DSpace Repository

Nazarbayev University Repository (NUR) is an institutional electronic archive designed for the long-term preservation, aggregation, and dissemination of scientific research outcomes and intellectual property produced by the Nazarbayev University community and affiliated organizations.

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Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 2 - Youth, Digital Platforms, and Political Engagement in Kazakhstan
(2026) Kim, Elina
This report examines how young people in Kazakhstan participate in national politics and decision-making processes through media platforms and whether these platforms help overcome structural barriers to engagement. The paper combines analysis of secondary literature and eight semi-structured interviews with young people from different genders and regions. The findings revealed the ambivalent role of digital media. On the one hand, social media like Instagram, Tik Tok, Telegram, and Threads are the main source of information, including politics related information, for young people. They help to make social issues visible to institutions, connect like-minded individuals, spread information, and educate people. However, political awareness does not automatically translate into political action. Across the interviews, many people reported that political participation is restricted by anxiety, trust fatigue, and political futility. Moreover, these barriers are not experienced equally, as several inequalities were identified. Respondents mentioned gender norms, language access, and legitimacy stratification, all of which affect the experience of political involvement for young people.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 2 - Dual Citizenship in Japan: What Are the Potential Benefits of Dual Nationality?
(2026) Baidalin, Rassul
In Asia, the attitude towards dual citizenship remains largely negative, and Japan in particular does not allow multiple nationalities. Japan is one of the largest economies in the world that is actively taking part in global processes. This paper argues that the prohibition of dual citizenship in Japan is a burden that inhibits further development of Japan on the global stage by obstructing the solution of the demographic decline in the state, limiting labour contribution, inducing a sense of exclusion in foreign-born citizens, and leading to violation of human rights.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 2 - Why Formalization Policies Miss Micro and Small Entrepreneurs: Institutional Trust, Regulatory Uncertainty and SME Governance in Kazakhstan
(2026) Temirbolat, Ayazhan
The article examines why formalization policies do not automatically translate into stable compliance among micro-entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan. State-led initiatives such as digitalization, tax incentives, SME support programs aim to encourage business formalization, yet many entrepreneurs still operate informally or in a hybrid mode. Based on semi-structured interviews, qualitative content analysis of social media discourse, secondary policy analysis, paper explores how institutional trust, regulatory uncertainty and perceptions of state support programs shape decisions to formalize. The findings show that entrepreneurs often experience issues with the regulatory environment due to its structural incompatibility with small-scale business operation, the income volatility, shifting tax rules and administrative complexity. Instead of directly moving from informality and formality, entrepreneurs develop hybrid strategies that combine selective compliance with informal adaptation. Formalization is driven more by enforcement risks, contractual necessity, access to digital administrative tools, rather than by motivation to obtain financial support from state programs. Thus, SME governance should be evaluated not only through business registration rates, but through stability of compliance, institutional trust. Given the small, single-city and single-sector sample, the findings should be treated as exploratory rather than generalizable.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 2 - Policy Debate Paper: Foreign Aid Promotes Development v. Foreign Aid is Ineffective
(2026) Serikova, Aruzhan
This policy debate paper looks into the effectiveness of foreign aid in promoting growth in recipient countries. Through a thorough assessment of empirical evidence, institutional datasets and reports, and existing quantitative and qualitative research, this piece argues that foreign aid is unproductive in generating growth and in target countries and, hence, should not be considered as a substantive policy tool of development. The core policy problem of global aid lies in the evidence that after nearly seven decades of receiving assistance, recipient states remain locked in a state of continuing dependency and need for external funds. This paper offers the following explanations for aid’s ineffectiveness: (a) aid, by design, is not intended to foster development but to signal the strategic interests of donor states, (b) aid is consistently misallocated, failing to reach target populations, (c) aid neglects the weak institutional capacity of underdeveloped countries, and (d) aid eternalizes dependency. While acknowledging the impact of aid in humanitarian emergencies, this piece recommends abandoning foreign aid as a development strategy. Instead, the policy paper suggests focusing on long-term growth through active participation in the international market economy: prioritizing trade-oriented economic policies and foreign direct investment.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 2 - From Shared Soviet Legacies to Divergent Institutional Outcomes: How Openness and Cooperation Shape Juvenile Justice Reform in Central Asia
(2026) Saktagan, Aruzhan
Why did juvenile justice reform diverge across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan despite a shared Soviet criminal-justice inheritance? This paper revises a two-variable causal account into a structured, focused qualitative comparison. It examines three mechanisms: political openness, documented international engagement, and implementation capacity. Political openness is treated as the degree to which institutions permit contestation, scrutiny, and participation; international engagement as observable collaboration through technical assistance, joint assessments, pilot projects, training, and policy transfer; and implementation capacity as the ability of state institutions to coordinate, finance, standardize, and scale reform. The paper does not claim to identify the independent causal effect of any one factor. With only three cases, openness and observable international engagement covary too closely, and donor engagement may itself respond to domestic receptivity. The comparative evidence instead reveals different reform pathways. Kazakhstan combined relatively limited political openness with strong formal specialization and centralized scaling of juvenile courts. Kyrgyzstan, which is more politically open in V-Dem’s descriptive ranking, developed child-friendly procedures, specialized judges and lawyers within ordinary courts, and a pronounced long-term decline in custodial sentencing. Uzbekistan had meaningful international cooperation before 2016 and expanded reform engagement thereafter, but specialized child-justice institutions remain incomplete. The central finding is therefore not a monotonic relationship between openness, cooperation, and reform. Rather, reform appears to depend on how domestic permeability, external policy resources, and implementation capacity interact over time.