ABSTRACT
The first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has initiated democratic reforms from the top down and the president himself has curtailed democratic development by concentrating power within the institution of the presidency. This chapter considers "progressive" practice as compromising the ideals of true democracy, which President Nazarbayev has announced as his major political goal. The idea that democracy could be built by authoritarian means nullifies the essence of democratic participation in decision making. Political reforms were initiated in Kazakhstan to balance political power between the political institution of the presidency and the elected representatives, and to gradually transfer from an autocratic system to an effective system of checks and balances. In Kazakhstan, independent and oppositional media is controlled and politically harassed; evidence includes multiple violations of the legal rights of journalists to receive information from government agencies and closure of newspapers.
