PSCRP-BESA Reports No 230 (September 15, 2026)
Part 1. Specificity of Kazakhstan’s political modernization model.
1.Kazakstan’s road to current political modernization policy
Before Kassym-Jomart Tokayev came to power in 2019, Kazakhstan under Nursultan Nazarbayev combined a highly centralized political system with broadly neoliberal socioeconomic policies. In this respect, the Kazakhstani model displayed certain similarities with the previous developmental trajectories of several twentieth-century Asian states, including South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, where strong centralized authority coexisted with market-oriented economic modernization and deep integration into the global economy. Kazakhstan likewise achieved substantial (by Post-Soviet standards) economic growth, attracted large-scale foreign investment and built a relatively open market economy, while preserving a strongly personalized and vertically organized political system, which created a clear contradiction.
At the same time, however, the Kazakhstani model under Nazarbayev was specific in one particularly important respect. Members of the president’s extended family and individuals closely associated with them acquired a highly visible role in major sectors of the economy and in the political system. The concentration of political power was therefore accompanied by a popular perception that access to economic opportunities, state resources and political influence was distributed unequally. Over time, this contributed to a growing sense of social injustice and to a widening gap between the country’s considerable macroeconomic achievements that have significantly transformed Kazakh society and the way in which many citizens perceived the distribution of the benefits of modernization.
One of the most significant achievements of Kazakhstan during the first three decades of independence was the development of its distinctive multi-vector foreign policy. Situated between Russia and China, while simultaneously seeking close economic and political relations with the United States, the European Union and other major international actors, Kazakhstan avoided an exclusive geopolitical alignment and instead sought to maintain constructive relations with all major centers of global power. For Israeli readers, it is important to note that, as part of its multi-vector foreign policy, Kazakhstan’s leadership has traditionally maintained stable and constructive relations with the Jewish state. This strategy helped the country strengthen its sovereignty, attract investment from competing external partners and acquire a positive international profile. At the same time, Kazakhstan sought to present itself not merely as a geopolitical balancer but as a responsible international actor, emphasizing nuclear non-proliferation, multilateral diplomacy, dialogue and mediation in the conflicts.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was one of the central figures in the construction and implementation of this foreign-policy model. A polyglot and professional diplomat, he served as Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister in the period of development of distinctive multivector foreign policy and, from 2011, served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva, while also representing the UN Secretary-General at the Conference on Disarmament. His career was therefore closely associated with precisely those elements that had become trademarks of Kazakhstan’s international strategy: multi-vector diplomacy, nuclear non-proliferation, engagement with different great powers and a strong commitment to multilateral institutions. This background also helps explain why Tokayev emerged as a new president in 2019. He had an unusually strong international reputation and extensive experience in both domestic government and global diplomacy. In this sense, the 2019 transition initially appeared to guarantee continuity in one of the most successful dimensions of the Nazarbayev-era model – Kazakhstan’s foreign policy – while opening the possibility of gradual transformation in those areas, particularly domestic political and socioeconomic governance, where the limitations of the previous model had become increasingly visible.
2. The logic of political modernization under Tokayev’s leadership
The 2026 Kurultai election should be understood not as an isolated institutional change, but as the element of a political modernization process that began with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s accession to the presidency in 2019.
The underlying logic of this process has been adaptation. Kazakhstan itself has changed substantially over the past three decades. It has become more urban, more educated, more digitally connected and socially differentiated. A younger (and what is also important in a country with highly ethnically mixed population – ethnically mostly Kazakh) generation has entered public life with different expectations concerning government responsiveness, social mobility, participation and access to information. At the same time, the country is attempting to move beyond the economic and political structures inherited from the first decades of independence toward a more diversified, innovative and eventually post-industrial model of development.
Such socioeconomic modernization inevitably creates pressure for political modernization as well. Institutions designed primarily to guarantee combination of political stability with centralized and broadly neo-Liberal socio-economic decision-making increasingly need additional mechanisms of feedback, representation and responsiveness. Tokayev’s reforms can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to preserve political stability not by freezing the existing institutional system, but by gradually adapting it to a changing society.
