—Kaustubh Tiwari, advocate practising in India and interested in comparative constitutional law
Constitutional Conspectus
Kazakhstan, a country situated in Central Asia, has recently adopted a new Constitution that will make sweeping and significant changes to its constitutional system. In a historic referendum conducted on March 15, 2026, with a 73% voter turnout, the Kazakh people opted – with an overwhelming majority of 87% – to undergo a vital transition in order to create a ‘Just Kazakhstan’. The new Constitution is set to come into effect on July 1, 2026.
Just Kazakhstan’ is a wider political project entailing President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s vision of creating a just State. For this purpose, President Tokayev has, over the years, made several substantial changes to the constitutional text to remove the centralising vestiges of the super- presidential system espoused by former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Thus, in 2022, through a slew of constitutional amendments, Nazarbayev’s special status as the ‘Leader of the Nation’ (also known as ‘Elbasy’)— which included lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution, the authority to exercise a veto over key policy decisions even after demitting office, along with lifelong chairmanship of the Security Council codified in the Constitution— was abolished. Further, the principle of party neutrality for the President was introduced, the Lower House was strengthened through a mixed electoral system where independent candidates could participate in elections, and a Constitutional Court was established, broadly in line with the framework contemplated under the 1993 Constitution, replacing the earlier Constitutional Council. All these measures gestured towards a democratic transition under the banner of Just Kazakhstan, in contrast to earlier constitutional amendments, such as the 2007 amendment that accorded the aforesaid special status upon President Nazarbayev, entailed calcification of presidential dominance. In this context, Kazakhstan’s constitutional history offers an opportune vantage point from which to assess the evolving relevance of the Just Kazakhstan project.
On January 28, 1993, Kazakhstan adopted its first Constitution. This document represented a compromise between competing factions and was replete with contradictions. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan’s constitution-making process involved two primary groups: parliamentarians from the Supreme Soviet (the erstwhile highest lawmaking body) and reformists led by President Nazarbayev. The parliamentarians advocated a constitutional structure that ensured legislative supremacy, whereas the reformists favoured a presidential republic with a strong executive that was adequately equipped to address social unrest and economic stagnation. This tension resulted in a constitution fraught with internal contradictions. It established a Supreme Council, a unicameral legislative body, which functioned as an oversight mechanism over executive authority and was entrusted with determining internal as well as external policies of the State. Simultaneously, the Constitution declared the President to be the highest executive and administrative authority. In a presidential system, the spheres of functioning between the executive and legislature are typically well-defined: the executive formulates policies, while the legislature enacts laws. The conflation of these roles under the 1993 constitutional framework conspicuously undermined the separation of powers doctrine, effectively allowing the legislature to contradict executive policies and vice versa. Moreover, any presidential veto over a legislation could be overridden by a simple parliamentary majority. These conflicting features of the 1993 Constitution generated significant institutional friction.
However, events took a different turn when the Constitutional Court created under the 1993 Constitution, declared elections to the Supreme Council invalid on the grounds of violating the ‘one person, one vote’ principle, thereby effectively enabling the President to govern the country through decrees without legislative oversight. This event acted as a catalyst for the adoption of the 1995 Constitution under the stewardship of President Nazarbayev, who saw an opportunity to entrench presidential authority and dampen institutional independence of the Supreme Council and the Constitutional Court. Turning into an indispensable legal engine for consolidating power, the 1995 Constitution carried some profound changes. To enervate the Supreme Council, it distributed legislative powers between two parliamentary chambers – the Senate and the Mazhilis, authorised the President to maintain a loyalist majority in the Senate alongside an option to dissolve an ‘uncooperative’ parliament— a new constitutional provision previously unavailable. Further, the Constitutional Court of 1993 was replaced with a Constitutional Council, a quasi- judicial body whose decisions were susceptible to presidential veto.
Overall, the architecture of the 1995 Constitution concretised presidential hegemony and discouraged institutional checks. The Just Kazakhstan vision, therefore, is a project to unravel these pervasive authoritarian tendencies by adopting yet another Constitution. However, upon a substantive analysis of the constitutional changes proposed in the 2026 Constitution, this post argues that the spectre of concentration of executive power in the hands of the President again looms large.
The New 2026 Constitution
The 2026 Constitution embodies some far-reaching and important changes, reshaping the constitutional landscape of Kazakhstan. In a stark departure from the previous bicameral parliamentary system, the Constitution introduces a unicameral legislative body called the Kurultai, abolishing the Senate (Upper House). Now consisting of 145 deputies elected through proportional representation, the Kurultai will be the only elected legislative chamber representing the people’s voice and is entrusted with the task of lawmaking.
