Why Kazakhstan’s ongoing political reform matters – Minhyeon Jeong

Framed as a new stage of political modernization following the 2022 constitutional reform, the initiative signals an attempt to strengthen state resilience, improve government effectiveness, and institutionalize a more balanced system of checks and balances under the formula “Strong President – Influential Parliament – Accountable Government.” If implemented credibly, this package has implications that extend beyond domestic politics: it can influence long-run economic transformation, democratic development, and Kazakhstan’s international profile.

The importance of the ongoing political reform in Kazakhstan

At its core, the reform recognizes a central lesson from political economy: institutions are not “background conditions,” but production factors for long-run development. Scholars such as Douglass North emphasized that institutions shape incentives and transaction costs, thereby influencing investment, innovation, and productivity over time. In middle-income economies— especially those seeking to move from resource- and scale-driven growth to value-added, innovation-led growth—the quality of governance becomes a binding constraint.

Kazakhstan’s economic challenge resembles that faced by many middle-income countries: sustaining growth through structural transformation. This typically involves (a) diversifying away from commodity dependence, (b) expanding high-productivity tradables and modern services, (c) strengthening competition and private-sector dynamism, and (d) improving public-sector effectiveness and integrity. These are not purely “economic” tasks; they depend heavily on the predictability and credibility of the policy environment.

From an economic perspective, political stability and predictability matter through several well-known channels:

• Long-horizon investment and “credible commitment.” When policies are volatile or institutions cannot credibly commit to stable rules, investors discount the future and

shorten time horizons. Work on uncertainty and investment (often associated with Dixit and Pindyck) highlights why firms delay irreversible investment when uncertainty is high: waiting has option value.

• Checks and balances as a stabilizer of policy. Research often associated with Henisz and others suggests that stronger constraints on discretionary authority can reduce the risk of abrupt policy reversals. For economies seeking industrial upgrading and productivity growth, this matters because structural transformation requires consistent, multi-year commitments to reform and public goods (skills, infrastructure, regulatory modernization, competition policy).

• Governance and productivity (TFP). Broad strands of institutional economics (North; and later, work associated with Acemoglu and Robinson; and Rodrik and collaborators) link rule of law and institutional quality to productivity and sustained prosperity.

In this light, the most important feature of Kazakhstan’s reform is not a single institutional innovation, but the attempt to institutionalize predictability: shifting from governance reliant on discretion and informal coordination toward governance based on clearer roles, stronger oversight, and more credible enforcement of rules.

The proposed reforms—most notably parliamentary reform—aim to strengthen the legislature’s role and deepen the system of checks and balances. A transition to a unicameral parliament, renamed the Qurultay, with expanded authority in key appointments (such as

constitutional review bodies, audit institutions, and election administration) is designed to make governance more accountable and less dependent on one node of power. The creation of a consultative People’s Council with representation from regions and societal groups seeks to institutionalize nationwide dialogue and give structured channels for participation and consensus-building. The introduction of a Vice-President (appointed by the President with parliamentary consent) is presented as a stability-enhancing mechanism for continuity in governance. Finally, the inclusion of constitutional protections for personal digital data acknowledges that modern state legitimacy increasingly depends on trust in how the state handles information and rights in a digitalized economy.

Taken together, these reforms matter because they are plausibly connected to the core economic imperative of the coming decades: moving toward a higher value-added growth model by improving governance quality and reducing uncertainty.

Alignment with international practices, including those of the Republic of Korea

Kazakhstan’s reform agenda aligns with a broad set of international governance practices found across presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary systems—especially where democratic consolidation has required building trust in neutral institutions.

• Strengthening checks and balances through institutional design.

International practice increasingly emphasizes that credible governance depends on independent or semi-independent institutions—constitutional review, audit, and election administration—supported by transparent appointment processes and meaningful legislative oversight. Empowering parliament to play a decisive role in these appointments is consistent with an international trend: limiting excessive concentration of appointment power and reinforcing institutional autonomy through shared or distributed appointment mechanisms.

• Independent election administration and constitutional review.

Kazakhstan’s emphasis on institutionalizing the legitimacy of elections and constitutional oversight resembles practices in a number of democracies where confidence in the electoral process is protected by constitutional or quasi-constitutional bodies. In the Republic of Korea, for example, the National Election Commission is constitutionally established as an independent organ, and the Constitutional Court has played a prominent role in constitutional adjudication. The broader lesson is not that one model should be copied, but that institutional credibility often rests on insulation from day- to-day partisan control, combined with clear legal mandates and real capacity.

• Legislative oversight and accountability mechanisms.

Strengthening parliamentary power over budget oversight, audit bodies, and high-level appointments is also consistent with good-governance standards promoted in many advanced democracies. Korea’s National Assembly, like many legislatures, exercises oversight through hearings, audits, and confirmations (in various forms) and serves as an arena where policy conflicts are formalized rather than pushed into informal channels. Kazakhstan’s “Influential Parliament – Accountable Government” framing echoes this logic: move contestation and scrutiny into institutions, not into ad hoc bargaining.

