WHEN CAPITAL CITIES MOVE: THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NATION AND STATE BUILDING

Capital relocation (i.e., the physical move of the central state apparatus from one location to another) is an unusual tool for nation and state building. Yet, it is used more frequently than we might expect. Thus, when Kazakhstan shift ed its capital city in 1997 from Almaty to Astana the move was unique in that post-Soviet region, but not as uncommon in other post-colonial cases. This paper examines the move of the capital in Kazakhstan suggests that this move was designed to address particularly acute nation-and state-building challenges. If the Kazakhstan experience seems strange in de-Sovietization, this tells us much about the different nature of postSoviet space versus other post-colonial contexts. The relative in frequency of capital moves implies that the challenges of nation and state building in the exUSSR-as daunting as they have proved to be-are generally not as acute as in those of other post-colonial contexts.