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 1 - Comparative Study on the Differences in Climate Change Mitigation Between Systems with Different Sizes of the Winning Coalition: CO2 Emissions in Focus
(2025) Akhmetova, Rabiga; Bolat, Aruzhan; Saparova, Jayna; Dyussembekova, Madina
The scholarly opinion on how autocracies, democracies, and other factors within those systems affect environmental performance appears to be controversial but promising for future research. Applying the selectorate theory, we attempt to examine the difference in the provision of a clean environment as a public good in systems with larger and smaller sizes of the winning coalition. We found no significant empirical evidence to support the notion that systems with larger winning coalitions are less likely to adopt a policy, and we argue that they are associated with lower carbon dioxide emissions than those with smaller coalitions. This might be because in the former systems, the policy enforcement mechanisms and thus their implementation are expected to be more efficient. Also, we notice that the regime subtypes of democracy and autocracy can suggest other answers to the question of what specific institutional system is associated with a certain level of emissions. Though the results shown by autocracies generally support the theory, those of democracies show some deviance; specifically, liberal democracies do not show an expected reduction in CO2 emissions with increases in the winning coalition. However, in general, our findings align with the selectorate theory, meaning that the theory’s underpinnings could be extended to another public good - clean air.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 1 - Knowledge Production About Dzhatak Kazakhs: Fragmented Imperial Representations of Settled Poor by Russian Ethnographers, Public Writers, and Bureaucrats (1890-1900s)
(2025) Kudaibergen, Yersultan
This article examines how the Russian Empire conceptualized and represented dzhatak Kazakhs—formerly nomadic individuals who settled due to the colonial dispossession—in the framework of late imperial knowledge production. Drawing on ethnographic surveys, frontier bureaucratic reports, and articles from the Kirgizskaia Stepnaia Gazeta (1894–1904), the study explores how these sources with unique expertise and goals framed dzhataks as both symbols of progress and objects of disorder. Ethnographic expeditions, particularly the Shcherbina survey, portrayed dzhataks as reluctant but ultimately adaptable pioneers of sedentarization, legitimizing Russian colonization through a civilizing mission narrative. In turn, newspaper articles employed “strategic sensationalism” to depict dzhataks as impoverished, criminalized urban dwellers, both critiquing and reinforcing the empire’s reformist ideals. Meanwhile, intelligence reports by district chiefs cast dzhataks as subversive figures—susceptible to manipulation, Islamic mobilization, and administrative disorder—thereby justifying surveillance and coercive reforms. Rather than offering objective insight, these sources reveal tensions within the imperial knowledge regime, balancing between bureaucratic immediacy of action, emotional public discourse, and scholarly authority. In line with Gregory Afinogenov’s framework, the article argues that late imperial knowledge about the Kazakh Steppe was shaped by overlapping yet divergent aims—strategic governance, intellectual prestige, and ideological legitimation. The figure of the dzhatak, thus, illuminates broader contradictions in Russia’s colonial project that sets integration as a goal and yet produces marginalization, struggling to justify Imperial order and rationalize its detrimental consequences.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 1 - The Last Word of the Biy: Land Disputes in the 19th Century Middle Zhuz of the Kazakh Steppe
(2025) Gaziz, Zhan
The 19th century was a period of radical changes in Kazakhstan's traditional social and political culture, primarily related to the colonial policy of the Russian Empire. During this period Kazakhs experienced the destruction of popular institutions, which for centuries served as a support for the authorities and the people. This article examines how exactly these reforms caused the dissolution of institutions such as adat, set of unwritten legal customs passed down orally from generation to generation, and biys, popularly recognized clan leaders with judicial, administrative, and military authority. Using unpublished land dispute cases from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan and 19th century legal codes of the Russian Empire, the article reconstructs the gradual process of decline of these institutions. I argue that the legal and administrative reforms of 1822 and 1868 were the main contributors to the loss of legitimacy and power of biys. The findings complement the existing historical and legal literature, especially with the analysis of land disputes, as the most significant indicator of the decline of traditional institutions. The research also helps to better understand and re-evaluate the concepts of legitimacy, legal culture, and the sustainability of local institutions in the face of an encounter between the empire and the colony.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 1 - An Idealistic Anthropology: Criminological Theory and State Control in Tsarist and Soviet Russia
(2025) Butayev, Ilyas
This essay examines how the Russian and Soviet regimes weaponized criminological theory to navigate the tension between modernization and autocratic control. It traces a trajectory through three key phases: the pre-Lombrosian era (Orthodox/Classical ideals), Lombrosian biological determinism (late 19th century), and the post-1917 Marxist approach. Despite claims of progressivism, each phase served the common function of legitimizing state power by redefining criminality to suit contemporary political needs. Analysis of legal codes, debates, and penal practices reveals a consistent shift in the state's conceptualization of the ‘criminal,’ oscillating between theories of redemption, determinism, and social control. While Tsarist attempts to reconcile legal reform with autocracy largely failed, the Soviet regime cynically adapted Marxist ideology to pathologize dissent as ‘social danger,’ enabling unprecedented social penetration and control under the veneer of a scientific, progressive criminology. Ultimately, criminology in Russia was persistently subordinated to the political imperative of maintaining control amidst modernization efforts.
Access status: Open Access ,
Issue 1 - The Cost of Progress: Accountability and Aftermath of Nuclear Testing in Semipalatinsk
(2025) Lisitsyn, Vladislav
The Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS), the Soviet Union’s main nuclear testing site, remains a reminder of the human and environmental costs of Cold War militarization. This article combines scientific, historical, and political perspectives to examine the creation, exploitation, and long-term consequences of STS from an interdisciplinary perspective. The STS serves as an example of how scientific ambitions and the struggle for geopolitical control have neglected the rights and health of local people, creating a legacy of long-term pollution, disease, and socio-environmental injustice. The site still poses danger for public health and land use, which reflects larger conflicts between environmental justice and post-Soviet development.