카자흐스탄 엘리트 정치 구조의 변화

Abstract

Has Kazakhstan's elite political structure changed since the 2022 Kazakh unrest? Prior researches on the Kazakh elite have mainly explained the consolidation or replacement of the supreme leader's power, focusing on elite circulation and clientelism. These studies are useful for understanding the characteristics of the Kazakhstan political system and political changes, but there is a limit to not being able to track changes in the elite political structure from a macro perspective. Because it did not apply a tangible analysis framework. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis on the changes in Kazakhstan's elite political structure before and after the 2022 Kazakh unrest from Winters’s typologies of Oligarchy. As a result of applying two measures which are the ‘Nature of Rule’ and the ‘Oligarchs’ Role in Provision of Coercion’ proposed by Winters, the Nazarbayev regime was close to a ‘Sultanistic Oligarchy’ in that it privatized state power, monopolized the state's economic power, and suppressed opposition to neutralize the influence of other oligarchs. On the other hand, the Tokayev regime tended to shift slightly from the existing ‘Sultanistic Oligarchy’ to the ‘Ruling Oligarchy’ in that it distributed some of the power concentrated on the president, failed to suppress itself at the time of the protests, was supported by the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and eased the state's monopoly on economic power. Consequently, it is difficult to say that the current Kazakh elite political structure has completely changed from the existing ‘Sultanistic Oligarchy’ to the ‘Ruling Oligarchy’, but it is necessary to continuously observe the possibility of change in the future.