Kazakhstan: Development and Its Discontents

November 26, 2014

November 26, 2014 

Franco Galdini, Independent Researcher, CASI Visiting Fellow

Abstract: The presentation broaches Kazakhstan’s long-term development strategy and its ambitious objectives in view of the country’s Soviet legacy. It sets President Nazarbayev’s vision against Kazakhstan’s political economic reality, specifically how the leadership’s multi-vector foreign policy is faring between Russia’s regional integration projects and China’s westward push to develop Xinjiang province along the new Silk Road. Finally, it identifies multiple challenges that may compromise Kazakhstan’s development plan in the future: from the country’s cronyism and endemic corruption, as well as its mixed record on economic diversification and wealth redistribution, to China’s Uighur question and Russia’s standoff with the West in Ukraine.

Note. This presentation is based on Galdini, Franco & Satke, Ryskeldi. Between East and West: Kazakhstan’s development along China’s new Silk Road, Review of International Affairs N. 110-11, CIDOB (Barcelona). Forthcoming March 2015.

Bio: Franco Galdini is a visiting scholar at CASI. Previously, he worked for several international organisations in former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Central Asia.

PP Presentation

Handout

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