Identity Politics in Managing the System Risks of Nation-Building: On the Example of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Abstract

In previous years, the evolution of nation-building politics in the Republic of Kazakhstan was characterized by an alternation of tactical schemes that actualized either the ethnocultural or civil-political foundations of statehood. At present, the emerging common Kazakhstani culture is becoming the basis for mutually agreed development of ethnocultural and civic identity as its own elements. In the system of common Kazakhstani culture, the civil and ethnocultural models of the nation are the poles or attractors of the process of self-organization of a single nationwide Kazakhstan identity. The optimal identity politics in the nation-building risk management in the conditions of modern Kazakhstan is to adopt the point of view of the whole set of identification models and to maintain the dynamic balance of conflicting identities through the mechanism of mutual checks and balances.