Can Kazakhstan Follow Singapore? Assessment of Its Civil Service Reform Capacity

Studies have found that the success of civil service reforms initiated by the political executive depends in part on the reform capacity of the government. In this article, we assess the reform capacity of Kazakhstan – a... [ view full abstract ]

Studies have found that the success of civil service reforms initiated by the political executive depends in part on the reform capacity of the government. In this article, we assess the reform capacity of Kazakhstan – a country that seeks to modernize and professionalize civil service as a part of its “100 Concrete Steps” for institutional reform, embarked on by President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2015. We chose Singapore as a comparative benchmark because the city-state is known to have achieved civil service excellence and because the President has been citing Singapore as a model for Kazakhstan to follow. For a systematic comparison, we adopt Christopher Knill’s (1999) propositions, which state that reform capacity differs between two ideal types of public administration: instrumental and autonomous. These two types differ with respect to three dimensions, namely, (1) executive leadership, (2) bureaucratic power, and (3) administrative entrenchment (which is positively associated with the structural complexity and size of the government, and the power of the judiciary). An ideal instrumental administration features strong executive leadership, weak bureaucratic power, and low administrative entrenchment, whereas an ideal autonomous administration features the opposite in all three dimensions. Knill posited that the conditions of the former are more favorable to the introduction of civil service reforms by the political executive, and hence, an instrumental administration has a higher reform capacity than an autonomous one. Applying Knill’s theory, Painter (2004) argued that Singapore in its early decades had a relatively instrumental administration, and hence a high reform capacity. As a result, the city-state was able to introduce a series of civil service reforms. Can Kazakhstan follow Singapore? Does the country have the same reform capacity? We argue that since Kazakhstan’s independence, its administration has been less instrumental than that of Singapore. Our study is based on primary data from discussions with government officials in Kazakhstan and extensive secondary data analysis.