Pure peer pressure makes me share my Master’s dissertation. It’s actually kind of related to Nathan’s Kazakhstan section as some people might find. You can download it here. Any feedback would be most appreciated.

The problem I had with writing this paper was the obligation to, well, “craft” a theoretical framework with which to analyse the changing relationship between Kazakhstan’s centre and its periphery. Being in the Development Studies department over here at Cambridge (currently led by the brilliantly heterodox economist Ha-Joon Chang), this has somewhat inevitably led to a critique of mainstream academia’s understanding of transition and decentralisation. I am not entirely sure whether one could call this approach “institutionalist political economy”.

My argument goes something like this: Kazakhstan’s post-independence trauma led to a de facto decentralisation in the power relations between the central administration and the oblasts (not as extreme as in Russia, but sharing several characteristics). Several developments in the 1990s paved the way for the centre to reappropriate most of the authority it had lost, a process that kick-started with the economic (oil-)boom setting off in 1999/2000. (more…)