BETWEEN RUSSIA, CHINA, AND THE US: WHY DOES AUTHORITARIANISM PREVAIL IN KAZAKHSTAN?

Abstract The significance of the external influence of Russia and China on the strengthening of authoritarianism in Kazakhstan has yet to be revealed due to the lack of a theory of the interaction of external influence and domestic political regimes. In my research, I sought to show that the authoritarian regimes of the Eurasian states have a common political legacy that unites the states that have joined them into a single political world. Their main actors are the supporting states interested in preserving kindred regimes throughout the common political space. Using tracing process analysis, I have mapped out causal relationships through the survival mechanism of kinship regimes and restoration of interdependence between pivotal and non-pivotal actors that determine how key states, such as Russia and China, react to external factors—geopolitical threats. The most important conclusion of my research is that the weakening of an authoritarian regime in one of the non-pivotal states poses a threat to regimes in core states such as China and Russia and triggers their survival reaction through increased foreign policy towards non-core states. In addition, my research has shown that political regimes that share a common legacy are interdependent and that the external influence of the central states of a common political space is primary in maintaining internal regimes throughout its entire length. Therefore, pivotal states of other political legacies can influence political regime change when the causal mechanism fails