ABSTRACT

1 INTRODUCTION

The relevance of this issue became especially visible in 2020–2025. In post-socialist states, debates on the rule of law increasingly moved beyond courts and anti-corruption measures toward legal trust, civic participation, and legal literacy. For Kazakhstan, this shift is particularly significant, since official reforms promoting the rule of law, legal education, and access to justice still coexist with weaknesses in accountability, access to law, and enforcement. This reveals a persistent gap between formal regulation and citizens’ lived legal experience.²

The post-socialist and Eastern European context gives this problem a clear comparative dimension. These states share related historical and legal transformations, yet differ in institutional quality, public trust, and forms of civic engagement. European Commission materials confirm continuing differences in justice quality, anti-corruption mechanisms, checks and balances, and civic participation, which makes comparative analysis methodologically justified.³

The problem is further intensified by the broader crisis of institutional trust. OECD findings show that trust depends on openness in decision-making, evidence-based governance, institutional integrity, and perceptions of fairness. These factors are closely connected with legal consciousness: when citizens do not view law as effective and equally applicable, their participation in institutional forms of public life becomes less stable.⁴

Contemporary scholarship no longer reduces legal culture to knowledge of statutes or abstract respect for law. Legal consciousness is understood as the way individuals interpret law, relate it to their interests, and decide whether legal action is meaningful. It functions as an active link between the legal order and social practice. Research on post-communist Europe shows that legal culture becomes evident in legal mobilisation, everyday recourse to law, and perceptions of legal accessibility.⁵

Against this background, the central problem of the study is that comparative legal scholarship still fails to explain how legal consciousness shapes civic participation in post-socialist societies. This gap is especially relevant for Kazakhstan, which is rarely examined alongside Eastern European states within a shared comparative framework. The divide between doctrinal legal analysis and socio-legal interpretation, therefore, remains unresolved.

The aim of this study is to determine how legal consciousness and legal culture influence civic participation in Kazakhstan and Eastern European countries and to identify institutional and educational mechanisms that can strengthen this relationship in contemporary legal policy.

H1. A higher level of legal consciousness and legal culture increases the likelihood of stable civic participation in institutional and legal forms. This assumption is based on the view that legal knowledge, trust in procedures, and confidence in institutional effectiveness strengthen citizens’ readiness to use legal channels and participate in public life through normatively structured forms.⁶

H2. Differences in civic participation between Kazakhstan and Eastern European countries are shaped not only by formal legal norms but also by the quality of enforcement, institutional accountability, and public trust. Normative modernisation does not strengthen legal culture unless it is supported by predictable legal practice and a credible public experience of justice.⁷

H3. Strengthening legal education, legal literacy, and civic-legal learning helps reduce legal nihilism and reinforce civil society. This hypothesis rests on the view that legal culture develops not only through institutional reform, but also through long-term socialisation, public legal communication, and access to legal information.⁸

The scientific novelty of the study lies in treating legal consciousness not as an abstract category of legal theory, but as an applied indicator of citizens’ institutional embeddedness within the legal order. Unlike studies that are limited to general descriptions of legal culture or to isolated aspects of legal education, this article combines comparative legal analysis, socio-legal interpretation, and an institutional approach. It shows that civic participation does not arise automatically from formal rights and freedoms, but depends on the interaction of legal intelligibility, trust in institutions, and real procedural accessibility. This perspective links the theoretical discussion of legal culture with practical implications for legal policy and enforcement.

The article’s contribution is primarily conceptual and comparative. The index-based component is used to operationalise the main socio-legal dimensions and to make the crosscountry comparison more transparent. It should not be read as a stand-alone econometric explanation of civic participation or as evidence of strict causal effects. Rather, the indices provide a structured analytical lens through which differences between Kazakhstan and the selected Eastern European countries can be interpreted.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature on legal culture, institutional trust, and civic participation can be organised around three interconnected research directions. The first concerns legal culture and legal consciousness as conditions under which law becomes socially meaningful rather than merely formally valid. In this view, law influences civic behaviour only when citizens recognise it as understandable, legitimate, and practically usable.⁹ Earlier studies on legal culture in Kazakhstan emphasise the role of legal awareness, respect for law, and civic responsibility in strengthening the legal order and limiting corrupt or informal practices.¹⁰ More recent research builds on this argument by linking legal culture to access to rights-protection mechanisms and to everyday legal experience.¹¹ In the broader postsocialist context, legal consciousness is also treated as a dynamic form of legal mobilisation: citizens turn to law when they perceive legal procedures as accessible and capable of producing meaningful outcomes.¹²

