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I’ve seen a few tweets framing protest in Belarus as a the end of a post-Soviet social contract where people gave up democratic representation for the stability of authoritarianism. People say this about Russians and Putin all the time. Let us recall, it’s garbage: a thread. /1
This may be obvious but a social contract is an abstraction. No moment occurred where this “deal” was accepted. There was no mutual agreement among Belorussians about it. /2
Even if you want to believe that Luka winning the country’s first election in 1994 established a social contract, no one currently younger than 44 voted in that election—around 5.5mil people, ~60% of the population. /3
Instead of a social contract, we should be talking about performance legitimacy: is basic governance provided? Are there jobs? Does the economy function? Along with repression, this is the backbone of many modern authoritarian regimes, but esp in the former Soviet Union. /4
When you lose the economy and the provision of basic health and safety, people have no reason to tolerate authoritarianism and they have little to lose. In Belarus, people have been more likely to protest over econ issues like taxes than politics. /5
Lukashenka has done worse lately at taking care of people’s needs. Check out this polling info from January. The mishandling of COVID, which the state couldn’t afford, and the pandemic's economic fallout has certainly made this worse. /6 https://twitter.com/Toal_CritGeo/status/1294311119964823553
For some recent backgrounder Belarus’s economic problems check out /7 https://pism.pl/publications/Economic_Challenges_for_Belarus#:~:text=Economic%20Challenges%20for%20Belarus&text=Overdependence%20on%20cheap%20Russian%20energy,collapse%20of%20the%20Belarusian%20economy.
Lukashenka’s problems are not the result of a reevaluation of the social contract. A social contract never existed—that’s the point of regular elections. The state has been failing to govern well enough to keep people on their couches. /end