Tokayev articulated this principle very early in his presidency. In his first State of the Nation Address in September 2019, he introduced the concept of the “Listening State” (“Slyshashchee gosudarstvo”) and linked it to the broader formula of a “Strong President – Influential Parliament – Accountable Government” . For someone familiar with Soviet and post-Communist political discourse, this may sound like a certain combination of Gorbachev-era ideas of political reform – such as glasnost and democratization – with reforms inspired by the East Asian developmental model (when a development of society produced a need for democratization in the states like South Korea or Taiwan, and created demands for political liberalization in China).
A “listening” state in Kazakhstan was not simply supposed to process citizens’ complaints more efficiently. It implied a different understanding of political stability: government would have to receive continuous feedback from society and respond institutionally to changing public expectations.
Tokayev simultaneously rejected the idea of abrupt political liberalization that can, according to the opinion of many Kazakh experts with whom I communicated (and who prefer to be anonymous), bring destabilization and consecutive degradation of institutions well known by the example of neighboring Kyrgyzstan (or even produce Lebanese-style conflicts in a very religiously and culturally heterogeneous society). Tokayev’s preferred model is one of controlled, gradual and cumulative political modernization. The first reform packages of 2019–2021 followed this logic from reduction of barriers to the registration of political parties to direct elections of rural heads of administrations (akims).
The January 2022 unrest, which increasingly came to reflect popular resentment against the continuing influence of Nazarbayev, his family and the economic elite associated with the former president, dramatically accelerated this process. For the authorities, January demonstrated the risks generated by a widening gap between the modernization of society and the capacity of existing political institutions to aggregate social demands, communicate with citizens and manage conflicts.
Tokayev used the crisis as a starting point for a considerably more ambitious institutional restructuring under the broader project of building a “(socially) just Kazakhstan”. In March 2022, he proposed a first constitutional reform intended to move Kazakhstan away from an excessively concentrated super-presidential model and toward a system with a stronger parliament, more competitive elections and clearer institutional checks.
The reform reduced several presidential powers, strengthened Parliament, established the Constitutional Court, prohibited the president from belonging to a political party while in office, simplified political-party registration, and restored a mixed electoral system for the Mazhilis. In specific Central Asian conditions a very important element of the reform was introduction of restrictions concerning the president’s close relatives holding senior public positions
These measures were followed by a broader electoral reset. Tokayev was re-elected in November 2022 under the newly introduced single seven-year presidential term, while the March 2023 parliamentary election was conducted under the revised rules and brought a more diverse set of parties into the Mazhilis. This set of parties created the party-system background for 2026 elections. The reforms also extended downward into local government. Direct elections of heads of local administrations were expanded.
The reforms of 2019–2023 had altered individual components of the political system. The next question was how these institutions should fit together as a coherent political architecture. This was particularly important because Kazakhstan was simultaneously confronting a new stage of socioeconomic transformation. Society becomes younger – about 28% of Kazakhstan’s population today is represented by the youth. Digitalization, artificial intelligence, changes in patterns of education and employment, the growing importance of a knowledge economy all strengthened the perceived need for a state capable not only of maintaining stability but also of making complex long-term policy choices.
Simultaneously, against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in the global geopolitical environment (including the conflict in Ukraine affecting Kazakh export and import, heightened tensions in the Middle East, continuing instability around Afghanistan, and the intensifying rivalry between China and the United States) Kazakhstan came under growing external pressure. This, in turn, influenced its domestic agenda, increasing the importance of resilience, balance, and the overall effectiveness of the political system.
The process culminated in a much more fundamental constitutional restructuring in 2026. On 15 March 2026 following several months of public discussion, including the work of a 130-member Constitutional Commission, a draft of an entirely new Constitution was approved by a national referendum. The new constitutional architecture replaced the previous bicameral Parliament with a unicameral Kurultai, which became the country’s highest representative legislative body when the new Constitution entered into force on 1 July 2026.