• Proportional representation and party accountability.

A proportional representation system can increase party responsibility for policy platforms, strengthen programmatic politics, and create incentives for coalition-building. Many democracies use variants of PR to encourage representation and party-system development. The trade-off, of course, is that fragmentation can raise coordination costs if party systems become too dispersed. Still, the international experience suggests that PR can support democratic development when combined with transparent party finance, fair media access, and effective parliamentary procedures.

• Digital rights and modern constitutionalism.

Constitutional protection of personal digital data aligns with a global movement toward rights-based governance in the digital age. While legal regimes differ across countries, the direction is clear: states increasingly treat data privacy and digital rights as part of the legitimacy framework for modern governance and for participation in advanced digital trade and technology ecosystems.

In short, Kazakhstan’s proposed institutional changes—particularly those that strengthen legislative involvement, neutral institutions, and rights protections—are broadly compatible with international governance norms and resemble key features that supported democratic consolidation in countries like Korea.

Potential impact on democratic development and Kazakhstan’s international profile

 Democratic development: institutionalizing pluralism and accountability (with real implementation as the decisive variable)

The democratic promise of the reform lies in its potential to shift Kazakhstan from a governance model where outcomes depend heavily on political discretion toward a model where outcomes are shaped by institutionalized accountability.

• More meaningful checks on executive discretion. If parliament’s enhanced appointment and oversight roles are genuine, they can strengthen the autonomy of constitutional review, audit, and election bodies. That can increase trust in political competition and reduce the perceived risk of arbitrary governance.

• Structured participation and dialogue. A People’s Council that aggregates regional and civic voices can provide a channel for national integration and consensus-building—especially valuable in diverse societies.

• Rule-based politics and predictability. Democratic quality improves when political contestation is processed through institutions, procedures, and rights—not through informal networks.

However, the democratic impact depends on operational choices that cannot be assumed from constitutional text alone. The key risks are familiar in comparative experience:

• appointment mechanisms that are formally shared but substantively captured,

• consultative bodies that become symbolic rather than influential,

• party systems that are competitive in form but constrained in practice,

• and oversight institutions lacking budgetary autonomy, investigative power, or enforcement capacity.

The practical test is whether institutional reforms produce observable changes: more transparent appointments, credible audits, genuine electoral integrity, more predictable policy, and stronger remedies for rights violations (including digital rights).

International profile: credibility, investment climate, and diplomatic standing

Kazakhstan’s international reputation is increasingly linked to governance credibility. For investors, ratings agencies, and multilateral partners, political reforms matter because they affect risk premia and the durability of policy commitments.

• Investor confidence and sovereign risk. More credible checks and balances can reduce perceived policy volatility and improve confidence in long-term investment, particularly in non-resource sectors that require stable regulatory environments.

• A stronger narrative of modernization. A well-executed reform process culminating in a referendum can reinforce the image of a country pursuing institutional modernization through rule-based processes.

• Compatibility with high-standard economic integration. Constitutional recognition of digital rights, stronger oversight, and predictable governance can support Kazakhstan’s participation in modern trade, investment, and technology networks—where governance expectations are increasingly explicit.

A Korea-related lesson: internalizing reforms early to avoid the “external shock” pathway

Your comparison to Korea adds a valuable policy insight. Korea’s experience suggests that reforms often arrive either as:

• internally owned, gradual, negotiated change, or

• externally anchored, crisis-driven, rapid adjustment (with high social costs).

During the 1997–98 crisis, many reforms—financial restructuring, supervisory modernization, corporate governance improvement, and labor-market adjustment—were implemented under severe time pressure and external conditionality. While that pathway accelerated reforms and helped restore credibility, it also imposed painful distributional costs on workers and households. In political-economy terms, external conditionality can serve as a “commitment device” that breaks domestic stalemates, but it does so at the price of compressed timelines and social stress.

Applied to Kazakhstan, the implication is clear: the best moment to undertake institutional and structural reforms is before crisis conditions force them. If Kazakhstan can successfully implement credible political reform domestically—building checks and balances, predictability, and accountability—then it may improve the odds of achieving structural transformation with lower social cost than a crisis-driven adjustment would impose.

Concluding note

Kazakhstan’s ongoing political reform matters because it is, in effect, an institutional investment in the credibility of the state. It aligns with widely observed international practices— especially the strengthening of legislatures and neutral institutions and the constitutionalization of rights in modern governance. And it can enhance democratic development and international standing if it translates into real operational independence, transparent appointments, enforceable oversight, and predictable rule-based policymaking.

The strategic objective should be understood as more than political modernization in the abstract: it is about creating the institutional conditions for long-run growth—especially the shift toward a higher value-added economy—while avoiding the high social and economic costs that arise when reforms are postponed until crisis forces them.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency shared thoughts of Dr. László Vasa, Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and Co-editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Central Asian Studies, on the landmark reform of the Kazakh Parliament.