Anti-opposition crackdowns and protest: the case of Belarus, 2000–2019

This article uses a comparison with Ukraine to investigate why protests against Lukashenka in 2020 failed to oust the Belarusian dictator. First, in contrast to his counterparts in Ukraine, Lukashenka successfully built new authoritarian economic and coercive institutions in the 1990s that raised the costs of opposition activity and reduced challengers’ access to business support. Second, Belarus has lacked a strong national identity that was critical to opposition success in Ukraine. In Ukraine, relatively powerful anti-Russian nationalism repeatedly motivated a core group of anti-incumbent activists and facilitated the opposition’s control over local power structures that supported protest activities at critical moments. In Belarus, weak national identity and consequent dearth of committed activists in national government institutions in the 1990s hampered efforts to challenge Lukashenka’s consolidation of authoritarian power. In addition, weaker national identity undermined the capacity of opposition forces to control local power structures that might have aided opposition protest.

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why the 2020 Belarusian Protests Failed to Oust Lukashenka

Way,

Tolvin

2023

“…Social science scholarship that has focused specifically on what distinguishes protesters from the non-protesting populationor put otherwise, what correlates with and aids in the mobilization of individuals to join in a protest eventpoints to six broad categories of characteristics: (1) socio-demographic variables and biographical availability, (2) past protest experience, (3) network embeddedness and perceptions of protest efficacy, (4) collective identities bounded by common grievances and claims, (5) shared political dispositions and claims, and ( 6) access to information and patterns of media consumption. While research on competitive authoritarian, autocratic, and democratizing contextsincluding the post-communist regionhas suggested that the nature and level of repression, access to types of information (and media sources), and the types of organizations and social networks that ordinary people may or may not be imbedded in might vary, the theoretical propositions behind mobilization tend to follow the same patterns (Aouragh and Alexander 2011;Auyero and Moran 2007;D'Andrea 2014;De Vogel 2022;Fu 2017;Greene 2014;Haciyakupoglu and Zhang 2015;Landolt and Kubicek 2013;Onuch 2014a;Robertson 2004Robertson , 2007Robertson , 2009Robertson , 2010Smyth 2018Smyth , 2020Ting 2020;Tucker 2007;Tufekci 2017;Weiss 2014). We thus expect to find distinct patterns and statistically significant variation between protesters and non-protesters in Belarus along the lines listed above.…”

Section: Mass Mobilization In Belarus: Flower Tractor Telegram [R]evo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This geographical spread of the protests was rather unexpected in Belarus, as most past protest events were typically concentrated in the capital and a handful of other major cities. In reaction to these initial contentious episodes, Belarusian security forces responded with wholesale violent repression across multiple locations and, in the first few days, arrested over 7,000 people and disrupted the internet in the whole country (De Vogel 2022; Onuch and Sasse 2022b; Shotter and Seddon 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flowers, Tractors, & Telegram: Who are the Protesters in Belarus?: A Survey Based Assessment of Anti-Lukashenka Protest Participants

Onuch

Sasse

Michiels

2023

Who are the people who, in the face of extreme repression, unexpectedly take to the streets en masse in an authoritarian state? This article aims to answer this question with reference to the case of the Belarusian anti-Lukashenka mass mobilization of 2020. It employs unique data from an original online protest survey among citizens of Belarus who were 18 or older and residing in the country at the time of the protests (Onuch et. al.; MOBILISE 2020 & 2021; n = 17,174), fielded August 18, 2020–January 29, 2021.2 This survey was designed to: (a) capture as many protesters as possible; and (b) capture a large enough sample of non-protesters as a comparative reference group enabling us to better understand how different anti-Lukashenka protesters (n = 11,719) were from non-protesters (n = 5,455). Guided by theoretical and empirical expectations of contentious politics scholarship, we first provide descriptive statistics about the socio-demographic characteristics of the protesters, self-reported protest grievances and claims, and median protester preferences on a range of attitudes and policies. This portrait of the protesters is followed up by regression analysis to test whether these patterns hold at a statistically significant level when comparing protesters and non-protesters.

“…It dealt particularly harshly with the opposition after each presidential election (Ash 2015). In particular, the 2010 crackdown led to fragmentation and a near-total failure of coordination within the opposition, the demobilization of socioeconomic protest activities, and the increasing politicization of the scarce protest events in subsequent years (de Vogel 2022). On the other hand, the regime had softened its initially hostile attitude toward the emerging civil society over the last couple of years, beginning to tolerate and even encourage “constructive” nonpolitical activities.…”

Section: Regime and Opposition On The Eve Of The 2020 Presidential El...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Sense of a Surprise: Perspectives on the 2020 “Belarusian Revolution”

Stykow¹

2022

Drawing on three theoretical perspectives—“protest-democracy,” “authoritarian/patronal regime dynamics,” and “contentious politics”—developed in the study of popular protests in post-Soviet electoral autocracies, this article argues, first, that the 2020 postelection mobilization in Belarus was not to be expected for both structural and agency-related reasons. Second, by the summer of 2020, the political opportunity structure had opened up because of contingent choices by individual actors, with Alyaksandr Lukashenka committing several major mistakes, particularly on pandemic (non)control and the administration of the upcoming presidential election, and political newcomers taking on the role of challenging him. After the election, mass mobilization unfolded in two waves triggered by two additional regime mistakes: blatant electoral fraud and excessive repression. These mistakes served as focal points for spontaneous coordination, substituting for the deliberate “engineering” of protest by an organized opposition typical of the post-Soviet color revolutions. Third, Lukashenka survived in office because popular protests did not lead to elite defection. Instead, he was able to secure the loyalty of elites because he avoided gross blunders against both regime insiders and Russia. The case of Belarus indicates that hegemonic-authoritarian regimes are more vulnerable to mistakes by incumbents than to challenges from below and outside the regime.