CONTINUITY AND CONSOLIDATION OF AUTHORITARIAN RULE IN BELARUS: POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN 2024–2025
Igor Kotler
In 2024 to 2025, Belarus exhibits the characteristics of a consolidated authoritarian system in which executive dominance is underwritten by a fully synchronized coercive and administrative apparatus. The post 2020 cycle of contentious politics has yielded a restructuring of the public sphere through legal restriction, institutional cooptation, and routinized repression. Core state organs, including the security services, prosecutorial bodies, courts, and state aligned media, operate in mutually reinforcing fashion to deter mobilization and narrow the boundaries of permissible expression. The result is a governance environment defined by rule by law rather than rule of law, limited associational autonomy, and a persistent chilling effect that substitutes compliance for participation and conformity for deliberation.
The electoral calendar in 2025 served primarily as an instrument of regime maintenance rather than as a mechanism of representation. Candidate exclusion, party deregistration, the criminalization of oppositional activity under expansive extremism provisions, and restrictions on observation collectively transformed elections into a ritualized demonstration of incumbency rather than a contest over policy or leadership. This configuration deepened the erosion of political pluralism and further displaced independent media and civil society from the domestic arena. At the same time, growing political and economic reliance on Russia has reinforced the regime’s capacity to withstand external pressure, entrenching a trajectory marked by intensified coercion, institutional stagnation, and the continuing diminution of fundamental rights and freedoms.
