Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian states have developed liberal-constitutional formal institutions. However, at the same time, political phenomena in Central Asia are shaped by informal political behaviour and relations. This relationship is now a critical issue affecting democratization and regime consolidation processes in former Soviet Central Asia, and this book provides an account of the interactive and dynamic relationship between informal and formal politics through the case of party-system formation in Kazakhstan.

Based on extensive interviews with political actors and a wide range of historical and contemporary documentary sources, the book utilises and develops neopatrimonialism as an analytical concept for studying post-Soviet authoritarian consolidation and failed democratisation. It illustrates how personalism of political office, patronage and patron-client networks and factional elite conflict have influenced and shaped the institutional constraints affecting party development, the type of emerging parties and parties relationship with society. The case of Kazakhstan, however, also demonstrates how in the former Soviet space political parties emerge as central to the legitimization of informal political behavior, the structuring of factional competition and the consolidation of authoritarianism. The book represents an important contribution to the study of Central Asian Politics.

Central Asian Survey has remained as the premier world-leading peer-reviewed journal for Central Asian studies for four decades. To mark the 40th anniversary of the journal, this volume is intended to be a reader of selected essays from the journal over the last four decades. This book is not just a mere collection, but also a critical reflection on the field over that time. Each of the nine sections in the book feature a critical appraisal of the selected excerpts by young scholars who analyse the reproduced excerpts and the contribution they make to advancing our understanding of the field. The nine sections encapsulate prominent themes in Central Asian studies: history, identity and nationalism, Islam, governing and the state, informal institutions, contentious politics, gender, everyday life, and regional and global perspectives. The book is not just intended to reflect on the role of Central Asian Survey in the development of Central Asian studies, but also the aim is for the volume to be used as a teaching resource where the different sections in the collection could correlate to specific teaching weeks in courses on the region. The different contributions cover many case studies from across a range of countries that have featured in the journal over the years, and thus is not just restricted to the Central Asian republics but also includes Mongolia, Azerbaijan, and Xinjiang. This book will serve as a great resource for researchers and students of Central Asian history, politics, culture, society, and international relations.

The eagerly awaited third edition of this highly respected and user-friendly text for introductory courses has been thoroughly updated to reflect the world today. Politics: An Introduction provides stimulating coverage of topics essential to the understanding of contemporary politics. It offers students necessary guidance on ways of studying and understanding politics, and illustration of the many different sites at which politics is construed and conducted. Ideal for students taking combined degrees at introductory level in politics and the social sciences, it emphasises the individual and social dimension of politics and covers theories and concepts in an accessible way. Fundamentally, it helps students see the political, and its relevance, in their lives. Key features include: a revised introduction considering 'what is politics' and how we understand and approach its study clear and well-organised coverage of political theory, political behaviour, institutions and the policy process carefully crafted in-text chapter features such as 'consider this' thought-provoking scenarios, 'think points', keyword definitions, chapter summaries, and exercises designed to enliven and extend the learning experience stimulating, up-to-date examples and case studies from across the globe, such as 'fake news', online activism, the rise of populism, culture wars, 'fertility tourism' in India, hydropower in Cambodia, free speech in France, and personality politics in Turkmenistan detailed consideration of democratisation, authoritarian regimes, direct democracy, gender critical perspectives, minority rights, global capitalism, social movements, radical political change, post-secularism, and challenges and changes brought by social media. Politics: An Introduction is a broad-ranging, accessible, and essential guide for all students studying, or beginning to study, politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia offers the first comprehensive, cross-disciplinary overview of key issues in Central Asian Studies. The 30 chapters by leading and emerging scholars summarise major findings in the field and highlight long-term trends, recent observations, and future developments in the region. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students of the region and those working in the field of Area Studies, History, Anthropology, Politics and International Relations.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian states have developed liberal-constitutional formal institutions. However, at the same time, political phenomena in Central Asia are shaped by informal political behaviour and relations. This relationship is now a critical issue affecting democratization and regime consolidation processes in former Soviet Central Asia, and this book provides an account of the interactive and dynamic relationship between informal and formal politics through the case of party-system formation in Kazakhstan. Based on extensive interviews with political actors and a wide range of historical and contemporary documentary sources, the book utilises and develops neopatrimonialism as an analytical concept for studying post-Soviet authoritarian consolidation and failed democratisation. It illustrates how personalism of political office, patronage and patron-client networks and factional elite conflict have influenced and shaped the institutional constraints affecting party development, the type of emerging parties and parties' relationship with society. The case of Kazakhstan, however, also demonstrates how in the former Soviet space political parties emerge as central to the legitimization of informal political behavior, the structuring of factional competition and the consolidation of authoritarianism. The book represents an important contribution to the study of Central Asian Politics.

