Original scientific paper
The Presidential-Hegemonic Party and Autocratic Stability: The Legal Foundation and Political Practice in Kazakhstan
Davor Boban
orcid.org/0000-0002-9748-3250
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Post-Soviet parties of power are dominant parties created in the years after the collapse of the USSR. It is not a type of political party, but a term that means that executives form them, producing a legal and illegal advantage over other parties in elections and in the daily allocation of resources. This paper attempts to determine if the Kazakh party of power Nur Otan is also a hegemonic party along the line with Sartori’s definition. I argue that party of power could be any dominant party, including a hegemonic party, and hence we need further analysis to identify its appropriate typological definition. The answer to this question is not only important for the purpose of typological labelling, rather its importance lies in aiding our ability to gain insight into the existing Kazakh authoritarian regime’s institutional framework of sustainability. After the analysis, the paper comes to the conclusion that Nur Otan is a hegemonic party, but it is a new subtype of the hegemonic party that achieves hegemony within the party system, but not within the whole political system as a classic hegemonic party of the 20th century. Therefore, it contributes to the current stability of the autocratic regime, but the institutional framework of the regime’s sustainability after the departure of Nursultan Nazarbayev from the state presidency is not certain.
Keywords
presidential-hegemonic party; hegemonic party; autocracy; Kazakhstan; Nur Otan
Hrčak ID:
176829
URI
Publication date:
6.3.2017.
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