ABSTRACT
Over the preceding chapters this work has examined the relationship between informal and formal politics in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan as a way to examine the development of political institutions (in this case political parties) and the development of an authoritarian polity in the post-Soviet space. In this account, informal forms of political relations are illustrated to have influenced and shaped the development of political parties by circumscribing their ability to develop as autonomous political institutions capable of undertaking functions typically associated with parties in a democratic environment. Conversely, however, this examination of political parties in Kazakhstan has demonstrated how formal institutions possess causality vis-à-vis the domination of informal forms of politics, such as patron–client networks and personalism. Parties in Kazakhstan have illustrated their capacity to legitimize informal forms of political behaviour, channel elite stability, structure elite competition and legitimize authoritarian executive power. This concluding chapter seeks to place the findings of this study in the comparative context of other post-Soviet states and assess the key conclusions in accordance with wider conceptual and theoretical debates regarding informal and formal politics. The comparative element of this concluding chapter is not exhaustive and is suggestive in spirit, seeking to open potential avenues for comparative research using Kazakhstan as the building block.
