Aidar Amrebayev

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Director of the Center for Political Studies of the Institute of Philosophy, Political Science and Religious Studies of the Ministry of Higher Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In 1988 he graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow (Russia). Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, and in 1994 defended his thesis at the Institute of Philosophy and Political Science of the National

Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Honorary professor of the East China Normal University (Shanghai), since 2014 – Member of the International Consortium of Analytical Structures of China’s Neighboring Countries.

A B S T R A C T

This article is dedicated to studying potential of political modernization in Kazakhstan, opportunities, and risks of its realization. The issue of the need to conceptualize the goal of building a New Kazakhstan is being updated. The article critically analyzes the experience of political and economic design in Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet thirty-year period. The author makes a conclusion about the failure of attempts to reform the country on the old value and organizational-administrative basis with closed (or limited) system of interaction between government and society. However, at the same time, the processes of further sovereignization of the country and deepening the process of national self-identification in Kazakhstan reveal the need and possibility of qualitative renewal of the country, formation of new development ideologies that can mobilize society for change. The current directions of modernization of Kazakhstan’s political system are considered, practical steps of the country’s political leadership to amend the Constitution and a number of laws are evaluated from the point of view of political realism, in order to reveal the potential of reforms and stimulate social energy of the people for constructive changes. According to the author, it is necessary to have a comprehensive vision of the modernization process in Kazakhstan, which includes both economic and political, as well as cultural and ideological transformation of society. It is also necessary to change the tools of political reforms, to develop effective feedback mechanisms between the government and society aimed at strengthening the functionality of state power, its optimization and dynamization according to public expectations. The author concludes that the importance of consolidating the social capital of the nation for supporting reforms and political will of the country’s leadership for institutional and functional changes in the political regime.

Kazakhstan Journal of Foreign Studies

SCIENTIFIC MAGAZINЕ

No 3–4 (5–6) 2022 • Kazakhstan Journal of Foreign Studies

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