Identification of policy agenda in Kazakhstan via analysis of the annual presidential addresses and its (in) adequacy in the light of quality of state governance

Abstract

Setting a policy (or public, national, legislative) agenda is the most important source of presidential duties. It is done in order to influence and stimulate the relevant stakeholders of a public system for consideration of issues of specified polices. Among these stakeholders typically are governments, nations, media, Parliament and so on. In Kazakhstan this presidential duty or power is constitutionalized and implies that the Kazakhstani president regularly or annually addresses to citizens with a message about current circumstances in the country and shares the core guidelines of the domestic and international policies. Such constitutionalized opportunity is called the annual presidential address (or APA for short) and considered ad a major presidential communication tool for setting public agenda. Therefore, the already delivered 22 APAs are adequate source to identify how the Kazakhstani public agenda has been changed throughout a long-term period (over 20 years – from 1997 to 2018) in order to further explore how the annually set policy agenda have been reflected on the quality of governance over long-term period. This research’s results demonstrate that in comparison the domestic policy agenda has been dominant over the international policy agenda. Precisely, 92% of the contents of 22 APAs has been devoted to domestic policy agenda versus 8% - on the international one. In the domestic agenda, main attention has been spent on the Economic and Social issues rather than on the Administration and Democratization issues - 41.59% and 32.06% versus modest 11.87% and 6.90% respectively. The relevance of the annual policy agenda to the state governance is explained by possible reflection the former to the latter’s quality. Basically, the state governance is “…the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.” (The World Bank, 1996). With respect to Kazakhstan from 1997 to 2017 3 out of 6 dimensions of state governance (1)-“Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism”, (2)-“Government Effectiveness”, (3) “Rule of Law”, and (4)-“Regulatory Quality” have been improved - over 45% out of 100%. While 2 rest dimensions as (5) “Voice and 3 Accountability”, and (6) “Control of Corruption” steadily demonstrate low performance (up to 25%). According to the findings relatively heterogeneous non-rapid (60% maximum) and low (no more 25%) indicators of the quality of the governance in Kazakhstan reflect the constant stable focus of the annual policy agenda on the economic and social policies (41.59% and 32.06%). Additionally, within the annual policy agenda there have been relatively modest focus on the administration and democratization policies purposes of which relatively more associated with the good governance. Therefore, it is assumed that the aims of annual policy agenda could be reconsidered shifting from long-term focus on economic and social policies in order to advance quality of the governance in Kazakhstan.