Crossroads Asia | Politics | Central Asia

Kazakhstan Reverses Course on Direct Elections of District Akims

If earlier moves toward more direct elections were indictive of Kazakhstan’s political maturation, what should we make of the reversal of that effort?

Less than three years after launching pilot direct elections of district mayors, known as akims, Kazakhstan has reversed course. A recent amendment to two critical laws – “On Local Public Administration and Self-Government” and “On Elections” – alter the procedure for selecting akims at the district and “cities of regional significance” level, doing away with elections.

In Kazakhstan, there are 39 “cities of regional significance.” These are regional economic hubs, such as the regional capital and other major urban centers. The cities of Almaty, Astana, and Shymkent, are “cities of republican significance” and operate independently of the regions in which they sit. “Akim” in Kazakhstan refers to the head of a local government – whether a village, town, city, district, or region. It’s akin to a mayor or a governor.

In 2021, Kazakhstan introduced the direct election of village akims. At the time, as Colleen Wood recounted: “President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said of the reform that paved the way for the election of akims, ‘This is not only a sign of sufficient maturity of our political system, but also a serious step in the democratic development of our society.'”

The change allowed villagers to directly chose their local leadership for the first time. Previously, as Wood explained, from 2013 onward village akims had been indirectly elected by local representative bodies, the maslikhat. Prior to 2013, they were directly appointed by the president, as remained true of akims higher up the administrative ladder at the time.

Two years later, in September 2023, Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission announced the small towns and provincial districts that would take part in “pilot” elections for their akims.

While these elections were framed by the government as decentralization and democratic development, the results belied a more mundane truth: power remained concentrated in the hands of the powerful.

In the 2021 village akim elections – 730 of them took place on July 25 that year – some 85 percent of the winners were members of the ruling party, Nur-Otan (which rebranded as Amanat in 2022 and........

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