Abstract:
The Open Government reform has been actively adopted across
various non-democratic regimes, including post-Soviet Central Asia.
The reform is supposed to bolster responsiveness and transparency
through the active use of information communication technologies,
and numerous authoritarian countries have recently adopted and
deepened the Open Government reform. In this work, we study
whether Open Government reform contributes to responsiveness in
autocracies using the case of Kazakhstan under Tokayev’s rule
(2019–present). We investigate the concept of the ‘Listening State’
recently adopted in Kazakhstan through the analysis of novel
primary data. The perceptions of ordinary citizens reveal that the
Open Government reform in the country has not led to the
realization of its key goal of increased responsiveness. Therefore,
we argue that the Open Government reform has serious limitations
in achieving its ultimate goal of a better listening state to people’s
needs in autocracies.
