BACKGROUND: One year after President Nursultan Nazarbayev established his dominance over the Kazakhstani political system by winning 91 percent of the presidential vote, his Otan (Fatherland) party, re-enforced its position in Kazakhstan’s parliament, the Majilis. On December 22, the pro-presidential Civic Party, with its 160,000 registered members, and the Agrarian Party, with its 102,000 members, voted to join the President\'s Otan party. This past summer, the Asar Party, led by the President\'s daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, made a similar decision to incorporate into Otan. Along with the expansion came a change in name from Otan to Nur-Otan, which loosely translates as \"The Fatherland\'s Ray of Light.\" Bakhytzhan Zhumagulov, the acting deputy chairman of Otan, was quoted to say that the name also referred to Nazarbayev \"as the leader of the whole nation,\" as he is sometimes called Nurege or Nur-Agha. Prior to these decisions, the Agrarian and Industrial Union of Workers Bloc – made up of the Civic and Agrarian parties – and Asar were the second and third largest blocs in the Majilis, respectively. The Union of Workers Bloc held 11 seats and Asar held 4. With the merger, the President\'s party now controls 90 percent of the seats in parliament. The membership of the new \"mega-party\" dwarfs the anti-presidential opposition, of which no party has more than 100,000 official members. Within parliament, the anti-presidential opposition party, Ak Zhol, received 12 percent of the list vote in the last parliamentary elections, but electoral rules limited it to only one seat, which remains empty in protest. Just seven days after this announcement, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Justice accepted the application for registration of the center-right \"Atameken\" party. The registration was approved after the party presented 60,000 signatures collected in the two months after its founding congress. The party program states that the party has a goal of \"preventing corruption in the Kazakhstani economy\" and \"is against state domination in business and the privatization by state officials.\" The program also says that the party \"is against the commercialization of the state and its interference into the economy.\" However, at the same time, the founding party congress in October stated that the party was formed \"in order to support the head of state [Nazarbayev].\" The new party also signed a cooperation memorandum with Nur-Otan on January 19, which says that, while both sides will elaborate different programs and run candidates, they will support each other in parliamentary elections and during other electoral campaigns. IMPLICATIONS: The decision of the largest political parties to permanently unify under the President\'s Otan banner illustrates several important features of the current Kazakhstani political system. It represents a major change in strategy for the political parties involved. The Civic Party, for example, was founded by influential businessmen, including those in the Eurasia group, to protect their business interests through representation in the Majilis. Asar was set up by Dariga Nazarbayeva to promote her political ambitions and to establish an independent base for her political authority. The decision by these groups to incorporate into Otan suggests that they now see their previous strategies as either futile or counter-productive. It suggests that the best method for interest articulation in the current regime is through close cooperation with Nazarbayev, rather than through the process of establishing an independent power base and using that base as leverage on government decision-making. The decision also marks a departure from the political model pursued by Kazakhstan. Minister of Foreign Affairs Kassymzhomart Tokaev has many times defended his country\'s political record by saying that Kazakhstan cannot be expected to enact \"a \'gold standard\' of democracy which only a few countries in the West have achieved in centuries.\" Rather, Kazakhstan\'s democratic development, he contends, is an evolutionary process. With the establishment of a single, dominant party in parliament, the terms of this evolutionary process have changed. Instead of encouraging the establishment of a nominal opposition, the leadership is now promoting a single-party model. Zhumugulov cited Japan, Switzerland and Singapore as examples of one-party states that were successful in promoting development. However, in none of these examples, with the possible exception of Singapore, was the party quite as weak when compared with its leader as it is in Kazakhstan. With his re-election to another five-year term and his party\'s now dominant control over the Majilis, Nazarbayev is at the peak of his power. This development may shed some light on the academic debate over how succession will be approached in Kazakhstan. Most scholars have identified Nazarbayev\'s sons-in-law, Timur Kulibaev and Rakhat Aliev, and his daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, as the major competitors for power. While all of them have strong economic and political bases, their competition, in itself, may make anointing any one of them as the heir apparent difficult. Nazarbayev\'s current power, and his incorporation of all the major political players under the umbrella of his party, increases his ability to appoint a successor from outside of the major economic interests – someone whose power derives from their position in the party and allegiance to Nazarbayev, rather than from their independent economic or political power. Thus, it would not be surprising to see new players emerge in the succession discussion, whose power derives from their loyalty, rather than their independent power base. CONCLUSIONS: Nazarbayev\'s goal of establishing a national party of power, which he first attempted with SNEK in 1995, has now been achieved. This development, while not wholly unexpected, puts several important characteristics of Kazakhstani politics in stark relief. With Niyazov\'s death in Turkmenistan, and the ensuing succession battle beginning, now is the time to ask whether Kazakhstan\'s government, which has also been led by a single elder personality since independence, is in any better position to handle the loss of its leader. The difficulty in answering this question raises the possibility that Nazarbayev will use his powerful position to anoint a loyal successor. His actions in the coming year will either bring clarity to the succession debate, or will raise concerns about whether Kazakhstan will be able to deal effectively with his eventual exit from politics. AUTHOR’S BIO: Ryan Kennedy is a PhD candidate at The Ohio State University, and is currently on a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Moldova. Previous to this he conducted field work in Kazakhstan as part of his dissertation on the relationship between fuel exports and democratic development. His analysis of the 2005 Kazakhstan presidential elections appears in the current issue of Problems in Post-Communism.