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Paper short abstract:

This study analyses the interconnectedness between global development architecture and the dominance of neoliberal socio-economic agenda in Kazakhstan. The country has become a place where neoliberal development projects are employed to embed neoliberal mode of governance.

Paper long abstract:

This study analyses the interconnectedness between global development architecture and the dominance of neoliberal socio-economic agenda in the post-Soviet Kazakhstan. From the political economy perspective, this post-socialist country has become a space for the expansion of global capital where neoliberal development projects such as sustainable development goals are employed to embed neoliberal mode of governance. Global development architecture (GDA) premised on the ‘market episteme’ where market-oriented restructuring and commercial interests are at the centre of policy solutions has been adopted and implemented in the countries of the Eurasia region. The case of Kazakhstan is exemplary in demonstrating how the institutionalization of neoliberal socio-economic agenda works for the interests of transnational capital maintained by the GDA and the global financial order (GFO) of the post Bretton Woods era. This global capital accumulation and sustainable development organisation through the GFO and GDA respectively, helps to facilitate the current political economy regime in the country based on the premise of neoliberal ideology having nothing to do with truly national agenda of sustainable development and egalitarian ideals. On the epistemological level, it deprives of the ability to look beyond neoliberal orthodoxy of governance advocated by the newly developed Kazakh comprador class and technocrats indoctrinated into the mainstream (neoclassical) economics.

The research provides new insights into the evolution of contemporary capitalism and how it is adapting its upward capital accumulation goal in the Eurasian region. This is demonstrated by examining case examples on over-emphasis on economic growth, microcredit and obsession with competitiveness.