Kazakhstan 2.0: Change and Continuity?

In 2019, Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev surprised the world by voluntarily stepping down after almost thirty years in power to leave space for “a new generation of leaders.” Kazakhstan has become the success story of post-communist development in the region. Investors, domestic elites, and foreign leaders have been praising the stability of Nazarbayev’s neopatrimonial regime. Nazarbayev, however, is the first Central Asian leader who chose to step down from the presidency through a political tandem with the chairman of the Senate and second in line for the presidency, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Despite the fact that Tokayev finds himself in a secondary role in Kazakhstan’s political system, he has taken some steps toward changing his image and has shown some controversial signs of liberalization. This chapter discusses the turbulent relationship between political elites and the opposition in Kazakhstan, following the analytical model of the Sociology of Power. It first presents the elites that control Kazakhstan, the competition that these elites face from abroad, and the most significant groups and leaders that can mobilize popular discontent. The focus then turns on the strategies that Kazakh elites used to maintain power and the prospects of Kazakhstan’s transition.