TESTIMONY
Before the
U.S. CONGRESS’S COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
On
THE CHALLENGE OF BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN KAZAKHSTAN
By
DR. MARTHA BRILL OLCOTT
Senior Associate
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Professor of Political Science
Colgate University
May 6, 1999
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. honeymoon of the independence period is ending. The transformation of state institutions will become more difficult over time. If Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbaev does not begin following through on promised democratic reforms in the next year, the country's citizens are likely to wait
at least a generation before they are granted the opportunity to live in a democratic society. Failure to introduce such reforms will make Kazakhstan
a less attractive and less reliable partner for the US. It is incumbent on US lawmakers to keep exerting pressure on President Nazarbaev and the government of Kazakhstan to insure the freedom of the press and to hold free and fair parliamentary elections. TIMING
It is easier to put off democratic reforms than to successfully introduce them once they have been delayed. The timing of introducing democratic reforms is really critical. Democratic reform is not a project that is picked up and put down at will. Political institutions develop their own lives, and institutions which are designed to inhibit political competition rarely readily make way for those which encourage such competition. The necessary institutional transformation is only likely to occur if there is political will exerted from the top, or strong protest from the bottom.
To date both have been absent in Kazakhstan. Yet there is a real risk that the current state of popular apathy could become the basis of focused protest. It is difficult to know how disaffected Kazakhstan's population really is.
Certainly the fact that approximately two million people---the overwhelming majority of them Russians and other European nationalities---have left the country during the past decade speaks to the disaffection of many. Studies of recent and prospective Russian emigres from Kazakhstan suggest that the desire to leave Kazakhstan is the result of a variety of causes, including most typically the belief that one's nationality will lead to diminished economic opportunities. However, complaints by Russians and other non-Kazakhs that they have become second class citizens are frequently encountered as well.
Ethnic Kazakhs also seem to have their fair share of complaints about How affairs in their country are being managed, and the Kazakh-dominated Regions of western Kazakhstan gave Nursultan Nazarbaev his lowest majorities
in the recent election.
In fact, the very conduct of this election speaks to official fears that popular displeasure would be expressed; though most local and western analysts predicted that President Nazarbaev would handily defeat any potential opponent, even former prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin. The highly restrictive election law insured that the Kazakh leader did not get to face several potential opponents. Despite all his protestations to the contrary, no serious student of Kazakhstan believes that this law could have been put forward without Nazarbaev's personal approval. Still, it is hard to believe that the election law would have been introduced if President Nazarbaev had not thought that he would have received an embarrassingly small majority, and possibly even been forced into a run-off round.
As President Nazarbaev seems frightened of facing the voters today, he is unlikely to be much happier about the prospect in six more years, when presidential elections approach once again. Similarly, if he is able to avoid being subjected to the criticisms of a democratically elected parliament today, he is no more likely to want to confront such critical voices when it is time for yet another set of parliamentary elections. retirement will serve as a stimulus for such a reform effort, either. The elite that he has empowered will not want to put their wealth and Privileges at risk, as would be the case in a competitive election process.
Even if the most optimistic economic development figures are realized---and
the Drop in oil prices during 1998 as well as the general difficulties in development of Caspian oil reserves suggest that they will not---this elite
may still fear the public judgement that they have already taken more than their fair share.
Certainly, in his official statements on political institutional development President Nazarbaev is laying the groundwork for an extremely slow road to a democratic society. While the Kazakh leader invariably endorses democratic development as a goal, he always introduces the caveat that democratization of Kazakhstan must come in a way that is consistent with the Kazakhs' history and traditions.
HISTORY
Such statements by President Nazarbaev and similar discussions
by Kazakhstan's elite are rather disingenuous, as their express purpose is to make the case against democratic reform rather than for it. There are two issues that are salient here. The first is what kinds of cultural and historical roots are necessary for democratic reform to succeed, while the second relates to the nature of Kazakhstan's past.
It is very difficult to know how large a role a country's history of democratic government plays in influencing its development of democratic institutions after a break of several generations. People are fond
of saying that Poland, the Czech republic and Hungary are having an easier time developing democratic institutions because of their histories of independent statehood, and their earlier commitments to civic institutions.
Similar claims are often made about the Baltic states as well.