The second direction focuses on the rule of law, institutional quality, and legal backsliding. Studies of Central and Eastern Europe show that formal constitutional guarantees do not automatically secure the practical authority of law. The weakening of judicial independence, anti-corruption mechanisms, checks and balances, and civic space may reduce the credibility of legal institutions even where legal procedures remain formally available.¹³ This

literature is important for the present study because it demonstrates that legal culture cannot be separated from the institutional environment in which citizens encounter law. At the same time, much of this scholarship remains concentrated on courts, supranational mechanisms, and constitutional standards, while the link between institutional quality and everyday civic participation is less fully examined.

The third direction addresses institutional trust, legal literacy, and participation. Trust is increasingly understood not as a general attitude toward the state, but as a multidimensional relationship shaped by predictability, impartiality, accountability, and procedural fairness.¹⁴ Legal literacy and access to justice also matter because citizens cannot use legal channels if they do not understand their rights or lack procedural support. However, legal knowledge alone is insufficient. It produces sustained civic participation only when supported by credible institutions and procedures that citizens experience as fair and effective. This is especially relevant for post-socialist systems, where formal legal modernisation may coexist with distrust, legal scepticism, or reliance on informal strategies.

Recent work on digital civics and algorithmic governance adds a further dimension to this debate. Digital state platforms, online petitions, e-justice tools, and algorithmic decision-making increasingly mediate the relationship between citizens and legal institutions.¹⁵ These developments expand access to legal and administrative procedures, but they also raise questions of transparency, accountability, and digital inequality. For

Kazakhstan, where public services and channels of appeal have become increasingly digitalised, this dimension is particularly relevant.

Overall, the literature confirms that legal culture, institutional trust, legal literacy, and civic participation are closely connected, but they are often studied separately. Rule-oflaw scholarship tends to privilege macro-institutional analysis, while studies of legal literacy and civic education often focus on applied mechanisms without integrating them into a broader theory of civic-legal embeddedness. Comparative research that places Kazakhstan and Eastern European countries within one analytical framework remains limited. The present study addresses this gap by examining how legal consciousness, legal literacy, institutional trust, legal nihilism, and the rule-of-law environment jointly shape civic participation in post-socialist legal systems.

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1. Research Design and Analytical Logic

The study employs a mixed comparative legal design to examine how legal consciousness, legal culture, legal literacy, institutional trust, and the rule-of-law environment are associated with civic participation. The design combines doctrinal legal analysis, directed content analysis of official documents, index-based modelling, and statistical testing. This combination was selected because the research problem cannot be addressed through formal legal analysis alone: the study requires both interpretation of legal and institutional materials and a comparable measurement of socio-legal patterns across countries.

The quantitative component has an interpretive and comparative function. It is intended to systematise documentary evidence, identify relative differences between countries, and support hypothesis-oriented interpretation. Given the limited number of country cases and the aggregated character of the data, the index-based and statistical procedures are not designed to establish causal effects in a strict econometric sense.

3.2. Comparative Scope and Empirical Base

The comparative sample includes Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary. These countries share a post-socialist legal legacy but differ in institutional development, civic space, public trust, and the practical operation of legal procedures. Kazakhstan is treated as the central case, while the Eastern European cases provide the comparative framework. The period of analysis covers 2020–2025.

The empirical base comprises three groups of sources: national legal and policy documents, international and supranational assessment materials, and scholarly publications on legal culture, institutional trust, legal literacy, civic participation, and the rule of law. In the

qualitative part of the study, the unit of analysis is a document or report. In the quantitative part, the unit of observation is the country-year.

3.3. Research Procedure

The research was conducted in five stages. First, the literature was reviewed to identify the key dimensions linking legal culture and civic participation. Second, doctrinal legal analysis was used to examine the formal legal and institutional context of each country. Third, directed content analysis was applied to official documents using a predefined coding matrix. Fourth, the coded values were transformed into sub-indices and a composite index. Fifth, the relationships between the indices were tested through Spearman’s rank correlation and regression modelling.

