ABSTRACT Most of Kazakhstan’s wealth hinges on oil rents, and the overall performance of the economy is closely linked to petroleum’s price fluctuations. This study asks (1) why the institution of private ownership of oil proceeds has not led to a positive transformation of patron–client relations embedded in the country’s energy sector, thus challenging the relevance of the ‘private ownership’ narrative, and (2) why the collapse in the price of oil did not affect the stability and essential character of the regime in power. To answer these questions, the article examines two case studies: the privatization of the oil sector in the 1990s, and the post-2014 oil crisis. Thus the article problematizes important theories on oil-sector privatization and contributes to recent work on regime stability as it pertains to the resource curse. The analysis of the constitutive impact of oil wealth on Kazakh politics generates wider insights on the links between the power of informal networks and regime stability in petrostates through boom and bust cycles.

中文翻译：

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盘旋桶：2014 年石油危机后哈萨克斯坦的政权稳定

摘要 哈萨克斯坦的大部分财富依赖于石油租金，经济的整体表现与石油价格波动密切相关。本研究询问（1）为什么石油收益的私有制制度没有导致该国能源部门的赞助人 - 客户关系发生积极转变，从而挑战“私有制”叙述的相关性，以及（2）为什么石油价格的暴跌并未影响当权政权的稳定性和本质特征。为了回答这些问题，本文考察了两个案例研究：1990 年代石油部门的私有化和 2014 年后的石油危机。因此，这篇文章对石油部门私有化的重要理论提出了问题，并有助于最近有关政权稳定性的工作，因为它与资源诅咒有关。