The significance of this reform extends beyond the replacement of the Senate and Mazhilis with a single chamber. The creation of the Kurultai represents an attempt to simplify the institutional structure of representation while simultaneously strengthening the political role of parties. This is particularly important because all members of the new Kurultai are elected through party lists, rather than through a combination of party-based and regional representation, as was previously the case.
Kazakhstani experts with whom I spoke suggested that this measure may have three main rationales. First, it creates an institutional foundation for the further development of the party system as an important element of future democratization. During the preceding period, party structures remained relatively weak, and one of the key questions is now whether these parties can develop recognizable constituencies, coherent policy identities, and meaningful connections with different groups within a rapidly changing Kazakhstani society. Second, the new system already reduces the opportunities for representatives of regional elites with strong patronal networks, many of them rooted in the Nazarbayev era, to enter parliament through territorially based channels. This consideration is particularly important in the specific political context of Central Asia. In this context, it is worth recalling that a number of scholars described the early years of Kazakhstan’s independence under Nazarbayev as a period in which former Soviet party and economic officials, often embedded in powerful regional and informal networks, continued to play a dominant role. Such senior figures were popularly referred to as agashki. Third, a fully party-based system makes legislative decision-making simpler and potentially faster, which may be especially valuable in conditions of global crisis. Against the backdrop of growing international instability, the strengthening of a genuinely nationwide party-political system may also reduce the influence of narrowly based regional interest groups. On the basis of these institutional changes, the first election to the Kurultai has been held on 23 August 2026.
3. Political Modernization in Kazakhstan Against the Backdrop of Global and Regional Democratic Recession
Because the policy of political modernization pursued by Kazakhstan’s leadership has been highly cautious, and because Kazakhstan still remains far from the contemporary Western model of liberal democracy, this policy – and, in particular, the recent Kurultai elections held within its framework – has been subject to criticism, in particular by European organizations working in these fields. For example, OSCE observers noted that the Kurultai elections were technically well organized, but stated that, in their view, they “lacked political pluralism”. Of course, inside Kazakhstan there are also critics that insist on quicker democratization.
At the same time, Kazakhstani experts with whom I spoke emphasized that the country’s political modernization should be understood in the specific context of current developments in the world in general, and in Eurasia in particular. The contemporary international environment, and especially the region in which Kazakhstan is located, is marked by a large number of conflicts and geopolitical tensions that are clearly not conducive to democratization. This specific context, according to this opinion, underscores the significance of the Kazakhstani leadership’s efforts to maintain its course of political modernization despite such unfavorable external conditions.
Freedom House has documented twenty consecutive years of global decline in political rights and civil liberties, beginning in 2006. In its Freedom in the World 2026 report, Freedom House notes that conditions for freedom deteriorated in 54 countries in 2025. The democratic recession is clearly visible across the post-Soviet space. Between 2020 and 2026, due to different reasons, including war, Freedom House scores declined — often dramatically — in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine. In several of these countries, particularly in Central Asia, the scores were already very low in 2020. In Kazakhstan there has been no comparable erosion of representative institutions of the kind seen by Freedom House in many neighboring states, while in some areas (most notably internet freedom) there a progress observed in this country.
Moreover, as several Kazakhstani experts I interviewed pointed out, there is a clear effort to incorporate political modernization into the broader formula of national development: an approach that stands out particularly sharply against the regional background described above. They also point out that Kazakhstan stands out positively among many other post-Soviet states because its approach to political modernization is relatively systematic. Democratic development is presented not as an isolated political objective, but as an organic part of a broader strategy aimed at preserving peace and tolerance, preventing ethnic and religious conflict, and maintaining stability in a highly diverse society. At the same time, political reform is closely linked to the country’s longer-term socioeconomic modernization, with greater participation, institutional responsiveness, and social development treated as mutually reinforcing elements of national progress.