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Abstract

Kazakhstan’s development pathway has experienced several stages of transformation. Since 2022, the country’s foreign policy has expanded its external partnerships through active engagement in both regional cooperation processes and the international agenda. The peacekeeping diplomacy remained as a core idea of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, leveraging partnership, mutual understanding, and the resolution of contradictions. In doing so, Kazakhstan demonstrated its soft power, which is far beyond its culture, and became important element of its middle power status.

If considering the soft power as an ability to get outcomes without coercion, as Nye asserted, then the foreign policy models of Kazakhstan and Singapore have common patterns of development which rely on soft power capabilities.

For example, by examining the development trajectories of two countries, it becomes possible to identify common patterns inherent to groups of those states taking rational steps against the backdrop of crucial historical moments. In terms of Singapore’s case, officially “pragmatism of small state” is one of the fundamental principles of its foreign policy adhering peaceful environment in Southeast Asia. Both have a colonial past and experienced a thorny path of decolonial transformation in terms of economy, political institutions, culture, and foreign policy maturity. In doing so, Kazakhstan and Singapore create common patterns of Asian development configurating new paradigms and narratives thanks to soft power capabilities.

The one problem that should be pondered in terms of countries’ soft power is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the Asian model of soft power. Despite many cases demonstrated successful soft power projects by South Korea, Turkey, Japan, Central Asia countries, etc., the model differing from Western views on soft power needs to be proved. Within the comparative studies of Kazakhstan and Singapore, it becomes possible to identify and measure the countries’ soft power pillars and then contribute to the development of an Asian model of soft power.

My intention to discover this relevant topic started from the broad literature review on soft power within my PhD program. In 2024, I published a book review on a topic, “Soft power in Central Asia: the politics of influence and seduction,” and revealed to the audience a scientific gap that is connected with the lack of a paradigm, in addition to Joseph Nye’s configurations.

In continuation of this work, I’m intended to share a piece of my doctoral dissertation in which I tested the cases of Kazakhstan and Singapore in the CESS conference.