Formation and evolution of informal politics in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Kazakhstan’s informal politic has experienced a long-term historical development. According to the principle of the organization, the informal politic of Kazakhstan isn’t limited only to clan, political, economic, and other structures, but also manifests itself in the form of «teams». According to the form of the operation, the informal politic of Kazakhstan manifests itself in the form of “patron-client», which includes three forms, such as «blood ties», «promises of the leader» and «pro-presidential parties». The characteristics of Kazakhstan’s informal politic are pluralism-internal mobility, and closeness to ordinary people. The informal politic is a tool of the President of Kazakhstan to overcome the crisis of political transformation, it is an addition to immature formal politics, but it also generated a wave of elite teams fighting and caused doubts in society about its legitimacy. To solve the above problems, the first President of Kazakhstan — N.Nazarbayev tried to implement the “integration” of informal and formal politics, and Tokayev promoted the transition from informal to formal politics through “infiltration”. The organic interaction of the two types of politics has once again stimulated the viability of Kazakhstan’s development as a whole. Tokayev filled a gap in the benign interaction between society and the government and reflected a completely new direction of modernization of the political system of Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, as long as the «infiltration» does not lead to qualitative changes, the complementarity and competition of the two policies will remain the political reality of the country in the long term.