Legitimacy and Legitimation in Central Asia: cases of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

This chapter brings to bear what Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan can explain with regard to the concepts of legitimacy and legitimation in authoritarianism. It argues how legitimation should be understood as a series of claims by the regime regarding their appropriateness to rule which are then transformed through social action which then produces legitimacy. The chapter challenges contemporary theorisation of legitimation in the post-Soviet space, which disaggregates the process too far, failing to address the overlapping and interdependent nature of legitimising claims. Instead, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan demonstrate how authoritarian regimes can rely on a combination of charismatic, traditional and legalrational claims to evoke legitimation, but that ultimately, we can never truly know the extent to which broader society believes in the legitimacy of these regimes