Authoritarian Cooptation of Civil Society: The Case of Belarus

In Belarus, a vibrant civil society coexisted for the better part of the past decade with a firmly entrenched autocracy in a depoliticised cooptation mode. Through cooptation, the energy of civil society was channelled from representing a threat to the regime into being its resource. However, the capacity developed by civil society during this period of political inactivity was quickly redeployed for political purposes at the junction of economic crisis, the regime’s failure to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. After the 2020 mass protests, in which civil society played a pivotal role, the regime’s attitude to civil society turned to suppression and hostility.