Abstract

This paper examines how discourses of justice are constructed, negotiated, and mobilised during periods of political change. The study employs a comparative relational approach to how cultural policymaking practices are discussed, delivered, and implemented in two cities — Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Tbilisi, Georgia. It follows the critique of the relevance of the post-Soviet framework for understanding contemporary socio-cultural and political developments in these sites, and brings together justice studies, comparative urban research, and policy mobilities scholarship to investigate which regional frameworks matter when cultural policymaking in two contrasting regional contexts is approached through a justice lens. The study draws on semi-structured expert interviews conducted during four field trips in 2024–2025 and policy analysis. The interviews involved experts from the cultural sector and policymaking field. Interviewees included state and non-state cultural practitioners, former and current officials working on strategic documents for the cultural sector, representatives of international cultural organisations working in Kazakhstan and Georgia, and local and European specialists (journalists, researchers, analysts) working in the Kazakhstani and Georgian cultural sectors over the past decade. The paper explores how culture, often treated as a depoliticised domain, becomes a fruitful field for tracing practices of navigating the constraints of authoritarian governance, exploring foreign policy orientations, and analysing the localisation of international justice vocabulary. The paper explores the complex rationale behind the regional framings mobilised in the processes of cultural policy making and enactment, challenging the relevance of the recently dominant and still persistent post-Soviet framework in the social sciences. It argues that justice discourses within the cultural sectors of Georgia and Kazakhstan are defined by nation-building strategies and resulting developments in foreign policy, alongside the contrasting local specifics of everyday governance practices that differ from site to site. The paper further elaborates on how justice in cultural policymaking can be explored through a multi-scalar approach attentive to shifting regional framings, strategic geopolitical alliances, and the differentiated ways authoritarian contexts shape policy discourse and practice. The study situates the findings amid wider debates on productive collaboration between area studies and geographic research by bridging regional scholarship and empirical findings with political-geographical research on justice.