Civic Activism in Authoritarian Space: Urban Development Interventions in Kazakhstan

This book is about citizenship under globalized governance, and how people in urban spaces maneuver overlapping authorities to advance their common interests. It shows how citizens can affect change in the policy implementation process by creating spaces and opportunities for political participation, while at the same time staying safe and free from surveillance in settings of political repression. The comparative case study of political participation in urban development politics in three cities in Kazakhstan shows that despite the centralized and authoritarian nature of Kazakhstan’s government, there are variations in governance within a centralized sovereign state. This volume offers new ways to think creatively about political activism and collective agency by describing novel, citizen-created modes of effective political participation in a non-democratic setting. It will appeal to students of political science, global studies, post-Soviet studies, natural resource politics, and international development. Further, this book will be of great interest to civil society organizations, government officials, and activists operating under authoritarian and transitioning regimes, or in resource-rich states.

Sara O’Connor is the Associate Director of the Geo-SpACE Lab with California State University, Long Beach, and a Lecturer in the Department of Geography.