The Double Bind of Successors: Reprofessionalizing the State Amid Personalist Threats

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  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Authoritarianism (Table 7)

Abstract

Research on authoritarian elites has long emphasized a tension between loyalty and competence, yet the historical development of the field has produced systematic biases in how scholars apply its core paradigms. Formal paradigms, rooted in post-Maoist and post-Soviet reform eras, are typically used to analyze successions and periods of institutional rebuilding. Informal paradigms, focused on patronage and personalist rule, have been applied to periods of consolidated power. This division obscures the crucial fact that during the succession of a generational leader, institutional imperatives and personalist threats coincide. Successors often confront both the need to re-professionalize the state and the need to neutralize entrenched elites appointed by their predecessors, conditions under which neither paradigm alone is adequate.

This study develops a temporally sensitive framework that explains how vulnerable successors blend formal and informal strategies when balancing loyalty and competence. We evaluate this argument using Kazakhstan’s transition from Nursultan Nazarbayev to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a case that provides a natural experiment in two-stage consolidation. Drawing on an original longitudinal dataset of 173 regional executives (akims) appointed between 2013 and 2024, we compare elite selection across three periods: late Nazarbayev rule, early Tokayev rule (2019–2021), and the post–January 2022 Qandy Qantar crisis.

The findings reveal a sequential pattern. During the formal transition, Tokayev increased the appointment of centrally experienced administrators. After 2022, he sharply reduced reliance on senior Nazarbayev-era elites and appointed a younger cohort, while maintaining central administrative experience. These results demonstrate that successions in personalist presidential regimes produce hybrid appointment logics that existing paradigms overlook. They underscore the need to analytically integrate formal and informal mechanisms in the study of authoritarian elite politics.

Authors

• Jacob Austin Reidhead, National Chengchi University

• Ayazhan Yerzhomartova, University of Tsukuba