Nation-building as a process is never complete and issues related to identity, nation, state and regime-building are recurrent in the post-Soviet region. This comparative, inter-disciplinary volume explores how nation-building tools emerged and evolved over the last twenty years. Featuring in-depth case studies from countries throughout the post-Soviet space it compares various aspects of nation-building and identity formation projects. Approaching the issue from a variety of disciplines, and geographical areas, contributors illustrate chapter by chapter how different state and non-state actors utilise traditional instruments of nation-construction in new ways while also developing non-traditional tools and strategies to provide a contemporary account of how nation-formation efforts evolve and diverge.

Nation-building as a process is never complete and issues related to identity, nation, state and regime-building are recurrent in the post-Soviet region. This comparative, inter-disciplinary volume explores how nation-building tools emerged and evolved over the last twenty years. Featuring in-depth case studies from countries throughout the post-Soviet space it compares various aspects of nation-building and identity formation projects. Approaching the issue from a variety of disciplines, and geographical areas, contributors illustrate chapter by chapter how different state and non-state actors utilise traditional instruments of nation-construction in new ways while also developing non-traditional tools and strategies to provide a contemporary account of how nation-formation efforts evolve and diverge.

How might political opposition shape regime outcomes over time in an authoritarian system? Most studies on political opposition in authoritarian contexts tend to focus on the agency of the regime over and above that of the political opposition. Using Albert Hirschman's framework of exit, voice and loyalty, this book examines the case of Kazakhstani opposition agency over 30 years to explore the extent to which political opposition in Kazakhstan has shaped the dynamics of authoritarian regime development in the country. What the analysis reveals is that in Kazakhstan the regime has tended to treat formal institutional political opposition as neither a credible nor non-credible threat. Consequently, the Kazakhstani regime has always responded to opposition exit and voice with sanctions and institutional adaption which strengthened the regime in the short to medium term, but left them exposed to spontaneous, grassroots non-institutional opposition in the longer term. This spontaneous grassroots opposition emerged in Kazakhstan as a series of 'shocks' crystalised in the 2011 events in Zhanaozen, the 2016 land protests, the 2019 election protests and the events of 'qandy qantar' (bloody January) in 2022. What this book illustrates is how authoritarian regimes which treat opposition threats ambiguously are likely to end up in a continuous state of instability because the feedback provided by opposition agency disappears leaving the regime susceptible to spontaneous opposition.

The eagerly awaited third edition of this highly respected and user-friendly text for introductory courses has been thoroughly updated to reflect the world today. Politics: An Introduction provides stimulating coverage of topics essential to the understanding of contemporary politics. It offers students necessary guidance on ways of studying and understanding politics, and illustration of the many different sites at which politics is construed and conducted. Ideal for students taking combined degrees at introductory level in politics and the social sciences, it emphasises the individual and social dimension of politics and covers theories and concepts in an accessible way. Fundamentally, it helps students see the political, and its relevance, in their lives. Key features include: a revised introduction considering 'what is politics' and how we understand and approach its study clear and well-organised coverage of political theory, political behaviour, institutions and the policy process carefully crafted in-text chapter features such as 'consider this' thought-provoking scenarios, 'think points', keyword definitions, chapter summaries, and exercises designed to enliven and extend the learning experience stimulating, up-to-date examples and case studies from across the globe, such as 'fake news', online activism, the rise of populism, culture wars, 'fertility tourism' in India, hydropower in Cambodia, free speech in France, and personality politics in Turkmenistan detailed consideration of democratisation, authoritarian regimes, direct democracy, gender critical perspectives, minority rights, global capitalism, social movements, radical political change, post-secularism, and challenges and changes brought by social media. Politics: An Introduction is a broad-ranging, accessible, and essential guide for all students studying, or beginning to study, politics.

This book brings together a series of innovative contributions which provide an eclectic view of how theorizing politics plays out in Central Asia. How are the concepts of governance, legitimacy, ideology, power, order, and the state framed in the region? How can we use the experiences of the Central Asian states to renovate political theorizing? In addressing these questions, the volume relies on the contributions of many young and local researchers, whose chapters are primed to address three key themes: exploring models of governance, revealing ideological justifications, and reframing state and order. Utilizing a range of single and comparative case studies from across the Central Asian space, this illuminating and original volume opens up a new space for political theorists, regional specialists and students of politics to begin reconsidering how we approach the theorization of regions of the world assumed to be on the periphery.