3.4. Variables and Measurement

The study uses six sub-indices and one composite indicator. The Legal Consciousness Index (LCI) captures the extent to which documents reflect legal subjectivity, procedural justice, and orientation toward law as a legitimate means of action. The Legal Literacy Index (LLI) measures legal education, accessibility of legal information, and procedural navigation. The Institutional Trust Index (ITI) reflects accountability, impartiality, predictability, and responsiveness. The Civic Participation Index (CPI) measures legally structured participation, including consultation, complaint, appeal, and mediation-related mechanisms. The Legal Nihilism Index (LNI) captures distrust in legal mechanisms, orientation toward extra-legal strategies, and weak procedural motivation. The Rule of Law Environment Index (RLEI) reflects the external institutional context, including judicial guarantees, checks and balances, and access to rights protection. The Composite Civic-Legal Participation Index (CLPI) integrates these dimensions into a single comparative measure.

All indicators were coded on a three-point scale:

0 – the feature is absent or expressed only declaratively;

1 – the feature is present partially;

2 – the feature is clearly expressed and supported both normatively and procedurally.

This format was chosen because it allows comparison of heterogeneous documents without introducing artificial precision while supporting the reproducibility of the results. To improve reliability, the coding matrix was first tested on a pilot sub-corpus, after which the main coding procedure was carried out (Table 1).

Component Analytical meaning Measurement and function in the study

Spearman’s rank correlation

Measures associations between the main indices. Used to test H1 and H3 because the data combine ordinal and normalised values.

Regression model Examines how CPI is associated with LCI, ITI, RLEI, and LNI within the aggregated comparative dataset.

Exploratory procedure used to support the comparative interpretation of H2, not to establish causal effects.

3.5. Hypothesis Testing Strategy

The hypotheses were tested through correlation and regression procedures. H1 was tested by examining the relationship between LCI and CPI. H2 was tested using a regression model with CPI as the dependent variable and LCI, ITI, RLEI, and LNI as predictors. H3 was tested through the relationship between LLI and LNI, using both Spearman’s rank correlation and an additional regression model with LNI as the dependent variable. Spearman’s rank correlation was selected because the dataset combines ordinal and normalised indicators and is of moderate size.

3.6. Methodological Limitations

The study has several limitations typical of comparative legal research. The documents differ across countries, legal languages, and institutional contexts, which may affect the comparability of some indicators. These limitations were mitigated through a unified coding matrix, comparable source categories, value normalisation, and triangulation among doctrinal analysis, document coding, index construction, and statistical testing. The methodology, therefore, does not claim to measure legal culture exhaustively. Its purpose is to provide a consistent comparative framework for identifying how legal consciousness, institutional trust, legal literacy, and legal nihilism shape civic participation across post-socialist legal systems.

4 RESULTS - COMPARATIVE PATTERNS AND EMPIRICAL OUTCOMES OF CIVIC-LEGAL EMBEDDEDNESS

The initial institutional background indicates that the legal environments of Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary developed unevenly in 2020–2025. Despite their shared post-socialist legal legacy, these countries differ in rule-of-law dynamics, institutional resilience, procedural quality, and anti-corruption capacity. For comparative consistency, the study uses the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index as the baseline indicator, as it uses a uniform scale and allows cross-country changes to be tracked over time.

The index is suitable for this analysis because it covers not only the judiciary, but also constraints on government powers, corruption control, open government, fundamental rights, regulatory enforcement, and civil and criminal justice. It therefore provides a coherent basis for assessing how the broader legal environment shapes legal consciousness, legal literacy, institutional trust, and civic participation (Figure 1).

Note. Values range from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating a stronger rule-of-law environment. Lithuania was not included in the WJP 2020 edition. Values marked ~ for 2023 were reconstructed from the official 2024 data and the annual percentage change.

The comparison reveals distinct trajectories. Lithuania maintains the strongest and most stable rule-of-law environment, while Poland shows partial recovery after an earlier decline. Kazakhstan records a gradual but limited improvement, mainly in procedural and enforcement stability. Hungary demonstrates persistent deterioration, whereas Ukraine’s decline should be interpreted in the context of wartime pressure and incomplete institutional recovery. The following table, therefore, compares the direction and scale of change across the selected countries (Table 2).

The comparison confirms that similar quantitative scores may conceal different institutional conditions. Kazakhstan, Hungary, and Ukraine fall within partly comparable numerical ranges, but their legal environments differ in substance. Kazakhstan reflects uneven but observable institutional strengthening; Hungary demonstrates more entrenched structural weaknesses; and Ukraine combines declining rule-of-law indicators with wartime pressure and incomplete institutional recovery.

