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…)

Bonnie Boyd has posted an excellent overview of the debate around income inequality in Central Asia (part one; part two). Her first post lists a couple basic tenets to the debate, mostly drawing from a recent Brookings-organised study. How can globalisation benefit the poor in Central Asia? The problem, first off, is to define who’s poor in Central Asia.

Data standards in the region, especially when it comes to economic indicators, are usally very low (mostly valid for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). There is also an abundance of poverty threshold definitions, both international and national, both dollar-linked and and those based on purchasing power parity.

Data can thus be amiguous. Take for instance Kazakhstan’s progress in fighting poverty. There are several poverty headcount methods: The share of people living below the absolute poverty line, i.e. people living on less than $1 a day, has decreased from 39% in 1998 to 24.2% in 2002. In purchasing power parity terms, the share of people living on less than $1 a day is significantly lower, with only two percent of the population at this level. The proportion of the population living below the national poverty line, based on a Kazakhstan-specific subsistence-minimum definition, fell from 31.8% in 2000 to 16.1% in 2004. (more…)

An unexpected gradualism prevailed in some Kazakh politicians’ words recently, especially over the country’s formerly ambitious oil export targets. ‘We don’t have to rush at any price’ seemed to be the word of the day - maybe also in the light of Azerbaijan’s increasing woes with oil windfalls that are becoming more and more difficult to digest.

But now we are back with some heavy number crunching and ambitious development targets. This time it’s Vice Prime-Minister for the Economy and Budgetary Planning Aslan Musin (former akim of Atyrau) who is showing the way forward. There are so many goals for the year 2015 that we should switch to bullet points:

• Kazakhstan GDP should stand at USD 300 billion in 2015, thus growth rates should be no less than 15 percent p.a.
• investments during the next eight years should amount USD 127 billion
• Before 2015, Kazakhstan should enter the top 10 world oil and gas producers, requiring a doubling of current levels
• Manufacturing as a share of GDP should reach 40%
• By 2015, the share of science-intensive industries as a proportion of GDP should rise by factor six
• The national banking system should transform Kazakhstan into a financial center of the whole Central Asian region
• Kazakhstan should enter the top 5 world grain exporters

There is a little more of that in the short article, but I thought the above is already enough to give an impression of what you should expect to see in Kazakhstan by the (not-so-distant) year 2015. There are some question marks, surprise surprise. (more…)