Paper short abstract:

Kazakhstan is facing the challenges that could be addressed only if there is political stability. The events in January 2022 urged President Tokayev to propose political, economic and societal reforms. Will those reforms help to build a “dynamic” mode of political stability of the “New Kazakhstan”?

Paper long abstract:

Three decades after gaining its independence Kazakhstan is at the crossroads again. The post-Soviet era is finally ending: there are generational changes both within the political elite and throughout entire society; there is a particular international environment raising structure-agency question; there are the tasks to be fulfilled and the problems inherited from the recent past none of which could be tackled effectively without political stability. The events in Kazakhstan in January 2022 actualized all these even more.

The case of Kazakhstan after January 2022 shall help us to problematize the notion of ‘political stability’ as the absence of changes rather than the capacity of a system to withstand internal and external shocks. It shall help to explain the circumstances of and the rationale behind the particular mode of political stability maintained in Kazakhstan so far.

The paper then discusses how the events of January 2022 and their causes are seen in Kazakhstan, what kind of discourses they emanating and, most importantly, what the response of the system is. The author examines the reforms in political, economic and social spheres initiated by President Tokayev. As such reforms may be sustainable and successful only if they will result in transformation of a “static” mode i.e., that of prevention of internal shocks from emerging into a “dynamic” one, i.e. management of the shocks when they emerge, the author evaluates critically each step of the reforms in terms of its “transformative” capacity.

Keywords: political stability, “dynamic” stability, “static” stability, Kazakhstan’s political reforms, January 2022 in Kazakhstan