Legalized Rent-Seeking: Eminent Domain in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Cornell International Law Journal: Vol. 50 : No. 1 , Article 2Kazakhstan ranks consistently low on measures of property rights protection and the rule of law more generally.1 Echoing these evaluations, existing literature emphasizes the degree to which informal institutions shape property relations in personalist, authoritarian regimes, like Kazakhstan. The expectation is that formal institutions like law and courts fail to restrain or otherwise influence state agents’ rent-seeking behavior. In effect, they serve primarily as ornamentation. Regardless, these explanations fail to explain why both citizens and the State regularly turn to these institutions to settle property disputes. This Article focuses on conflicts over eminent domain and finds that in these cases the law provides lower and upper bounds for officials’ rent-seeking behavior. Within these limits, law combines with informal practices to determine legal outcomes. Although the law and courts sometimes provide citizens with opportunities for limited redress, they also help facilitate and legitimize officials’ use of eminent domain for personal enrichment.

Why Does Sharecropping Survive? Agrarian Institutions and Contract Choice in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

“…The authority to issue and control land rights is granted to the local government, akimats and local land commissions. Low motivation or lack of finance to turn from a cheap land lease to private land and the notalways-transparent process of granting or bidding for land hinder private ownership of land in Kazakhstan (Hanson 2017). Moreover, regardless of ownership status, if land is not used in accordance with its designated use or if cultivation is held up over two years, it can be seized by district or city officials (Land Code of Republic of Kazakhstan art.…”