Historical analogies in political action. The case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

The article attempts to define the role played by historical analogies in the political actions of Kazakhstan’s leadership. The comparison of the circumstances of the rise to power of two political leaders: Nursultan Nazarbayev and Kasym Zhomart Tokayev, as well as the list of mechanisms of building their own position used by them, serves to answer the question about the existence of a specific “Kazakh” variant of power succession within the model (traditional for Central Asia), strongly personalised and based on informal ties to the system of government.