Building an authoritarian regime: strategies for autocratisation and resistance in Belarus and Slovakia

The article explores the conditions under which incumbent leaders in initially competitivepolitical systems manage to offset democratic resistance and establish an authoritarian regime.Autocratisation – the transition from a competitive political system to a regime dominatedby a single political force – is a challenging effort for an incumbent and involves interventionsin three ‘arenas’ to achieve (a) public legitimation, (b) institutional reforms increasing politicalrepression and (c) mass-scale co-optation. Focusing on Slovakia and Belarus in the 1990s, whereautocratisation efforts failed and succeeded respectively, the article finds that co-optation plays acatalytic role in helping the incumbent pass institutional reforms and escalate repression withoutrisking de-legitimation. In Belarus, co-optation engulfed society and the economy whereas, inSlovakia, a socioeconomic environment with greater autonomy from government limited thescope for co-optation. The Slovak opposition was able to find the resources and supportersnecessary to fight back against the incumbent.