ABSTRACT
Driven by the uncertainty and contingency of transition, the president of Kazakhstan has relied on informal forms of politics and formal constitutional power to enshrine his rule. This combination can best be understood through neopatrimonialism, and indeed the Nazarbaev regime represents a form of neopatrimonialism. With power underpinned by both formal and informal means, the president depended upon the informal powers bestowed upon loyal clients to interpret and selectively apply formal rules to ensure pro-presidential parties monopolized the party system, thus assisting in consolidating his rule. Naturally, the major party to benefit from this formal and informal bias was Nur Otan (Light of Fatherland), the party organized to serve the president's interests. As noted in the previous chapter, the parties to emerge in this context were elite-and clientelistic-focused, serving fundamentally the interests of those elites or charismatic individuals seeking to retain or contest power. In these parties general membership is weak and party ideology is centred on the interests and ideas of the elites leading the party organization. Nevertheless, parties do not exist in a vacuum and traditional sociological interpretations of party development would require us to consider parties’ relationship with society. Therefore, this chapter seeks to assess Kazakh political parties’ broader relationship and linkages with citizens. Additionally, it will seek to address how informal forms of political relations and behaviour have affected parties’ relationship with society and how parties have shaped authoritarian consolidation through assisting the legitimization of Nazarbaev's rule.
