Title: A constructive critique of Bhuiyan (2012): Political Leadership and its Role in Achieving Good Governance in Kazakhstan, International

Journal of Public Administration, 35:6, 379-388 Candidate number: T01436 Word count: 1966

A constructive critique of Bhuiyan (2012): Political Leadership and its Role in Achieving Good Governance in Kazakhstan, International Journal of Public Administration, 35:6, 379-388 Shahjahan Bhuiyan currently activates in the Department of Public Policy and Administration as an Associate Professor and head of the College of Social Science at KIMEP University in Kazakhstan. This background information would explain the authors choice of this particular country as the subject of his research but also the field of public administration. The journal Bhuiyan is writing for is the International Journal of Public Administration. It is a research driven publication focused on individual case studies of countries but also comparisons between two or more states. Its main, though not sole audience, are scholars. Other people who might be interested in the articles that could be found in this publication are civil servants drafting future policies or someone who aspires to work in the sector of public administration. Therefore, Bhuiyans article (2012), as stated in the abstract, aims to examine the activity of the Kazakhstan leadership in accomplishing good governance. The author uses deductive methods to conduct the research, a case study of Kazakhastan, by firstly defining the key concepts (2012: 379-381) and then examining in depth the nature of the political conduct in the country (2012: 381-382). It then addresses the question posed at the beginning and ends by drawing conclusions based on the arguments outlined in the main body. As mentioned above, the audience of this article is mainly scholars, and therefore, the language is academic, but still clear and concise, which makes it accessible for students of political science. Orwell (1946) mentions in his work that the English language is gradually in decline with authors writing more incoherent and vague pieces of work. However, it can be argued that Bhuiyan (2012) successfully avoided this by setting out a range of definitions for his key concepts and using a clear and concise language throughout. This constructive critique will firstly examine the topic of the article, and look at the strength and limitations imposed by its choice. It will the look at the argument presented, and if it was successfully done. Finally, the essay will analyze the authors methodology. Therefore, the key concepts that are found in the title are explained in detail, under the heading Conceptualizing Political Leadership and Good Governance (2012: 379) ensuring that the reader has a variety of ideas in his mind, and that there is no confusion or misinterpretation (Orwell, 1946). For example, in order to define political leadership, Bhuiyan uses definitions given by Seligman, Burns, Heifetz etc. The author also acknowledges the reader that good governance, which in this case represents the dependent variable, has a range of definitions and does use some authors to illustrate this. For example, Kaufmann et al. (1999: 1) wrote that governance consists of traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. However, one main disadvantage is that the question imposed by the name of the article is not defined in the body. Additionally, the title first suggests that it is going to be talked about the role but then goes on and argues the limited success of the government. The difference in the wording is very subtle, but very important. Moreover, the title is very inflexible: Political Leadership and its Role in Achieving Good Governance (Bhuiyan, 2012). This limits the topic of the whole article by simply focusing on one independent variable, political leadership. Although the essay is trying to establish a cause and effect relationship between the role of governance and successful administration, it provides a one sided view of the author without looking at other possible causes of the final outcome. Despite a good start and a well defined purpose of the article, in the middle Bhuiyan (2012) loses track of his topic and starts describing party politics, the processes of registering as one, and Nazerbayevs political conduct and his attitude towards opposition parties and the treatment of them in the political system. Moreover, the way the evidence is presented is very descriptive and simply reviews one source after another, as opposed to an analytical way of looking at evidence. Therefore, I would argue that a lot of this descriptive information could have been omitted or reduced. Especially the sections Understanding party politics in Kazakhstan and Images of political leadership in Kazakhstan, it can be argued, are not relevant to the

