Parliamentary Daydreams in Belarus: When the Rubber-Stamp Really is Just a Rubber-Stamp

Abstract

As social scientists and political observers, we tend to have a bias towards analyzing events when they produce unusual results or have outcomes that interact dynamically with other social and political processes and institutions. Assigning importance to a given subject of interest is a natural thing, and reassessing under-appreciated political institutions is a particular concern of many comparative political scientists. Scholarship on how authoritarian parliaments can ‘matter’ in different ways grows every year – my own ongoing dissertation research very much so included. So, what do we do when the rubber-stamp really does seem to be a rubber-stamp? We explore the Belarusian case here.

Keywords: Authoritarianism, Belarus, Post-Soviet Space