53. Both authors only touch briefly on the post-Soviet period, but their arguments about the long history of externally driven "reform" on the edges of Soviet power are suggestive of the lack of enthusiasm with which such formerly colonized people, Central Asians included, have greeted western-funded democracy programs. 32. A joke I heard told in Kazakhstan epitomizes this attitude. A women in a rural region comes home and tells her mother that she just had the strangest experience. A group of Americans gave a seminar on how to breastfeed children. The mother looks shocked and says, "Americans!? I was at one of those seminars thirty years ago, but it was run by people from Moscow. Just smile and say thank you; they have no idea that we have been feeding children for centuries."
54. Sahlins, Islands of History.
55. Given that many elections in the United States attract fewer than half the eligible voters to the polls, one might question this assertion. Voter turnout, however, does not tell the entire story. A 2004 survey by the California Voters Foundations, for example, found that 93 percent of infrequent voters and 81 percent of nonvoters in that state agreed that "voting is an important way to voice your opinions on issues that affect your family and your community."
56. California Voters Foundation, California Voter Participation Survey (2004), at www.calvoter.org/issues/votereng/votpart/index.html (last accessed 2 March 2012).
57. This suggests that infrequent voters and nonvoters recognize elections as legitimate; they do not vote for other reasons. This did not change dramatically during the crisis of the 2000 presidential elections when the entire election hinged on recounting the ballots in a few polling stations in Florida. Although in the end the Supreme Court essentially decided the election, American voters have responded since by calling for electoral reforms and by turning out in larger numbers to vote, as the 2008 elections demonstrated. 35. The history of elections in post-Soviet space outside the Baltics has been one of state manipulation. As already mentioned, some states, such as Moldova, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and to some extent Georgia, have begun to break out of this model. The elections in other states, including Kazakhstan, however, have generally not been deemed free and fair by the international community. For various reports from these countries' elections over the last twenty years,
58. The Web site of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, at www.osce.org/documents?keys=election&document_type=472 (last accessed 2 March 2012).
59. USAID had funded electoral assistance as part of its initial package of democracy assistance to Kazakhstan in the early 1990s, but it gradually reduced this assistance as it became clear that elections were not an area where there was any political will for reform within the host government. By 2004, there was no election support project funded by USAID, and the engagement of this election was pieced together by supporting existing projects to do short-term additional work.
60. Allegedly, DCK had been created with the consent of President Nazarbaev on the promise that it would neutralize his son-in-law, Rakhat Aliev, who had become a nuisance to Kazakhstan's elite by usurping the successful businesses of others and by appearing to have political ambitions beyond those his father-in-law had prescribed. See Cummings, Kazakhstan. As DCK developed, however, it became increasingly critical of policies in the country, and, by implication, of the president. According to Azamat Junisbai and Barbara Junisbai, DCK's expanded platform included calls "for decentralization of political authority (via the direct election of regional governors) and a strong legislature and independent judiciary to balance the power concentrated in the presidency."
61. Azamat Junisbai and Barbara Junisbai, "The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan: A Case Study in Economic Liberalization, Intraelite Cleavage, and Political Opposition," Demokratizatsya 13, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 378.
62. As soon as the movement began to articulate this platform for concrete reforms, however, the government moved to dismantle it, arresting its leaders, Abliazov and Zhakiianov, for alleged corrupt actions while in office. Abliazov was soon released on the promise that he would leave the country and refrain from trying to influence political events in Kazakhstan. Zhakiianov chose to remain in jail for most of his term rather than make a deal with the government. After these dramatic events, most of the other young officials and businessmen who had supported the movement withdrew their support.
63. It is difficult to recreate this package of assistance from available documents since most of these activities were added onto existing projects that had broader objectives. For this reason, the activities funded by USAID for the elections only appear as brief footnotes in project reports. See, for example, Internews Network, Final Project Report, 1 October 2001-30 November 2004; and IFES, FY 2004 Quarterly Report, 4th Quarter, 1 July 2004 -30 September 2004. In providing this account here, I draw primarily on my own experiencesworking with these projects at the time as a democracy advisor for USAID.
64. National Democratic Institute (NDI), Delegation to Kazakhstan's September 19, 2004 Parliamentary Elections, Almaty, 23 July 2004, at www.ndi.org/files/1731_kz_statement_072304.pdf (last accessed 2 March 2012)
65. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Republic of Kazakhstan Parliamentary Elections, 19 September 2004, OSCE/ODHIRNeeds Assessment Mission Report, Warsaw, 28 June 2004, at unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/untc/unpan019026.pdf (last accessed 2 March 2012).
66. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Republic of Kazakhstan Parliamentary Elections, 19 September and 3 October 2004, OSCE/ODHIR Election Observation Mission Report, Warsaw, 15 December 2004, at www.osce.org/odihr/elections/kazakhstan/38916, p. 6 (last accessed 2 March 2012).
67. According to the OSCE, while Otan and Asar were represented on 99.7 percent and 98.8 percent of committees, respectively, Ak Zhol and DCK were only given seats on 51.6 percent and 20 percent of committees, respectively. Ibid.
