Graduate School of Public Policy

GSPP Assistant Professor Maxat Kassen published an article in a leading international peer-reviewed journal

Dr. Maxat Kassen, Assistant Professor of the Graduate School of Public Policy at Nazarbayev University, has recently published an article in an international peer-reviewed research journal:  Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy (Scopus CiteScore 4.1). The article titled “ Politicization of e-voting rejection: reflections from Kazakhstan” focuses on implications of political debates around the prospects of e-voting to replace traditional ballot, which have always been uneasy and, in many cases, highly speculative and politicized. Despite certain political, organizational, technological and socioeconomic benefits that e-voting brings, governments around the world are beginning one by one to denounce its further use in the electoral process. In this regard, in the article, the author aims to analyze reasons that led to the discontinuation of e-voting, resorting to the case of Kazakhstan, a transitional post-soviet country, which actively used the technology in 2004-2011, as a poster child of the global trend, elaborating on key political, socioeconomic, organizational and technological risks that could be associated with the possible return of this innovation in future elections. The results of the case study research could be useful for academia in understanding better e-voting as a public trust bench-marking phenomenon. The study can also be used to inform ways of how to improve the current e-voting platforms, especially in ensuring better security and transparency of the systems, which could be useful for e-government policymakers and practitioners who work on developing more innovative blockchain-driven solutions in the area.

The full article can be read here (https://doi.org/10.1108/TG-11-2019-0106)