At the next stage, these institutional differences were translated into measurable indicators through directed content analysis of official documents from 2020 to 2025. The analysis focused on three dimensions: LCI for legal consciousness, LLI for legal literacy and access to legal information, and ITI for institutional trust. Each dimension was coded using a predefined matrix and normalised on a 0–1 scale to ensure a standardised document-based comparison.

Note. The values show the share of positively coded features within each block. A feature was treated as positive if it received a score of 2 or if recurring level-1 features were consistently confirmed over several years.

The LLI results show a different pattern. Lithuania records the highest value (0.75), reflecting the strongest integration of legal aid, mediation, and accessible legal information. Kazakhstan and Ukraine have equal scores (0.67), but Kazakhstan’s result is linked mainly to digital public services and procedural access, whereas Ukraine’s reflects broad legal aid under wartime conditions. Poland and Hungary remain weaker in this dimension. Overall, legal literacy is understood here as a combination of legal knowledge, procedural navigation, and access to assistance.

The third stage calculates the Institutional Trust Index, covering accountability, openness, procedural impartiality, independence, responsiveness, and predictability (Figure 5).

that legal support may expand without a corresponding increase in trust. Hungary shows deterioration across all three dimensions, especially in institutional trust. These results confirm that higher legal literacy or legal consciousness does not automatically produce stronger institutional trust. The next step illustrates the calculation procedure using Kazakhstan as an example.

For LCI:

For LLI:

For ITI:

The consolidated internal profile is then calculated as follows:

The Kazakhstan case shows that legal literacy is the strongest component, while institutional trust remains the main constraint. This means that legal and service accessibility are developing faster than public confidence in institutional impartiality and predictability.

To capture this imbalance, the study uses CPI, which measures structured civic participation, and LNI, which reflects distrust in the law and an orientation toward extralegal strategies. Together, these indicators show whether legal infrastructure is converted into legitimate civic engagement.

Official markers for 2024–2025 reveal different participation patterns. Kazakhstan relies mainly on Epetition.kz, Citizens’ Reception Centres, and video-based public services; Poland on public consultation and NGO support; Lithuania on court use, digital justice, and mediation; Ukraine on legal aid, the Ombudsperson network, and rights-based complaints; and Hungary remains constrained by limited civic space. Accordingly, CPI is measured through three components: voice and consultation, complaint and appeal channels, and mediation or other procedurally structured participation (Figure 6).

These results show that civic participation depends less on formal declarations than on functioning procedures. CPI was therefore also calculated for the beginning and end of the period to assess its dynamics (Figure 7).

These results show that CPI growth may have different meanings: in stable contexts, it reflects deeper participation procedures; in crisis conditions, it may indicate increased dependence on formal rights-protection channels. This distinction is especially relevant for Ukraine. The next step calculates the Legal Nihilism Index (LNI), which encompasses distrust in the law, an orientation toward extra-legal strategies, and weak procedural motivation (Figure 8).

Lithuania records the lowest LNI value (0.28), consistent with its strong LCI, LLI, and ITI profile. Poland shows a moderate level (0.39), while Kazakhstan and Ukraine differ despite similar CPI values: Ukraine has a higher LNI, indicating that legal participation may coexist with incomplete trust. Hungary records the highest LNI (0.56), reflecting weak civic space and erosion of a trust-based legal environment. These findings confirm that high civic participation does not necessarily imply low legal nihilism. CPI and LNI should therefore be analysed together, and LNI dynamics were calculated for the beginning and end of the period (Figure 9).

Hungary shows the most unfavourable LNI dynamics, indicating stronger alienation from the formal legal order. Ukraine also records an increase in LNI despite CPI growth, which confirms that greater use of legal channels does not necessarily reflect stronger trust in law. By contrast, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Lithuania show declining LNI values. This suggests that legal nihilism decreases where participation is supported by clearer procedures and a more credible institutional environment.

For the final comparison, the Civic-Legal Balance Coefficient (CPB) was calculated:

A higher CPB value indicates that civic participation prevails over legal nihilism, whereas a negative value indicates that alienation from the law is stronger than the readiness to act within formal legal frameworks.

