Better Government Requires Political Reform

As Kazakstan’s new government continues the administrative reform begun by its predecessor, political observers are saying that if the policy is to be successful, an overhaul of the whole political system will need to take place in parallel.



As many people expected, administrative reform was declared one of the central aims of the new government when it was formed last week. At a January 15 cabinet meeting, the new prime minister Karim Masimov announced the creation of special working groups to draft recommendations on how to pursue these reforms.



Plans to modernise the way the state is run have been on the table for several years now. Administrative reform was a keynote theme of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s March 2006 message to his people, and the basic principles are set out in Kazakstan’s strategic development plan for 2010.



The cabinet led by Masimov’s predecessor as prime minister, Danial Akhmetov, took the first steps to decentralise the system. According to Alikhan Baymenov, a member of parliament representing the opposition Ak Jol party, Kazakstan has made the shift to a new model for state service and has begun decentralising power.



However, other political commentators argue that the handover of power from the centre to the regions has been illusory.



“The essence of this reform is decentralisation, yet we have confined ourselves to ‘de-concentration’,” said Leonid Burlakov, a member of the upper house of parliament or Senate. “What that means is that in theory, we ceded certain powers and functions to the regions, but allowed control over the way these were implemented to remain in the hands of the central authorities.”



Burlakov made the point that poorly-executed decentralisation has led to duplication of many functions in many ministries and departments. Genuine decentralisation, on the other hand, requires the centre to overcome its desire for universal control.



Meanwhile, Baymenov argues that the progress of administrative reforms cannot be judged only by the success of decentralisation. He believes these reforms can only be properly addressed if there also is a will to make systemic political reforms happen, since both processes need to take place in parallel.



“Further progress on administrative and economic reforms is constrained by the current political system,” he said. “Administrative reform presupposes total transparency, and that implies political reform.”



Baymenov said it is not enough for the government to set up working groups; instead, he recommends creating a separate state institution that would be responsible for administrative reform.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)