Formation and evolution of informal politics in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Kazakhstan’s informal politic has experienced a long-term historical development. According
to the principle of the organization, the informal politic of Kazakhstan isn’t limited only to clan, political,
economic, and other structures, but also manifests itself in the form of «teams». According to the form
of the operation, the informal politic of Kazakhstan manifests itself in the form of “patron-client», which
includes three forms, such as «blood ties», «promises of the leader» and «pro-presidential parties». The
characteristics of Kazakhstan’s informal politic are pluralism-internal mobility, and closeness to ordinary
people. The informal politic is a tool of the President of Kazakhstan to overcome the crisis of political
transformation, it is an addition to immature formal politics, but it also generated a wave of elite teams
fighting and caused doubts in society about its legitimacy. To solve the above problems, the first President
of Kazakhstan — N.Nazarbayev tried to implement the “integration” of informal and formal politics, and Tokayev promoted the transition from informal to formal politics through “infiltration”. The organic
interaction of the two types of politics has once again stimulated the viability of Kazakhstan’s development
as a whole. Tokayev filled a gap in the benign interaction between society and the government and reflected
a completely new direction of modernization of the political system of Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, as long
as the «infiltration» does not lead to qualitative changes, the complementarity and competition of the two
policies will remain the political reality of the country in the long term.