The CPB results show that Lithuania has the strongest civic-legal balance, with CPI exceeding LNI by 0.49. Poland also demonstrates a stable positive balance (0.22), indicating that the recovery of participation procedures is accompanied by lower legal scepticism. A higher CPB value indicates that civic participation prevails over legal nihilism, whereas a negative value indicates that alienation from the law is stronger than the readiness to act within formal legal frameworks. Hungary is the only country with a negative CPB value (−0.14), meaning that legal nihilism exceeds institutional participation.

among institutional trust, the rule-of-law environment, and participation. In the next stage, the composite indicator CLPI was calculated:

This formula reflects the general logic of the study. Five indicators are included in the index in positive form because they strengthen civic-legal embeddedness. LNI is included through the expression (1 - LNI) because legal nihilism operates in the opposite direction. The higher it is, the lower the final CLPI value (Figure 11).

restorative model. Kazakhstan records 0.57, indicating a medium service-procedural pattern in which legal literacy and appeal channels support participation, while institutional trust remains moderate. Ukraine has a close value (0.55), but its model is mobilisationalcompensatory, as participation is driven mainly by demand for legal protection under weaker trust conditions. Hungary records the lowest CLPI value (0.45), showing a structurally imbalanced model marked by weak trust and high legal nihilism.

Overall, the GAP coefficient distinguishes balanced models from compensatory ones.

The Balance indicator confirms the same pattern more compactly. Lithuania shows the strongest positive balance, with a mean of positive factors of 0.77, LNI of 0.28, and Balance of 0.49. Poland also has stable positive balances of 0.61, 0.39, and 0.22, respectively. Kazakhstan occupies an intermediate position, with a mean positive value of 0.57, LNI of 0.44, and Balance of 0.13. Ukraine shows a weaker positive balance, with 0.55, 0.47, and 0.08. Hungary is the only case with a negative value: the mean of positive factors is 0.45, LNI is 0.56, and Balance equals −0.11. This means that legal nihilism outweighs the positive capacity of the legal environment only in Hungary.

These results show that stable civic participation depends on whether institutional resources are strong enough to offset legal scepticism. Where this margin is narrow, participation remains vulnerable and may become reactive. The next step, therefore, presents the full calculation for Kazakhstan.

Gap coefficient:

Balance of positive and negative factors:

The calculation shows that Kazakhstan has a medium but not fully stable civic-legal profile. Its strengths are legal literacy, expanded channels of appeal, and a moderately positive rule-of-law trajectory, while institutional trust remains the main constraint on stronger civic participation.

After constructing the sub-indices and CLPI, the study proceeded to hypothesis testing. Spearman’s rank correlation was used to assess relationships between the indices, while an exploratory regression model treated CPI as the dependent variable and LCI, ITI, RLEI,

and LNI as predictors. The purpose was to identify stable empirical associations within the comparative legal framework rather than to develop a complex causal model.

The correlation results confirm the internal coherence of the index model. Civic participation is most strongly associated with legal consciousness (LCI–CPI: rₛ = 0.975) and institutional trust (ITI–CPI: rₛ = 0.900). The rule-of-law environment also supports participation (RLEI–CPI: rₛ = 0.700), while legal literacy has a positive but weaker association with CPI (LLI–CPI: rₛ = 0.667).

The negative correlations clarify the constraining role of legal nihilism. LNI is strongly and negatively associated with civic participation (LNI–CPI: rₛ = −0.900). Legal literacy is moderately associated with lower nihilism (LLI–LNI: rₛ = −0.667), while institutional trust shows the strongest anti-nihilistic relationship (ITI–LNI: rₛ = −1.000). RLEI also has a very strong negative association with LNI (rₛ = −0.900).

H1 is empirically supported within the limits of the comparative dataset. The stronger the expression of legal consciousness and legal subjectivity, the higher the probability of stable

institutional participation. In this sense, civic participation should be understood as a practical manifestation of legal culture.

The second hypothesis addressed a broader question: whether differences in civic participation are shaped not only by formal legal norms but also by the quality of the institutional environment, particularly institutional trust, the rule-of-law environment, and legal nihilism. To test this, the following model was applied:

signs for RLEI and LNI reflect multicollinearity: stronger LCI usually coincides with higher ITI and RLEI and lower LNI. Substantively, CPI is most strongly linked to LCI, followed by ITI, while LNI remains a constraining factor.

H2 is therefore supported by the comparative results, although the exploratory character of the regression model requires cautious interpretation. Civic participation depends not only on formal legal procedures but also on institutional trust, the rule-of-law environment, and the reduction of legal nihilism. Legal consciousness remains the strongest explanatory factor when supported by reliable institutions.

