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Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise, by Martha Brill Olcott. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002. xii + 244 pages. Abbrevs. Map. Appends to p. 267. Notes to p. 300. Sel. bibl. to p. 320. About the author. $44 cloth; $24.95 paper.
With all the recent international focus on Uzbekistan and the general movement away from detailed single country studies in political science, Martha Brill Olcott's rich and trenchant account of Kazakhstan's troubled emergence as an independent state is a welcome contribution.
Olcott cogently reminds readers of the central importance of Kazakhstan to the future political stability and economic development of Eurasia as a whole, and hence, of the need for the West to renew and enhance its commitment to this former Soviet republic that lies between Russia and the rest of Central Asia. She does not make the case, however, based on geography alone, but rather, based on a combination of the geographical, historical, and economic ties that have created a mutual dependency between Kazakhstan and its post-Soviet neighbors, particularly Russia.
More importantly, she masterfully depicts the multiple constraints on Kazakhstan's ability to create the legal order, the centralized and impartial bureaucracy, the multi-national orientation, and the networks of security, redistribution, and market regulation, that...