68. Azamat Junisbai and Barbara Junisbai, "The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan: A Case Study in Economic Liberalization, Intraelite Cleavage, and Political Opposition," Demokratizatsya 13, no. 3 (Summer 2005), 11-12.
69. Azamat Junisbai and Barbara Junisbai, "The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan: A Case Study in Economic Liberalization, Intraelite Cleavage, and Political Opposition," Demokratizatsya 13, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 12.
70. Republican Network of Independent Monitors, Preliminary Report on Monitoring of September 19, 2004
71. Elections to the Majilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty, 20 September 2004, at www.ndi.org/files/1749_kz_report_092304.pdf (last accessed 2 March 2012).
72. Central Election Commission, "Observers' Analysis of the Elections," Kazakhstan ElS ections 2004: A Guide to the September 19th Parliamentary Elections in Kazakhstan, 2004, at www.kazelection2004.org/observers.htm (last accessed 2 March 2012). The international observers brought in by the government included a mission from the Commonwealth of Independent States and a group of European parliamentarians with interests in Kazakhstan. Central Election Commission, "Home," Kazakhstan Elections 2004
73. Republican Network of Independent Monitors, Preliminary Report on Monitoring of September 19, 2004 Elections.
74. Democracy promotion is not the only aspect of U.S. foreign policy in Kazakhstan. Embassy employees in many countries are frequently less enthusiastic about pushing host governments on democratic reform than are those working directly on democracy development projects. This has often been the case in Kazakhstan, which is important to U.S. interests in a variety of ways, including as a major supplier of oil and gas.
75. Junisbai and Junisbai, "The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan," 375.
76. The rumors surrounding the divisions within the Nazarbaev family resemble the intrigues within European monarchies historically and are largely focused on personal issues rather than on politics. Although Nazarbaev remains married to his wife Sarah, it has long been rumored that they do not live together and that he has secretly married a series of women since being estranged from her (often described as his attempt to sire a son). It is also rumored that Dariga is not the president's actual daughter, but a step-daughter from his wife Sarah's first marriage. In this context, Dariga's conflict with her father is seen as her attempt to ensure that her family enjoys its deserved share of his power. These rumors have never been substantiated but circulate widely in Kazakhstan as people try to make sense of the actions of different family members. Some of these rumors, such as that Nazarbaev has taken a new wife, have been voiced by Dariga's former husband, Rakhat Aliev, in his book about President Nazarbaev.
77. Rakhat Aliyev, The Godfather-in-Law: The Real Documentation (Vienna, 2009).
78. When the opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbaev was found killed outside the city of Almaty in February 2006, Dariga used her media holdings to voice views contrary to official disclosures made by the government. In her now infamous article "Déjà vu," Nazarbaeva preempted what she suggested was an attempt to frame her husband for Sarsenbaev's murder and placed the blame at the feet of some of her father's longtime allies. In the article, however, she went beyond the personal, suggesting that the government's security forces were corrupt, that the parliament had no political voice, and that something similar to the state terror employed in Chile under Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s was beginning to be felt.
79. Dariga Nazarbaeva, "Dezha Vyu," Karavan, no. 10 (10 March 2006).
80. Although no actions were immediately taken against Dariga for these transgressions, which many viewed as publicly exposing the rifts in the family, her empire was gradually dismantled soon afterwards. First, Asar was officially folded into the party of the president, Nur-Otan, in July 2006. Then, in May 2007, another scandal arose around her husband regarding Nurbank, a financial institution over which he had control. Under accusations of assaulting and kidnapping two executives of the bank over business disagreements, a warrant was issued for Aliev's arrest, and he subsequently took refuge in Austria where he had formerly been the Kazakhstan ambassador.
81. Bruce Pannier, "Kazakhstan: Criminal Scandal Widens around Ex-Ambassador Aliyev," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 28 August 2007).
82. As a result of this final scandal, Dariga and Rakhat lost control of their media holdings and most of their other commercial holdings. Thus, almost three years after the September 2004 parliamentary elections, the president's daughter had been disinvested of most of her political power and had filed for divorce, many think against her will. In the meantime, Aliev, while in exile in Austria, came out in open opposition to his former father-in-law, publishing a book critical of President Nazarbaev. See Aliyev, Godfather-in-Law. Around the time of the book's publication, Dariga left for England allegedly to study English, and she has since only occasionally returned to Kazakhstan. In the recent 2012 parliamentary elections, however, Dariga was once again awarded a seat in parliament, and she will most likely resume her political activity as a result.
83. In characterizing the present political situation in Kazakhstan, Freedom House recently noted that "President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his Nur-Otan Party maintained almost complete control over the political sphere in 2009, using tactics including arbitrary arrests, restrictive new laws, and politically motivated prosecutions to muzzle critical media outlets and individuals."
84. House, Freedom in the World 2010: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York, 2010), 346.
85. Abdujalil Abdurasulov, "Kazakhstan's Snap Elections Draw International Criticism," Christian Science Monitor, 4 April 2011.
86. Sean R. Roberts, Saving Democracy Promotion from Short-Term U.S. Policy Interests in Central Asia (Washington, D.C., 2009).
87. Pieterse, Development Theory, 191. Emphasis in the original.