title: Central Asia in Transition: Social Contract Transformation in Nazarbayev and Post-Nazarbayev Kazakhstan
abstract: In 2019, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the oldest post-Soviet authoritarian leader, stepped down from his position as the first and the only president of Kazakhstan, the largest and most richly resource-endowed state in Central Asia. This unexpected move prompts a closer look at Kazakhstan’s political transformations, from the fall of the Soviet Union to Nazarbayev’s resignation and the early post-Nazarbayev transition under new President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The social contract theory allows for anal