H3 is supported in a qualified sense: legal literacy is associated with lower levels of legal nihilism, but this relationship becomes more meaningful when interpreted alongside institutional trust and procedural fairness. Legal literacy helps reduce legal nihilism, but its effect is stronger within a broader institutional environment characterised by trust, fairness, and procedural reliability. The results of hypothesis testing are summarised in Table 12.

These findings confirm the central argument of the study: civic participation is shaped by the combined effect of legal consciousness, legal literacy, institutional trust, and the quality of the rule-of-law environment.

Kazakhstan requires separate interpretation as the central case of the study and as an intermediate model. Its profile is transitional: the country demonstrates visible institutional and service-based improvements, but formal legal channels are expanding faster than trust in law as an impartial and effective mechanism.

Kazakhstan’s external profile confirms its intermediate but positive position. In the WJP Rule of Law Index, the country ranked 65th out of 142 states in 2024 and 66th out of 143 in 2025, while retaining fifth place among fifteenth countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Procedural accessibility also expanded in 2024 through 137 Citizens’ Reception Centres, eighty video-based public services, and the launch of Epetition.kz. The OECD Public Governance Scan of Kazakhstan further indicates that public administration reforms continue but require stronger coordination and governance quality.

The Kazakhstani case is neither stagnant nor crisis-driven. Externally, it shows moderate ruleof-law improvement, while procedurally it demonstrates broader access to appeal channels and public services. However, this progress remains uneven: digital and service-based accessibility is developing faster than trust-based and rights-oriented interaction with law.

Kazakhstan, therefore, represents a medium service-procedural model of civic-legal embeddedness. Its internal profile includes LCI = 0.58, indicating moderately expressed legal consciousness; LLI = 0.67, the strongest component, reflecting developed legal literacy and procedural accessibility; ITI = 0.50, showing that institutional trust remains the main constraint; CPI = 0.56, indicating participation above the mid-level; LNI = 0.44, meaning that legal nihilism remains visible; RLEI = 0.53, reflecting a moderately favourable external legal environment; and CLPI = 0.57, placing Kazakhstan within the medium type of civic-legal embeddedness.

The diagnostic coefficients confirm this transitional profile. GAP equals 0.02, showing that legal preparedness only slightly exceeds actual participation. Balance equals 0.13, indicating that positive institutional resources still outweigh legal nihilism, although the margin remains limited. Thus, Kazakhstan’s main challenge is not the absence of formal legal mechanisms, but their incomplete conversion into public engagement and civic-legal confidence.

In comparative terms, Kazakhstan represents a medium, transitional, service-procedural model of civic-legal embeddedness. Its development is supported by relatively strong LLI, a growing CPI, and a moderate CLPI, but is constrained by weaker ITI and a still-visible LNI. Further progress will depend on whether existing channels of appeal, digital access, and public services are perceived by citizens as fair, predictable, and rights-protective.

Lithuania represents a balanced high-level model in which all major indices are coherent and no substantial internal imbalance is observed. Poland reflects a restorative model, marked by stronger participation and declining legal nihilism, although institutional trust remains less stable. Kazakhstan demonstrates a service-procedural transitional model: its strengths are relatively high LLI and expanding channels of recourse, while the main constraint is moderate ITI and incomplete trust-based conversion. Ukraine represents a mobilisational-compensatory model, where legal mobilisation and legal aid sustain participation under crisis pressure, but participation outpaces the trust base. Hungary shows a structurally imbalanced model, with high LNI, weak civic space, and the most vulnerable overall profile.

The comparative analysis shows that cross-country differences are shaped by the interaction of legal culture, institutional trust, legal literacy, and civic participation rather than by a single variable. The most stable models emerge where these dimensions develop coherently.

To outline the practical implications of the findings, the study uses a baseline scenario for CLPI dynamics in 2026–2030. The scenario is illustrative rather than deterministic and is based on the observed relationship between LCI, ITI, LLI, RLEI, CPI, and LNI.

The forecast indicates the strongest five-year CLPI growth potential in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, although through different mechanisms. In Kazakhstan, this potential rests on an established service-procedural foundation, where stronger institutional trust could produce a significant multiplier effect. In Ukraine, growth depends more directly on broader institutional stabilisation. Poland is likely to continue its restorative trajectory, Lithuania to retain its leading position with moderate growth, and Hungary to improve more slowly due to persistent legal scepticism.

