In May 2015, the President of Kazakhstan unveiled a vast and ambitious programme of reforms entitled the 100 Concrete Steps, in order to bring about five institutional transformations: creation of a modem and professional civil service; the establishment of the rule of law; industrialisation and economic growth; a unified nation for the future; and transparency and accountability of the state.

At the dawn of its independence, Kazakhstan had a highly centralized administrative system inherited from the Soviet period. This system was characterized by strict control of the central level over the resources, decisions, and responsibilities of the local government. Later, as economic reforms progressed, the country saw the need to grant more autonomy and flexibility to the local level in order to increase transparency and responsiveness to citizen needs. These efforts took place as part of a set of public governance reforms in Kazakhstan to streamline the public administration and budgeting systems, apply the principles of the rule of law and a regulatory state, and modernise public institutions.

This chapter provides a brief overview of a process of reforms that has driven a significant shift in Kazakhstan’s public governance from a high degree of centralisation towards an increase in the responsibilities of subsidiary levels of government.

This chapter addresses the existing framework for decision-making and autonomy of local governments, which has been dominated by the central government. It reviews the legal and institutional factors surrounding decentralisation of government responsibilities and questions the capacity of recent reforms to lead to more targeted and flexible distribution of mandates and functions among tiers of government.

This chapter examines the capacity of the local government to exercise their powers and responsibilities stemming from their legal authority and budgetary capacity. The chapter looks into the system of the fiscal equalisation and the budgetary decision-making process, as well as into the impact of transfers of financial and human resources following the transfer of responsibilities between tiers of government. Finally, the chapter offers an analysis of evaluation systems in Kazakhstan and provides actionable recommendations on measuring the performance of local executive bodies and developing evaluation criteria that are better aligned to the roles of local government and the demonstration of outcomes to citizen.