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Abstract

Why do authoritarian leaders reform judiciaries they have spent decades constraining? I argue that strategies of judicial containment can produce overly deferential cultures that frustrate the regime's own objectives — legitimation, economic predictability, bureaucratic oversight — creating pressure to alter the composition of the bench. I investigate Kazakhstan's 2021 Administrative Procedures and Process Code, which established specialized administrative courts as part of President Tokayev's "Listening State" agenda. The reform staffed these courts partly with judges recruited from outside the career judiciary — bokoviki ("laterals") — to break what reformers described as an entrenched culture of judicial passivity. Analyzing over 7,000 Supreme Court administrative decisions (2021–2025) and interviews with judges, government lawyers, and litigants, I find that lateral presence on panels is associated with higher reversal rates of lower-court decisions favoring agencies, particularly against cabinet-level ministries and agencies rather than local bodies. This pattern complicates expectations that administrative courts in authoritarian settings primarily serve the center's interest in disciplining peripheral agents. Interview evidence reveals how this orientation was transmitted downward through informal mentorship, practice bulletins, and strategic sanctions, but also its limits: courts that aggressively scrutinized agencies exhibited marked caution in politically sensitive cases. By 2026, the political rhetoric had shifted toward "Law and Order," several lateral judges had departed, and agencies continued pursuing legislative rollbacks, raising questions about the durability of reforms

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This paper explores why constitutional reforms in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have failed to ensure the independence of the judiciary and to curb the activities of the prosecution service, despite three decades of reform of the judicial and prosecutorial systems. Drawing on an analysis of contemporary constitutional and institutional trends, this study examines the courts and the public prosecutor’s office as an interlinked sphere of authoritarian legal governance, a legacy of the Soviet period that continues to shape institutional standards.

The study proposes the concept of strategic constitutional layering as an explanatory framework. Constitutions adopted following independence enshrined the formal independence of the judiciary and limited the role of the public prosecutor’s office to legal oversight . However, subsequent reforms have added new layer of judicial councils, qualification commissions, constitutional courts and mechanisms for overseeing the activities of the prosecution service, which are supposed to strengthen autonomy whilst maintaining the dominance of the executive branch in matters of appointments, discipline, budgets and case allocation. Examples of this include the constitutional referendum in Kazakhstan after 2022 and the judicial reforms in Uzbekistan in 2023. The new powers of the Supreme Judicial Council coexist with the president’s right to veto appointments, whilst the hierarchy of the public prosecutor’s office retains priority in investigations. From an empirical perspective, the analysis highlights differences between the two countries. Kazakhstan exhibits greater institutional proliferation (multiple judicial bodies, a stronger rhetorical commitment to independence), yet prosecutorial dominance persists in politically sensitive cases, where prosecutorial discretion and judicial deference aligned with executive interests. Uzbekistan shows a more streamlined structure post-Mirziyoyev, with prosecutorial reform emphasising “human rights compliance”, but similar patterns emerge in cases such as that of Akmaljon Shukurov, where courts deferred to the prosecution’s framing despite procedural innovations. Both systems maintain structural advantages for the prosecution over the courts in pre-trial phases, with judges positioned as administrative implementers rather than adversarial checks.

The paper argues that, in the context of Central Asian studies, strategic constitutional multi-layering mimics judicial power without actually granting it, thereby maintaining the coordination of executive power through the courts and the prosecution service. This explains why discourse on the rule of law has not led to an institutional break in these post-Soviet states.

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The paper examines the re-establishment of the Constitutional Court in Kazakhstan as a part of broader constitutional reforms initiated after the January 2022 events. Institutional changes in the constitutional control body are aimed toward democratization and the transparency of judiciary institutions, as well as the protection of fundamental human rights. As a result of reforms, the Constitutional Court declared that more than 5000 appeals were received by the Court annually. Currently, over 70 decisions have been issued by the Court regarding the constitutionality of enacted legislation.

The research explores whether the re-establishment of the Constitutional Court in Kazakhstan marks a genuine reform toward democratization or serves merely as a tool for autocratic survival. It will also assess whether constitutional review in Kazakhstan is consistently effective across all legal issues or if effectiveness varies by category.

Following this, the research design will follow a qualitative case study approach with a constructivist philosophy. The data collection techniques involve content analysis, document and statistical analysis, semi-structured interviews, and process tracing of the judicial review process to understand causal mechanisms and test hypotheses about constitutional reforms in Kazakhstan.

The study will contribute to scholarship on courts in hybrid regimes and develop new measurements for the Court's functions across three dimensions: independence, power, and efficiency. It also offers policy-relevant recommendations to strengthen constitutional review and improve legislative accountability in Kazakhstan and the broader Central Asian region.

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The paper examines the extent to which the amendments introduced to Article 6(3) of the Constitution of Kazakhstan through the national referendum of June 8, 2022, and subsequently replicated in Article 8(3) of the new Constitution of March 15, 2026, reflect the realities of ownership and governance of natural and energy resources in the country. The constitutional provision that existed during the Nazarbayev era, stating that ‘natural resources are in state ownership’, was, during the presidency of Tokayev, replaced with the formulation that ‘natural resources belong to the people.’

The sovereignty of the people over natural resources is particularly important for a resource-supplying country such as Kazakhstan. Overall, the notion that natural resources belong to the people is consistent with Article 1 of the ICCPR and the ICESCR, which recognize the collective right of peoples to freely dispose of their natural wealth and stipulate that they shall not be deprived of their means and subsistence.

This paper analyzes the laws, government actions, and policies adopted following the introduction of amendments to Article 6(3) of the Constitution in order to assess whether this shift signifies a substantive transformation in resource governance or whether it remains largely declaratory and symbolic. Based on the analysis of policies concerning natural and energy resources in contemporary Kazakhstan, as well as an examination of the constitutions of the Soviet Union, which promoted an ideology and economic system based on the people’s ownership, the paper argues that these constitutional amendments are largely populist. They were adopted to gain political recognition and public support, while shaping public expectations of a better life. Furthermore, it argues that the powers of ministries have been narrowed and the management of natural resources has increasingly been transferred to the private sector.