Continuity and change in the Kazakhstani party system

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a brief overview of how the Kazakhstani party system has changed in the course of the past two decades and of how important these changes have been. The key claim of the article is that the reduction of the fragmentation of the parliamentary party system was instrumental in creating the conditions for the preservation of the Kazakhstani constitutional order. To support this claim, which echoes the findings of a substantive research tradition, I will show that improvements in the political stability of the Republic of Kazakhstan has gone hand in hand with a marked reduction in the level of party system fragmentation.