Towards a ‘More Rational’ International Order? The West, China and the Democratization of Post-Soviet Kazakhstan Doktorandin: Luba von Hauff, M.A. Promotionskolleg: Konturen einer Neuen Weltordnung Universität der Bundeswehr, München / Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung / Universität St. Gallen Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Carlo Masala (UniBW), Prof. Dr. Eberhard Sandschneider (FU Berlin). Datum: 05.12.2016 Contents Introduction 3 Chapter I Political Systems and International Relations after the Cold War 11 1. Democracy 12 2. How Democratize? 17 2.1 The Regime and Authorities 17 2.2 The Political Community 20 3.Why Democratize…? 22 3.1 Systemic Stability and Support 23 3.2 Democratization: National Origins – International Drivers? 25 4. …And Why Not? 29 4.1 Non-Democratic Responses 29 4.2 China: An Anti-Democratic Missionary? 32 Conclusion 37 Chapter II Localizing the International: On Similar Pathways and Variant Outcomes 42 of Socialization in IR 1. Norms, Pro-norm Behaviour, and International Relations 42 1.1 Socialization: Purposes and Processes 46 1.2 International Expectations… 53 1.3 … and Local Realities 56 1.4 ‘Successes’ and ‘Failures’ 59 Conclusion 65 2. Research Outline 67 2.1 Design and Methodology 67 2.2 Why (Only) China? 74 Chapter III Post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s Democratization Pathway (1991 – 2001): 82 ‘Failed’ Socialization or ‘Successful’ Localisation? How Newly Independent Kazakhstan Became a ‘Democracy with Soviet Characteristics’ 1. The Political Point of Departure 83 1.1 Western Benchmarks after the End of the Cold War: The CSCE/OSCE 83 1.2 The Local ‘Cognitive Priors’: The Legacy of Patrimonial Traditions and 86 Soviet Socialization 2. Separation of Power and Political Competition: The Evolution of the 89 Presidential Vertical 2.1 The Failure to Separate Power 89 2.2 Post-Soviet Political Competition… 96 2.3. … and the Emergence of Political Opposition 102 3. Post-Soviet Discourse and Democratization 107 3.1 Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: The Content of the New Social Identity 108 1 3.2 Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: The Contestation of the New Social Identity 111 4. National Legacies and International Disappointments: Localization 116 under Social Influence 4.1 Mimicking: Responses to Systemic Stress 116 4.2 Social Influence: The Social Promise of Democratization 120 Conclusion 124 Chapter IV Kazakhstan’s Continued Democratization Pathway (2002 – 2012): 132 From ‘Soviet Characteristics’ to the ‘Kazakh Way’ 1. Political Competition and the Presidential Vertical 133 1.1The New Point of Departure: ‘Democracy with Soviet Characteristics’ 133 1.2 A New Pattern? The Case of the DVK 136 1.3 Asserting the Presidential Vertical 141 Repression and Co-optation 141 The 2002 Law on Political Parties 145 Political Extremism 149 1.4 The New Pattern of ‘Stable’ Political Competition 152 2. Discourse and Democratization: The New ‘Kazakh Way’ 156 2.1 The Content and Contestation of Kazakhstan’s Social Identity: 157 The Second Decade Conclusion 165 Chapter V The ‘Kazakh Way’: A Chinese Construct? 174 1. The Ascendance of ‘Asian’ Values in Central Asia 174 1.1 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization 174 1.2 The Securitization of Political Competition 180 1.3 Ideational Neutralization 183 2. Strategic Localization 188 2.1 The Strategic and Ideological Uses of Kazakhstan’s Democracy Resistance 188 2.2. Strategic Localization 191 Conclusion 196 Conclusion 201 2 Introduction ‘The world is in some sort of global power transition. From concerted power to multipolarity perhaps, or some kind of diffused system of power. … Of course, China is at the centre of this.’1 During the past decade, ‘emerging powers’ have gained momentum on the global stage and have begun to eye critically the international system’s post-Cold War order. This order carried the epithet ‘liberal’ – because it manifested itself in multilateral institution building and international law, as well as in the spread of liberal norms such as democracy, respect for human rights, and free markets. It also carried the epithet ‘Western-dominated’, since it was epitomised by Western powers, most notably the United States (the remaining post-Cold War ‘superpower’) and the European Union (the then emerging ‘normative power’), as well as Euro-Atlantic organisations such as NATO and the OSCE. 2 Addressing this ‘old’ liberal and Western-dominated order, then, the newly emerging states came to demand not only a place at the ‘international high table’ of global governance, but also the right to bring along their ‘own rules of the game.’3 The motor behind the desire for change was these nations’ sense – according to Ikenberry ‘not just the BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) but also ‘middle states’ like Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey, among others – that the Western- centric configuration of the liberal order - the West’s domination of multilateral institutions and more generally of global governance - was ‘unjust’ and ‘irrational’; that it stood in contradiction to its effective ‘decline’ on the international stage, and these nations’ own simultaneous ‘rise’.4 In this regard, the notion of ‘decline’ was largely associated with the West’s structural weaknesses that were disclosed by the global financial and European sovereign debt crises, and the ensuing shift in economic power and material capabilities (in terms of financial reserves and spending capacity, but also in terms of technological progress) from the West to the East, and the general global South. 5 It is against this background that the new ‘rising powers’ came to be ‘increasingly disinclined … to continue as rule-takers rather than rule-makers in the international system.’6 Thus far, however, there has been little political or academic consensus as to how a potential trajectory of global governance, induced by the emerging powers’ disaffection with the current international order, may proceed in the 21st century. Essentially, this is due to these powers’ material, political, cultural, and ideational heterogeneity; their still on-going and (in spite of discontent) effective integration with the international system; as well as to 3 the as yet relatively short timeframe for analysis of their normative agency on the international level.7 To be sure, some spheres of limited agreement among the new powers have crystallized to date: for instance, agreement has been found on the necessity to restrict international military interventions; on the preferability to mandate more deferential environmental obligations on the developing nations, and more generally, on the need to establish ‘ultimate parity with the developed world.’8 Nevertheless however, as yet, today’s ‘emerging powers’, Ikenberry emphasises, do ‘not (constitute) a bloc. … (T)hey have different geopolitical interests in energy, in trade, in security.’9 For this reason, it is not quite clear what kind of ‘diversification of the liberal order’ will eventually emerge during the years to come – at least on the international, systemic, level.10 On the local level, by contrast, a trend as to what a ‘diversification’ of the liberal order might look like in the future seems to become apparent. Indeed, during the past decade, Freedom House and other watchdog organizations have been noting that ‘freedom in the world’, that is, the global presence of political rights and civil liberties, has been in gradual decline for years, with authoritarian regimes gaining pace or at least remaining resilient.11 This development has also been taken up by the academic community, which, during the past years, has not only diagnosed a worldwide ‘democratic rollback’, but also the ‘return of authoritarian great powers.’12 The ‘failure’ to spread Western-style liberal democracy and the unconcealed challenge of this system of governance on the part of some ‘emerging’ nations, notably Russia and China, substantially undermined the seemingly unequivocal validity of the post-Cold War’s linear autocracy–democracy transition paradigm and with it, a core tenet of the liberal international order: the establishment and consolidation of democratic governance in non-Western, non-democratic states.13 In other words, during the past decade, non-Western ‘emerging’ powers have come to contest the validity and legitimacy of the post-Cold War liberal and Western-centric international order, both on the level of global governance as well as on the local level of (non-Western) national political development. This co-occurrence of global and local ‘diversification’ processes, in turn, raises the question as to how these processes may be interlinked, and commends to consider the ‘emerging powers’ normative agency within the international system from a different – that is, from a local - angle. This is because the question as to how emerging powers are about to shape (or already have shaped) the ‘liberal world order’ has as much a local dimension as an international one. 14 In both dimensions, then, the People’s Republic of China is said to be playing a substantial, formative role, having been charged (by the West) with both the building of an alternative, illiberal and China- 4 centric international order as well as, in support of its international ambitions so-to-say, with the promotion of authoritarianism on the local level.15 It is against this background that this research project sets in, pursuing the objective to explore the ability of ‘emerging power’ China to influence other non-Westerners’ acceptance and implementation of the democracy norm - and thus, by extension, their adherence to the liberal international