Do Western-Educated Elites Bring Change in Authoritarian Regimes?

• In Event: Elites in Democracies and Autocracies

Abstract

International education has been seen as a powerful tool of transforming norms and cultures in the era of liberal paradigm. Large-scale study-abroad education programs for developing countries have been sponsored by state agencies and international organizations for decades, promoting cultural exchange through, ‘a diverse engagement program developed around subjects inherent to […] values such as democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech’ (Chevening Impact Report, 2018). Many of those ‘donor’ programs are based on the underlying assumption that they are investing not only in quality education, but more importantly in the future elites and global networks, which through exposure to the international (mostly Western) culture will bring home ‘universal’ business/governance ethics and good practices (Altbach, 1989; Teichler, 2004; Knight, 2014; Pham, 2015; Siltaoja et al., 2019).

My research contributes to this discussion by examining the case of Kazakhstan, where the state has been promoting and financing international, especially Western education starting shortly after gaining its independence from the Soviet Union: in 2015, Kazakhstan was among top 15 countries in the world with most students per capita participating in tertiary education programs abroad with about 83.5 thousand tertiary students from Kazakhstan studying abroad (Perna et.al., 2015). The Bolashak International Scholarship alone has sponsored more than 14 thousand young people since 1993 (Center for International Programmes, 2021). The program was designed to provide full scholarships to Kazakhs to study at the top universities around the world under the commitment to return to the country.

Today, Bolashakers (alumni of the program) are hard to miss in the country’s establishment, about a quarter of them are top managers of large companies and government organizations (Informburo.kz 2019). This younger generation of managers are seen by a certain part of the Kazakh society as those who will bring renewal and modernization as opposed to the ‘old school’ Soviet managers (Jonbekova et.al, 2022).

As Kazakhstan undergoes a major transformative period, transitioning from a 30-year rule of its first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, recovering from violent suppression of popular democratic protests of January 2022, and balancing its foreign politics amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, my research investigates how political change happens in authoritarian contexts.

I hope to offer a unique insight into a deliberate elite-building project and its role in reforming a post-Soviet authoritarian government model. Are Western-educated state managers more accountable and dedicated to democratization, if better-educated? Do they adapt to or change authoritarian regimes? How does such change happen?

The proposed paper is based on a recent field research, where I talked with Bolashak fellows in power - mid and high-level state managers. I was led by grounded theory and biographical approaches and went to the field with wide questions on identity, values, and institutions, as well as about the fellow’s ideas about changes taking place in the country, its political regime, and their imaginary of the future.

This research contributes to the discussion on the lasting impacts of international education on sending countries, particularly in terms of its influence on local institutional norms, good governance, and democratic processes. While existing works, such as those by Spilimbergo (2009), Docquier et al. (2009), and Atkinson (2010), offer valuable insights, they predominantly rely on large-N comparative models, leaving questions posed in the conclusion of the seminal work by Antonio Spilimbergo of ‘how a small minority of foreign-educated individuals become so influential and through which mechanisms they can bring about […] change at home’ (Spilimbergo, 2009, p. 538) beyond their scope.

Author

• Malika Toqmadi, University College London