As a countervailing institutional mechanism against the Kurultai, the 2026 Constitution envisages the creation of a new supreme advisory body called the People’s Council (Halyk Kenesi) which is a seminal addition in the new constitutional structure. It will be the supreme consultative representative body comprising 126 members based on the so-called ‘42-formula’, appointed by the President. This formula is aimed at accommodating 42 representatives each from ethnocultural organisations, local governments (Maslikhats) and civil society. Interestingly, it is contemplated as a ‘broad mirror of society’, encapsulating a wide spectrum of social groups. This People’s Council is empowered to submit new legislative bills for consideration to the Kurultai, propose nationwide referendums to the President, and moreover, play a socio- political role in fostering national values and ethnic harmony, alongside acting as a custodian of the ‘Just Kazakhstan’ principle.
The inclusion of a People’s Council in the new institutional architecture is startling. This Council is conceived as a parallel channel for proposing legislative changes whenever the parliament is unable or unwilling to cooperate with the President and, through a prescribed legal process, it can also seek the public’s opinion by initiating referendums, thereby effectively undermining the democratic authority of the elected Parliament. This institutional reality equips the President with coercive tools to pressurise the Kurultai to enact laws favourable to the executive as referendums initiated by the People’s Council can be branded as genuine demands from the society that cannot be disregarded. Consequently, a mechanism for constitutional subterfuge is created, where influence of an unelected body serves to obscure the independent judgment of an elected legislature. In essence, the custodians of the ‘Just Kazakhstan’ principle appears to militate against its foundational precept of creating a strong Parliament.
One of the central pillars of ‘Just Kazakhstan’ projects has been the need to resuscitate judicial independence. Judicial independence is the backbone of any vibrant democratic set-up as it produces a definitive institutional check against unrestrained executive power. The events of 1994 recalled earlier provided an impetus to replace the Constitutional Court with a toothless quasi- judicial body closed to the public— the Constitutional Council. The 2022 reforms resurrected the Constitutional Court from oblivion, such that, after 30 years, the Kazakh people would become empowered to challenge the constitutionality of laws. However, the 2026 Constitution blemishes this achievement by making the appointments and dismissal of judges the sole prerogative of the President without any concrete institutional check. Such control over the final arbiters of executive action flagrantly undermines judicial independence.
Correspondingly, one of the most controversial sets of changes pertains to appointments to key constitutional posts such as the Vice President, judges of the Constitutional Court, Chairperson of the Kurultai, the head of the Central Election Commission, and the chair of the Supreme Court, among others, which now fall within the exclusive domain of presidential discretion subject to confirmation by the Kurultai— a process that appears largely formalistic. If a candidate proposed by the President is rejected by the Kurultai twice, then the President is legally empowered to take the drastic step of dissolving the Kurultai and calling for fresh elections. This model risks reducing the Kurultai to a rubber stamp, as it effectively makes parliamentary consent a mere formality, with the constant threat of dissolution prevailing in case of dissent.
With only formalistic parliamentary approval required, the President is virtually at liberty to appoint political loyalists to key constitutional offices, fettering the independence of fourth- branch institutions. In modern constitutional design, the neutrality of fourth- branch institutions such as the Election Commission plays a critical role in preserving the processes of democracy. Unfortunately, the Kazakh constitutional system inverts this crucial safeguard by postulating a mechanism for institutional capture by the President through appointment of political loyalists to key constitutional posts, thereby anchoring a regime that centralises executive power.
The Rise and Rise of Authoritarianism
The constitutional reforms introduced in 2026 mirror the course taken in 1995— an exercise in consolidating presidential dominance. The motivation for these reforms is nominally located in the necessity to defenestrate the tendencies of super- presidentialism and to transition towards a democratic presidential republic. Conversely, far removed from the demagogic rhetoric, the constitutional text fortifies and entrenches presidential dominance by deliberate structural and design faults under the ostentatious veneer of democratisation.
The centralising drift manifests in the weakening of parliament by reducing it to a single legislative chamber and creating a parallel unelected echo chamber with significant powers, hampering judicial independence and concocting a mechanism for institutional capture of fourth-branch institutions like the Election Commission. These examples point to the inherent risk of authoritarianism embedded in the Constitution of 2026.
The recent constitutional developments in Kazakhstan gesture towards a nefarious turn to executive dominance, undermining rather than buttressing the principles of democratic governance. The stakes extend beyond Kazakhstan. For many transitional democracies like Bangladesh and Armenia, constitutional reform often carries the promise of institutional renewal. But when reform is driven by centralising imperatives, there is a risk of entrenching precisely the pathologies it purports to cure. Kazakhstan’s new Constitution serves as a cautionary example of how democratic rhetoric can coexist with—and even facilitate—the concentration of power.
If the trajectory set by this constitutional order endures, the vision of a ‘Just Kazakhstan’ may ultimately be defined less by the opportunity of democratisation and more by the calibrated consolidation of power.
Suggested citation: Kaustubh Tiwari, Kazakhstan’s New Constitution and the Rise and Rise of Authoritarianism, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Apr. 17, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/kazakhstan’s-new-constitution-and-the-rise-and-rise-of-authoritarianism/