Developing Kazakhstan: International Aid, National Agendas

At a recent Kennan Institute talk Ruth Mandel, Department of Anthropology, University College London, and Title VIII-Supported Research Scholar, Kennan Institute, discussed the interplay of different strategies and political agendas in the realm of international development assistance, and how this affected development projects in Kazakhstan. Mandel explained that global and local dynamics converge in international development assistance. The global dynamic is represented by money given as grants or loans by international agencies, while the local is represented by agendas and political pressures in both the donor and recipient states.

According to Mandel, the fall of the Soviet Union presented Kazakhstan with tremendous challenges as well as opportunities. One important challenge to Kazakhstan was the need to develop a new national identity with the end of the Soviet-imposed cosmopolitan identity. Kazakhstan has struggled with this issue; its population is approximately 50 percent non-Kazakh, and a large number of ethnic Kazakhs are highly Russified. Mandel argued that Kazakh nationalism and resentment of Russians have been increasing since Kazakhstan's independence.

If increasing nationalism and Kazakhification was the dominant national agenda in Kazakhstan, then privatization could be considered at the top of the international agenda, according to Mandel. Privatization was incorporated into many USAID projects, she stated, even in situations where it made little sense to do so. To demonstrate the prevalence of the emphasis on privatization, she described the pressure exerted by the Central Asian USAID Mission on a health reform project it was funding. USAID wanted the project to privatize the highly centralized healthcare system, including the dysfunctional and under-utilized hospital sector. This was neither practical nor possible. Eventually the project complied with the Mission's demands by working on privatizing the pharmacies.

Civil society promotion was also an important aspect of most USAID and other international assistance programs, Mandel said. In practice, civil society promotion typically meant support for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and led to an explosion of all types of NGOs in Kazakhstan. Mandel argued that this support could be problematic because not all NGOs reflect genuine grassroots civil society structures. Some NGOs exist only because of international support, some are essentially state organs, and some—such as those that provide services—weaken the state by taking over its traditional functions.

Mandel devoted special attention to a project funded by the British Know How Fund that produced a soap opera called Crossroads for the Kazakhstani television audience. Crossroads was modeled after the popular British series EastEnders and its plotline was supposed to promote ethnic harmony and the benefits of capitalism and democracy. Mandel noted that the soap opera became the most popular show in Kazakhstan, and the project provided training for dozens of Kazakhstani writers and production staff. However, the local writers and actors were not always accepting of British television aesthetics or of the liberal, capitalist messages, according to Mandel. The local staff occasionally undermined the plans of their British trainers, and when the British pulled out of the project, the character of the show changed. Complicating the situation, she added, was pressure from the government that sometimes turned the show into a propaganda tool for the President.

Mandel concluded with a critique of some of the fundamental flaws in the development aid process in the former Soviet Union, and offered some policy recommendations. She questioned the dominant "transition model" and suggested that it, along with other western concepts such as civil society, need serious reconsideration as applied in this context. In addition, Mandel highlighted the need for increased multilateral donor coordination in the design and implementation of development aid, and more realistic "rolling" models of monitoring and evaluation to reflect the potentially changing circumstances—political or otherwise—during the implementation phase of projects.