Civil service reform in Kazakhstan: trajectory to the 30 most developed countries?
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852317722397 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
Civil service reform in Kazakhstan:
2019, Vol. 85(3) 419–439
! The Author(s) 2017
trajectory to the 30 most
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developed countries?
DOI: 10.1177/0020852317722397
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Saltanat Janenova
Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
Colin Knox
Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
Abstract
Kazakhstan has ambitious plans to become one of the top 30 developed countries in the
world by 2050. Its most recent route map to achieve this is the Plan for the Nation: 100
Concrete Steps, announced by the president in May 2015. A key pillar in this reform
agenda is the development of a professional civil service. This article considers whether
civil service reforms to date and those envisaged under the new plan offer a trajectory
to the 2050 stated goal. It finds that despite significant political endorsement at the
highest level, reforms have focused on institutional, structural and legal changes without
the necessary attention to how these will impact on the quality of public services
provision. The article highlights the interdependence between civil service reforms
and an outcomes-based approach and adapts the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development’s Better Life framework for Kazakhstan as a way of
making this connection.
Points for practitioners
Moving to an outcomes-based approach in a developing country challenges practi-
tioners to focus on the impact of their work and to be judicious and context-specific
in the selection of results indicators.
Keywords
civil service reforms, Kazakhstan, outcomes-based accountability
Corresponding author:
Colin Knox, Nazarbayev University, Graduate School of Public Policy, 53 Kabanbay Batyr Avenue, Astana,
Kazakhstan.
Email: colin.knox@nu.edu.kz
420
International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(3)
Background
In December 2016, Kazakhstan celebrated 25 years of its independence following
the break-up of the Soviet Union. During this period, it has undergone a major
political, economic and social transformation. Kazakhstan is characterized by a
number of factors: its post-Soviet legacy; its large geographical territory (ninth
largest country in the world); its low density of population; its access to rich natural
reserves; its multi-ethnic composition (over 100 nationalities); and its transform-
ation from a planned to a market-based economy within a relatively short period of
time. As a result of its access to oil and gas resources, Kazakhstan is now classified
by the World Bank (2015) as an ‘upper middle-income country’.
Kazakhstan has high political ambitions, including the declared aim of joining
the top 30 developed countries in the world by 2050. Soon after the president’s re-
election in 2015, and as a direct response to worsening regional and global eco-
nomic conditions, he launched the Plan for the Nation in May 2015, with the
intention of accelerating the modernization agenda (Nazarbayev, 2015). One, of
five, key pillars of reform is the creation of a modern and professional civil service
that eschews nepotism, protectionism and corruption. Therein, the president pro-
moted the idea of a new civil service model that will create a more effective and
professional public service. Consistent with this new model is the principle of mer-
itocracy, regardless of ethnic background, and payment by results. All of this
suggests a radical plan for the civil service and, more widely, a programme of
public sector reform.
If Kazakhstan is to become one of the top 30 developed countries in the world,
the research question posed in this article is whether the existing and planned civil
service reforms, contained in Strategy 2050 and the Plan for the Nation, offer a
trajectory for this ambitious change to happen. We attempt to address this question
through a critical analysis of the substance of the reform agenda and examine
whether there is interconnectedness between structural changes in the civil service
and the potential for these reforms to improve the quality of public services in the
daily lives of Kazakhstani citizens. The article is structured in three parts. First, we
consider existing research on civil service reforms in developing countries, with
specific reference to Kazakhstan. Second, we examine the practical outworking
of the reforms in Kazakhstan and their impact to date. Finally, we suggest an
outcomes-based public services framework as a way of connecting civil service
reforms to the improved well-being of the citizens of Kazakhstan.
Civil service reform
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) con-
ducted a multi-donor evaluation of public sector governance reviews in developing
countries between 2001 and 2011 and found a ‘broadly negative picture’ in terms of
the impact of reforms (Scott, 2011; see also Manning, 2001; Polidano, 2001; Pollitt,
2013). Drawing on the work of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation
Janenova and Knox
421
Group (2009), the review noted ‘that civil service administration reform efforts
have not been successful’ (Evans, 2008: iii). The review described three waves of
civil service reform, as follows. The first wave (during the 1980s) involved reducing
the size of the civil service and restructuring central organizations. The second
wave (beginning in the 1990s) was significantly influenced by public management
reforms and included performance assessment, greater transparency and decentral-
ization. The evidence, the review concluded, was that these reforms ‘have largely
been regarded as failures’ (Scott, 2011: 14). The current phase focuses more on
improving the quality and motivation of the civil service, better recruitment and
promotion systems, and ultimately improving services delivery. Additionally, Scott
(2011: 14) argued, ‘there is an increased results focus as most post-2000 civil service
reforms have been linked to quality service delivery to support long term growth
and poverty reduction’.
While Kazakhstan has embraced elements of public management reforms, com-
mentators have indicated a need to ‘transform fundamentally what it means to be a
civil servant and the way goods are exchanged between public officials and citizens’
(Starr et al., 2016: 54). This, they argued, means going beyond international best
practice and reforming from within public bodies: ‘As long as there is no incentive
for public officials to approach their work in a new manner, business as usual will
prevail’ (Starr et al., 2016: 54). Turning to the specific circumstances of
Kazakhstan, there is an emerging body of scholarship on civil service reform as
a key component of the wider public sector change agenda. By far the most com-
prehensive research is the work of Emrich-Bakenova (2009). She examined three
stages of civil service development in Kazakhstan and assessed the extent to which
it was free from political influence, particularly on issues of selection, remuneration
and promotion. Emrich-Bakenova (2009: 739) concluded that the development of
civil service law was aimed at fostering a merit-based, professional and stable civil
service; however, ‘each step forward has also had a counterbalancing element
undermining the very same objectives of merit, professionalism and stability’.
Bhuiyan and Amagoh (2011) categorize public sector reforms in Kazakhstan as
falling into four key areas: the decentralization of responsibilities; civil service
reforms; e-governance; and the role of civil society (Knox and Yessimova, 2015).
These reform efforts have ‘helped Kazakhstan facilitate its economic development
and enhance the possibility for it to attain its goal of being one of the top 50
competitive economies in the world’ but they are ‘a first step in helping the country
towards the part of being a competitive player on the global stage’ (Bhuiyan and
Amagoh, 2011: 243, emphasis added).
More recently, in a review of administrative reforms since Kazakhstan’s inde-
pendence in 1991, Oleinik, Yermekov and Kuatbekov (2015) argue that despite
three phases of public management-type changes, these have not led to significant
changes in the quality of governance. Their analysis uses the concept of power
distance between superiors and subordinates (power elite and sub-elites) and they
argue that relatively low power distance is more amenable to public management
reforms and high power distance to Weberian-type changes. They find that a high
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(3)
power distance exists and, as a consequence, this ‘determines the scope of
administrative reforms’ (Oleinik et al., 2015: 187). These findings are consistent
with the work of Monobayeva and Howard (2015: 150), who, using a case study of
the implementation of the Bologna process in higher education in Kazakhstan,
found that remnants of Soviet administrative practices are still evident, ‘including
strong control by educational ministries, as well as incompatible organizational
cultures and a tendency toward superficial formalism in the implementation
process’.
We argue in this article that civil service reforms represent an example of
institutional isomorphism or imitation, where Kazakhstan has simply adopted
structural changes as part of the wider (global) public management reform
agenda for developing countries (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991). In so doing, this
has led to ‘empty mimicry’, which decouples civil service form from functions. This
leads to a situation...
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