For Kazakhstan, the baseline values are CLPI = 0.57, LLI = 0.67, ITI = 0.50, and LNI = 0.44. Future progress, therefore, depends less on expanding basic infrastructure and more on increasing institutional trust and reducing legal nihilism. Under the baseline scenario, LLI is expected to grow by 0.01–0.02 annually, ITI by 0.02–0.03, while LNI is projected to decline by 0.01–0.02 annually (Figure 12).

The model suggests that by 2030, Kazakhstan may reach CLPI ≈ 0.66, moving from a medium transitional profile toward a more stable and moderately high model. This improvement would depend less on expanding procedures than on strengthening institutional trust (ITI) and reducing legal nihilism (LNI).

Kazakhstan’s main reserve for growth, therefore, lies in converting its existing legal and service infrastructure into trust-supported participation. If service-procedural modernisation is accompanied by greater impartiality, accountability, and predictability, the country can substantially strengthen its civic-legal embeddedness over the next five years.

The broader conclusion is that legal culture becomes a real driver of civic participation only when supported by institutional trust, an intelligible legal environment, and low legal nihilism. For Kazakhstan, future progress depends not on multiplying channels of recourse but on increasing the trust-based and procedural credibility of law.

5 DISCUSSION

The findings show that legal culture should be understood not as an abstract value but as an institutional and behavioural mechanism that shapes civic participation. The comparison of Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary demonstrates that formal rights and procedures alone do not ensure stable inclusion in the legal sphere. What matters is whether law is perceived as legitimate, fair, intelligible, and practically effective. In this respect, legal consciousness emerges as the strongest predictor of participation, while institutional trust acts as a key condition that both supports participation and reduces legal nihilism. Legal literacy also contributes to this process, but its effect is more limited when it is not reinforced by trust and procedural credibility.

The country comparison reveals distinct models of civic-legal embeddedness. Lithuania shows the most balanced profile; Poland, a restorative one; Ukraine, a mobilisationalcompensatory one; and Hungary, a structurally imbalanced one. Kazakhstan occupies an intermediate, service-procedural transitional position. Its main strength lies in expanding legal literacy, procedural accessibility, and channels of appeal. Its main limitation is the slower development of trust in institutions. This means that Kazakhstan’s further progress depends less on creating additional formal procedures than on making existing ones more impartial, reliable, and socially credible.

6 CONCLUSION

The study shows that civic participation in post-socialist legal systems cannot be explained by the mere existence of rights and procedures. It is more accurately understood as the outcome of several interrelated conditions: legal consciousness, legal literacy, institutional trust, legal nihilism, and the quality of the rule-of-law environment. The comparative results do not establish strict causal relationships, but they indicate stable associations between these dimensions within the selected country sample.

The strongest and most consistent association was observed between legal consciousness and civic participation. Institutional trust also proved closely linked to participation and lower levels of legal nihilism. Legal literacy contributes to this process, but its effect is limited when citizens do not perceive institutions as impartial, predictable, and procedurally fair. This means that legal culture should not be reduced to knowledge of legal norms. It also includes legal subjectivity, procedural intelligibility, trust in institutions, readiness to use formal mechanisms, and reduced reliance on extra-legal strategies.

The comparison of Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary reveals several models of civic-legal embeddedness. Lithuania represents the most balanced configuration, where legal culture, institutional trust, and participation reinforce one another. Poland reflects a restorative model, in which participation mechanisms have strengthened, although the trust dimension remains less stable. Ukraine demonstrates a mobilisationalcompensatory pattern, where formal legal channels remain important under crisis pressure. Hungary shows the clearest structural imbalance, combining weaker participation with higher levels of legal nihilism and lower levels of institutional trust.

Kazakhstan occupies an intermediate service-procedural position. Its main strength lies in legal literacy, procedural accessibility, and the expansion of recourse channels, while its main limitation remains the moderate level of institutional trust. The Kazakhstani case, therefore, suggests that further progress depends less on multiplying formal instruments of participation and more on converting existing legal infrastructure into fair, predictable, and trust-based mechanisms.

The practical implication is that transitional legal systems should not treat civic participation as a purely procedural outcome. Stronger results are more likely when legal education, accessible legal information, institutional accountability, procedural fairness, and effective feedback mechanisms develop together. For Kazakhstan, this means that the next stage of legal policy should focus on strengthening the credibility of existing channels of appeal, improving the predictability of enforcement, and deepening citizens’ experience of law as an impartial and socially reliable framework.

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