This article discusses the continuing influence of Soviet institutional legacies on police corruption in present-day Kazakhstan. Several conclusions are drawn from a qualitative analysis that featured semi-structured interviews with officials, drug entrepreneurs and other relevant actors, participant and nonparticipant observations, and qualitative content analysis of mass media reports and archival data. After Kazakhstan’s most senior political leaders recognized the urgency of anti-corruption reforms, many legal and institutional measures against drug-related corruption were introduced. These measures, however, did not fully produce the anticipated results. Data presented here indicate the causal effects of institutional legacies of the criminal justice system. Inherited from the Soviet era, these institutions continue to provide incentives for corrupt police officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to manipulate the legislation against heroin and marijuana trafficking. More importantly, the same informal institutional incentives seem to hinder the enforcement of newly introduced anti-corruption legislation.
The central aim of this thesis was to study drug trafficking, drug related corruption and reactions to it in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, where billions of foreign investment are at stake, active state measures have produced significant changes in the drug markets. Geographic proximity to Russia, as well as the strategic interests of foreign actors in the region, are shown to have affected the way Central Asian governments respond to drug trafficking. Kazakhstan's key geographic position rendered it a bridge that connected regional drug capitals with Russian markets, and some drugs remained in Kazakhstan too. Drugs were mostly trafficked across legitimate trade routes connecting Central Asia and Russia. The structure of drug enterprises is placed under close examination. The empirical evidence is presented that drug trafficking enterprises in Kazakhstan can accurately be described as disorganised structures. Competitive advantage belonged to entrepreneurs who could link themselves with informal networks capable of exploiting the connection between production, transit and consuming countries. Such connections, or relational capital, seemed to be embedded into existing social relationships of actors. The measures taken against corrupt state officials resulted in thousands of criminal trials and imprisonments, and a recalculation by police officials nationwide about the costs and benefits of engaging in corrupt activities. The results were achieved mainly due to intensive enforcement of new legislation against corruption. However, this updated legislation still had a flavour of Sovietstyle attitude towards drugs and could still be considered very strict in terms of international standards.
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