One should be careful before giving too much credence to this notion of historical transference. A close look at the pre-war history of any of these countries would reveal how tenuous the commitment to democratic institutions was during these years in most of these places. What seems far more important is that the current citizens of these countries seem generally committed to advancing democratic ideals, and are therefore eager to redefine their histories in ways that create historic democratic roots for the current regimes.
By contrast, the Kazakh leaders are trying to justify their own opposition to democratic reforms by claiming an "Asian" history, which is defined as antithetical to such values. Kazakh history is certainly subject to interpretation in a variety of ways, and some of the traditional Kazakh values could certainly be construed as supportive of democratic ideals. In fact, the Kyrgyz consider many of the traditions that they have in common with the Kazakhs to be "natural" or "primitive" democracy, and they
use history to explain why their country is the most democratic of the Central Asian states.
In many ways Nursultan Nazarbaev squandered the opportunity to make Kazakhstan at least as democratic as Kyrgyzstan. The prospects of democratic
reform in Kazakhstan were at least as good as those of Kyrgyzstan nine years ago, when President Akaev came to power in neighboring Bishkek. If anything, Kazakhstan was better prepared for a democratic transition. It had a larger democratically oriented elite, both in absolute and relative terms, and for all the often-vocalized fears of the prospect of inter-ethnic conflict, Kazakhstan lacked the legacy of recent inter-ethnic
violence that the Kyrgyz confronted.
Moreover, the argument that some cultures are more naturally disposed to democracy than others is an argument that has traditionally held little sway for many democratic activists in the US. Reconstruction efforts after World War II were predicated on the idea that democratic values can be taught to people who have had very undemocratic histories. US-led efforts at political reeducation in both Germany and Japan proved very successful,
and both have become stable democracies.
US citizenship policy also explicitly rejects the idea that it takes generations to take people from autocratic societies and turn them into supporters of democratic ideals. Immigrants who come to the US are not expected to wait a generation or two before exercising political responsibility even if they come from the most non-democratic of settings. The tests of citizenship are blind to national origin.
US POLICY
If we accept the premise that there is no good reason that the Kazakh leadership cannot democratize their society, other than the fact that the elite doesn't want to, the Clinton administration is left with the difficult task of deciding how much to pressure this potentially strategic state.
In recent months the administration's resolve to push Kazakhstan towards democratic reforms has hardened somewhat, and official US displeasure with the conduct of the January presidential elections was quite apparent. It remains to be seen, though, whether this resolve will be translated into renewed pressure at the time of the upcoming parliamentary elections.
One thing that could mitigate against a strong US response is the fact that Kazakhstan's election is unlikely to be the least democratic of the parliamentary elections that are slated to be held in this region. The February bombings in Uzbekistan have led to a crackdown on both secular and religious opposition in that country, making the prospects of democratic reform more distant than ever. The bombings also create a frightening specter of what frustrated political groups may be capable of. This may be one reason why Turkmenistan's president has decided to allow multiple candidates to contest seats in his country's legislative elections for the first time ever, but this experiment with democracy is likely to be a very tentative one.
The voters of Kazakhstan are not likely to care what goes on in neighboring states. The comparisons that they are likely to make are between how they are living now and how they lived in the past, and for the overwhelming majority of the population this is one which does not favor the government.
Developments in neighboring states should not play a critical role in evaluating US options in Kazakhstan. We should not let Nursultan Nazarbaev off the hook, but rather we should continue to pressure him to introduce more democratic legislation for regulating the media and political party development. We should also keep up the pressure on the Kazakh government to adopt democratic legislation for the conduct of upcoming parliamentary elections, and strongly urge them to make the transition from appointed to elected local officials on an explicit timetable.
WHAT LIES AHEAD
It is unclear what lies ahead if Kazakhstan does not undertake
such reforms. At best the country will develop into a stable semi-autocratic regime; at worst it could be engulfed in civil war. The most probable outcome lies between the two, creating a state which seems sure to become an uncertain ally for the United States.
Unlike history, geography is not subject to reinterpretation. Given its three thousand-mile border with Russia, Kazakhstan will always have to juggle its ties to its northern neighbor with its relations with the US. The less democratic Kazakhstan is, the more attractive Russia may become to the government in Astana. If we wish to help shelter Kazakhstan from
undue Russian influence, the best advice we can give is to urge its leaders to take democratic reform more seriously.
Kazakhstan is entering a critical phase of its development. The
It is, of course, impossible to read the Kazakh leader's mind.
There is also little reason to hope that President Nazarbaev's