Abstract
This chapter argues that governmentalization in post-Soviet Kazakhstan produced neopatrimonial capitalism, which enabled people to gain informal access to wealth outside of market principles and guaranteed relative well-being. By relying on Michel Foucault’s theory of the state (Lemke 2007), this chapter redefines the nature of political authority away from objects, functions and policies towards technologies, strategies and practices to show that Kazakhstan adopted efficiency as the primary technology of power in opposition to the Soviet governing rationale of equality. Efficient re-organization of political economy with strategies of free enterprise, equality of outcomes and individual responsibility drastically diminished social welfare prompting establishment of neopatrimonial capitalism. A single case study of Kazakhstan sheds light on the political theory of neoliberalism, development studies and policy analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
There is a debate over terminology and the meaning of patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism in Central Asia and beyond (Erdmann and Engel 2006; O’Neil 2007; Schlumberger 2008; Isaacs 2014; Robinson 2009, 2011 Pitcher et al. 2009). For Robinson, neopatrimonialism is an order of political economy in modern state, regulated by tradition over an autonomous, disconnected from the rest of the world, domestic market, which is different from traditional patrimonialism, in which tradition rules, but power is personal spread over an autonomous domestic market (Robinson 2011, p. 437). However, such distinction tends to disregard the importance of formal institutions and limits analysis within political economy. Echoing the work of Rico Isaacs (2014), this chapter contributes to the debates and claims that neopatrimonialism does exist in Central Asia, defined as a political authority that relies on formal and informal mechanisms to manage interests of various stakeholders. The resulting political economy can be called neopatrimonial capitalism not only because such capitalist order is plugged into international markets supplying raw materials and agricultural goods, but also because by connecting the domestic market into an international one, rulers obtain bigger opportunities to create and distribute wealth by both formal and informal mechanisms.
- 2.
The programmes assumed transition to the ‘regulated market economy of the USSR’ (Yertlessova 2016, p. 17), not an autonomous free market.
- 3.
For example, S Legkim parom, in which a drunk guy mistakenly flies from Moscow to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) instead of his friend on the New Year’s Eve and ends up sleeping on the couch of another woman who lives in the apartment with the same number on the same street with the same name as his house in Moscow. Even the door locks are similar. Apartments are so similarly decorated that even when he sobers up, he does not realize the difference.
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Tutumlu, A. (2019). Governmentalization of the Kazakhstani State: Between Governmentality and Neopatrimonial Capitalism. In: Isaacs, R., Frigerio, A. (eds) Theorizing Central Asian Politics. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97355-5_3
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