The Legacy of the ‘Coloured Revolutions’: The Case of Kazakhstan

In the second decade of independence, the Kazakh regime, which throughout the 1990s had been thriving on patrimonial networks, began showing signs of moving away from these established patterns. In response to the rise of a pro-business opposition at the beginning of the 2000s, the regime attempted to co-opt small and medium-sized businesses across the country and began setting up state-led business bodies. The process of co-opting Kazakh businesses through the regime-established institutions accelerated in the years following the events of 2004 in Ukraine and 2005 in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. The acceleration has been the most important long-term structural legacy of the coloured revolutions in post-soviet Kazakhstan. The introduction of the new type of state–business relations aims at creating conditions for a predictable transition of power and guaranteeing the long-term durability of the existing power structure.