Kazakhstan’s evolving regional economic policy: assessing strategies of post-socialist development

Core foci of economic geographic research are spatial inequality and policies to mitigate it. The variables considered in creating such policy evolve over time and attend to changing political, social, economic, ecological, and geopolitical circumstances and ideals. As a former Soviet republic with considerable hydrocarbon resources and substantial executive power, Kazakhstan has periodically reconsidered its regional economic policies. This study analyzes Kazakhstani government documents to track evolving strategies of development and utilizes econometric analysis to assess their effect on disparity across the state’s regions. Such research should prove useful in comparison with other cases of the post-Soviet realm and developing states more generally.