Paper abstract:

Over the recent decades, Kazakhstan has embraced numerous Western institutions and practices, the public council is a state-sanctioned participatory institution. There is various research on civil society, social capital, ethnicity, and open government in Central Asia. However, little to no attention was paid to the impact of political culture on the performance of newly adopted institutions in Central Asia and Kazakhstan in particular. This research attempts to fill this gap by exploring the organizational performance of public councils and linking it to the social capital thesis offered by Putnam. Data has been collected via semi-structured interviews, surveys, non-participant observations, and archival work in four regional public councils of Kazakhstan. Two public councils were selected from ethnically homogenous regions, the other two were selected from ethnically heterogeneous regions. The fieldwork findings show that networks and reciprocity have an impact on organizational performance, however, it appears that trust does not necessarily go hand in hand with networks in local settings. Moreover, ethnically heterogeneous regions show neo-liberal and state-led civil societies, whilst ethnically homogenous regions have a communal and state-led civil society.