This book brings together a series of innovative contributions which provide an eclectic view of how theorizing politics plays out in Central Asia. How are the concepts of governance, legitimacy, ideology, power, order, and the state framed in the region? How can we use the experiences of the Central Asian states to renovate political theorizing? In addressing these questions, the volume relies on the contributions of many young and local researchers, whose chapters are primed to address three key themes: exploring models of governance, revealing ideological justifications, and reframing state and order. Utilizing a range of single and comparative case studies from across the Central Asian space, this illuminating and original volume opens up a new space for political theorists, regional specialists and students of politics to begin reconsidering how we approach the theorization of regions of the world assumed to be on the periphery.

Cinema and nationalism are two fundamentally modern phenomena, but how have films shaped our understanding of the creation -the 'imagining' - of Central-Asian nations? Here, Rico Isaacs uses cinema as an analytical lens to explore how the Kazakh national identity has been constructed and contested. Drawing on an analysis of Kazakh films from the last century, and featuring new interviews with directors and critics involved in the Central Asian film industry, his book traces the construction of nationalism within Kazakh cinema from the country's inception as a Soviet Republic to a modern independent nation.Isaacs identifies four narratives since the collapse of the Soviet Union: a warrior-like 'ethnic' narrative rooted in the 18th Century struggles against the Mongolian Oirat tribes; a 'civic' inspired narrative cemented in the Stalinist deportations of the 1930s and 40s; a religious narrative founded within the mystic and philosophical religion of Tengrism and the cult of the Sky God; and a socio-economic narrative which roots Kazakh nationhood and identity in contemporary social divisions, the lived day-to-day experiences of ordinary citizens and the struggles they face with authority. These last two tropes demonstrate how cinema has emerged as a site of dissent against the country's authoritarian regime under President Nazarbayev. Film and Identity in Kazakhstan advances our understanding of Kazakhstan and nationalism by demonstrating the multiple and inessential character of each, and illustrates the important role of cinema in contesting political power in the post-Soviet space.

Cinema and nationalism are two fundamentally modern phenomena, but how have films shaped our understanding of the creation -the 'imagining' - of Central-Asian nations? Here, Rico Isaacs uses cinema as an analytical lens to explore how the Kazakh national identity has been constructed and contested. Drawing on an analysis of Kazakh films from the last century, and featuring new interviews with directors and critics involved in the Central Asian film industry, his book traces the construction of nationalism within Kazakh cinema from the country's inception as a Soviet Republic to a modern independent nation.Isaacs identifies four narratives since the collapse of the Soviet Union: a warrior-like 'ethnic' narrative rooted in the 18th Century struggles against the Mongolian Oirat tribes; a 'civic' inspired narrative cemented in the Stalinist deportations of the 1930s and 40s; a religious narrative founded within the mystic and philosophical religion of Tengrism and the cult of the Sky God; and a socio-economic narrative which roots Kazakh nationhood and identity in contemporary social divisions, the lived day-to-day experiences of ordinary citizens and the struggles they face with authority. These last two tropes demonstrate how cinema has emerged as a site of dissent against the country's authoritarian regime under President Nazarbayev. Film and Identity in Kazakhstan advances our understanding of Kazakhstan and nationalism by demonstrating the multiple and inessential character of each, and illustrates the important role of cinema in contesting political power in the post-Soviet space.

This social and cultural analysis provides a new understanding of Kazakhstan's younger generations that emerged during the rule of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been presiding over Kazakhstan for the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Half of Kazakhstan's population was born after he took power and have no direct memory of the Soviet regime. Since the early 2000s, they have lived in a world of political stability and relative material affluence, and have developed a strong consumerist culture. Even with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free country. This book offers the first collective study of the "Nazarbayev Generation," illuminating the diversity of the country's younger generations and the transformations of social and cultural norms that have taken place over the course of three decades. The contributors to this collection move away from state-centric, top-down perspectives in favor of grassroots realities and bottom-up dynamics in order to better integrate sociological data.

This social and cultural analysis provides a new understanding of Kazakhstan’s younger generations that emerged during the rule of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been presiding over Kazakhstan for the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Half of Kazakhstan’s population was born after he took power and have no direct memory of the Soviet regime. Since the early 2000s, they have lived in a world of political stability and relative material affluence, and have developed a strong consumerist culture. Even with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free country. This book offers the first collective study of the “Nazarbayev Generation,” illuminating the diversity of the country’s younger generations and the transformations of social and cultural norms that have taken place over the course of three decades. The contributors to this collection move away from state-centric, top-down perspectives in favor of grassroots realities and bottom-up dynamics in order to better integrate sociological data.