discussion. Instead, it can be suggested that the argument of elitism could have been developed, which Bhuiyan only briefly mentions in regards to power. Moreover, surprisingly, Bhuiyan does not include Lasswell (1994: 3-25) in his argument about elite rule, which I think represents an important source since he is the first to have the idea and discuss it in his work. Since Bhuiyans (2012) written work is largely based on looking at secondary sources, debatably the evidence is chosen in a biased way, to fit the theory that the author had in mind. The author could have asked, based on his opinion, if Kazakhstani political leadership has limited success in achieving good governance (2012: 379) is indeed true. Some contrasting data could have been provided. Bhuiyan uses both quantitative data when talking about aggregate indicators, and qualitative data when defining key concepts, all collected from secondary sources. The validity of the definitions wasnt looked at from an analytical point of view, but taken at face value. The statistical data on the other hand represents reliable sources such as The Economist, and provides an insight in voting behavior. Most of the sources are well chosen for this particular area of research. For example, Bowyer (2008) also writes about the Nur-Otan, the opposition and the legislature. However, due to the similarity of the works, it can be argued that Bhuiyan does not therefore bring a contribution but simply repeats information that is already present in the literature. Another accurate and appropriate source used as evidence by Bhuiyan is Heinrich (2010), whose work provides more than a simple case study of a country, but goes further and compares Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. One question that could have been asked by Bhuiyan respectively would be how other post-communist countries political systems and leadership evolved since the fall of the USSR, and the impact this had. Another source that the author could have used would be Olcott (2010). In the book Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled promises? she talks about the extent the country successfully managed to achieve a status of a well-developed country and does so by looking at both successes and downfalls in the economy and the political system. Bhuiyan, as mentioned above, provides plenty of other scholars definitions of the key terms (political leadership and good governance). However, these definitions lack normative evaluation. Additionally, when it comes to addressing political leadership, Bhuiyan takes into account only Kaufmanns definition without evaluating this source. This flaws the argument, since no other contrasting views are looked at, making the choice seem biased. Another shortcoming would be Bhuiyan s choice of the three governance dimensions (2012: 384) mainly because he does not explain the specific ways those particularities were selected. This questions the objectivity of the argument, since the points could have been selected on purpose in order to suit the authors argument. This is also one of the main disadvantages of the deductive method, the author starts with an idea in mind and then performs the research, however, the chances are that if there are some contradicting arguments the author will simply ignore them. The article also lacks a well-developed and analysed counter argument, which would show that some of the policies of the Kazakhstan government did achieve good governance. This point was only vaguely touched upon in the conclusion, but not fully covered in the body. This makes the work look slightly skewed towards one point of view. Bhuiyan acknowledges the reader from the beginning that there is little research conducted in this particular area. Therefore, the article represents a valuable contribution in the study of the political phenomena of postcommunist countries and the paths they have taken and the ways that reflected upon the political leadership (democracy, authoritarian government etc.). However, despite this, Bhuiyan focuses too much on secondary data collected from other authors. His article could have therefore been improved by adding some data gained from conducting some research by using qualitative data (polling) to assess what people think about the party in power, and how they feel it is coping with achieving good governance. This would therefore provide more first hand insight, although it would have had a clear limitation, a small sample. Using posted questionnaires and therefore gaining quantitative data that would operationalise the concept of satisfaction among the population would have been an alternative.

This brings us to the next point; the theoretical perspective of the author and how that influenced the way the research was conducted. One main disadvantage is that the methods of collecting data were not explained, and the article also does not provide any insight about the reasons for choosing some authors over others. This makes it difficult to understand his ontological and epistemological views and standpoint. It seems that Bhuiyan did not learn how and why the data he used was collected, therefore not placing it in context. When using secondary data: The question of determining the original purpose of the project that produced the data is important because its influence may be present in other characteristics of the data, from the population targeted to the specific wording of questions included in a survey.(Boslaugh, 2007) However, Bhuiyans (2012) article clearly lacks that, it does not provide any information about the reasons for choosing some sources over other and the way he searched and chose the particular literature. Opposing points of view were not presented and neither subsequently refuted. This could mean that certain sources or text were used to fit the main argument, rather than the argument complementing the evidence. This may mean that it lacks internal empirical validity (Rose, 1982: 14) since the final conclusion was not arrived at from the collection of data, but vice versa. As mentioned above, Bhuiyan tries to establish a causal inference (King, Keohane and Verba, 1994) between political leadership and the achievement of good governance in Kazakhstan. However, it is important to mention that causal deduction is a very difficult thing to be established, since association does not prove causation (Boslaugh, 2007). Therefore, based on the sources used and the way information is presented, it can be argued that the article presents more of a descriptive inference (King, Keohane and Verba, 1994), that is observing events in the world in order to find more about the unobservable facts. In this case, sometimes aggressive and intimidating behavior towards opposition parties cannot be empirically observed, therefore another approach should be used. Finally, it can be argued that although the article is successful in describing and explaining various concepts, events and points, it largely lacks evaluation of sources and fails to acknowledge opposing views. Additionally it does not prescribe a possible solution for the ways in which good governance could be achieved in Kazakhstan. Bhuiyan goes no further than setting out ways the implemented policies had limited success. As a person interested in Public Adminstration, Bhuiyan could have proposed possible changes or legislation, or give prescriptions, that would have improved the political situation in the country and created more openness. Overall, the article provides a thorough study of the issue by describing, explaining and evaluating the arguments presented and discussed in the body. However, illustrating more counter arguments and balancing the main points could have improved the section on evaluation. Also, some solutions could have been offered as a response to the weaknesses mentioned, such as the lack of transparency or political opposition.

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