Resilient Autocrats: Negotiation vs. Repression in War and Rebellion in Post-Soviet Eurasia

This article examines how authoritarian leaders manage intragovernmental conflict following major shocks. Using comparative process tracing and counterfactual analysis, it analyzes Russia (Putin), Kazakhstan (Tokayev), and Belarus (Lukashenko). The argument is that personalist leaders remain constrained by coalition maintenance and, when feasible, employ intra‑regime bargaining and policy accommodation rather than exclusive reliance on repression. Pre‑2022 Russia and post‑January 2022 Kazakhstan displayed negotiated adjustments that mitigated elite defection risks; post‑2020 Belarus, by contrast, relied on comprehensive repression and external patronage, producing dependence and low domestic maneuverability. The findings clarify how regime type, temporal evolution, and external support condition the payoffs to negotiation versus coercion, contributing to research on authoritarian power‑sharing and crisis management.

Continue reading the article by Mikhail Troitskiy in Negotiation Journal.