Overview
- Offers the first monographic account specifically dedicated to the development of political opposition in Kazakhstan
- Based on 100 in-depth interviews with key political actors and specialists over the last decade
- Offers a new perspective on understanding opposition agency in authoritarian regimes
Part of the book series: The Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy (PSTCD)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Opposition Agency and Opposition-Regime Relations in Authoritarianism
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
How might political opposition shape regime outcomes over time in an authoritarian system? Most studies on political opposition in authoritarian contexts tend to focus on the agency of the regime over and above that of the political opposition. Using Albert Hirschman’s framework of exit, voice and loyalty, this book examines the case of Kazakhstani opposition agency over 30 years to explore the extent to which political opposition in Kazakhstan has shaped the dynamics of authoritarian regime development in the country. What the analysis reveals is that in Kazakhstan the regime has tended to treat formal institutional political opposition as neither a credible nor non-credible threat. Consequently, the Kazakhstani regime has always responded to opposition exit and voice with sanctions and institutional adaption which strengthened the regime in the short to medium term, but left them exposed to spontaneous, grassroots non-institutional opposition in the longer term. This spontaneous grassroots opposition emerged in Kazakhstan as a series of ‘shocks’ crystalised in the 2011 events in Zhanaozen, the 2016 land protests, the 2019 election protests and the events of ‘qandy qantar’ (bloody January) in 2022. What this book illustrates is how authoritarian regimes which treat opposition threats ambiguously are likely to end up in a continuous state of instability because the feedback provided by opposition agency disappears leaving the regime susceptible to spontaneous opposition.
Reviews
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Rico Isaacs is Professor of International Politics at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research interests lay at the intersection of authoritarianism, culture and political theory in post-Soviet states with a particular focus on the Central Asian Republics. He is the author of Film and Identity in Kazakhstan (2018) and Party System Formation in Kazakhstan: Between Formal and Informal Politics (2011), as well as authoring several co-edited volumes, including most recently The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia (with Erica Marat, 2021) and a Critical Reader in Central Asian Studies (2022). Rico is also the current serving editor of Central Asian Survey.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Political Opposition in Authoritarianism
Book Subtitle: Exit, Voice and Loyalty in Kazakhstan
Authors: Rico Isaacs
Series Title: The Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06536-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-06535-4Published: 14 August 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-06536-1Published: 13 August 2022
Series ISSN: 2947-4469
Series E-ISSN: 2947-4477
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 160
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: Comparative Politics, Asian Politics, Political Theory, Governance and Government