Political techniques of authoritarian regimes: from natural to artificial

photo by EuroBelarus Information Service

Authoritarian regimes at the post-Soviet area are artificially manipulating the processes that are going on in the society, thus creating real competition for more natural democracies.

The conference “Political techniques in modern authoritarian regimes as a challenge to transformation” took place on November 27 in Minsk and gathered participants from different post-Soviet countries.

The organizers of the event are the Center for European Transformation (Belarus) with the support of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus” (Belarus, Lithuania), and Heinrich Boell Foundation (Germany).

The conference continued the series of discussions of concept, theoretical, and practical issues of political changes of the post-Communist area during the last quarter of the 20^th century. Annual conferences of the Center for European Transformation (CET) are aimed at defining fundamental problems and deepening the understanding of reasons of a number of post-Soviet countries’ and nations’ resistance to transformation processes in the 21th century.

This time the conversation touched upon political techniques in modern authoritarian regimes as a challenge to democratic transformations. “Today we all see that authoritarian techniques went on a new development spiral, - noted Andrei Yahorau, the head of the Center for European Transformation. – It is both related to the processes that are now happening in Russia as well as to the broader context of what is happening in the region, including the European Union”.

According to him, the wave of democratization that has started in the USSR in 1989 has basically stopped now. “In a way an authoritarian revenge is taking place. Modern authoritarianism is one of the types of political structures and is a competitive system for modern democracies”, - the political scientist said.

Yahorau assumes that we need to introduce the categories of artificial and natural. “Everything that is happening in the authoritarian regimes is formed artificially and is built on the natural processes, which characterize modern state of the world. Those transformations that have been associated with the new pattern of information consumption, information flow, a new type of man, are formed in these conditions with a new type of economy, with the general process of globalization, and the increasing interdependence of nations. This global context problematizes numerous information issues of democracies’ existence as such. We see a set of artificially-natural processes, which set the context for political techniques of modern authoritarian regimes”, - he said.

Uladzimir Matskevich, methodologist and philosopher, the head of the Board of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus”, presented a report “Political techniques in modern authoritarian regimes as a challenge to transformation”, where he noted that artificial regulation of political and social processes by philosophers and methodologists of the 20^th century was considered to be as an attribute of totalitarianism and authoritarianism; whereas changes in the politics and society in the West were seen as natural processes. Politics and social changes in the countries of the former USSR after the downfall of the Communist regime were seen just as natural. However, as Uladzimir Matskevich noted, after the downfall of the regime, politics in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine was built artificially, or technologically.

In his report “Authoritarianism of political scene and center of attraction” philosopher and professor of Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas) Gintautas Mažeikis emphasized that modern propaganda together with the creative industries and developed media market, which serve it, is able to “promote” authoritarian leaders (“beacons”) – centers of attraction outside territorial and administrative space without the support of law-enforcement bodies and repressions. In result, “new media regime supporters get the symbolic capital of popularity and build new virtual and hyperreal fields of the sovereign”.

David Oganesyan, the head of the Armenian Center for Civilization and Cultural Studies, methodologist and orientalist, studied interconnection and influence of value systems, cultural codes, and civilization norms and institutes in his report “Information flows and society”.

Russian media-expert and political scientist Ivan Sukhy presented a report “Vassal political culture as a basis for political techniques of Russian authorities”, where he informed that the main goal of political techniques from the point of view of authorities is a clear positioning of a candidate as a part of power, its embodiment in a particular neighborhood, which ensure victory by a wide margin over any opposition candidates. Whereas positioning as an opposition candidate in most cases is a guarantee of failure, regardless of the candidate and its campaign.

Andrei Yahorau, the director of the “Centre for European Transformation”, presented a report “Belarusian authoritarianism as a modern model of political structure”.

A representative of the Armenian-based Partnership Eurasia Foundation Mikael Oganesyan in his report “Authoritarian system of Armenia: basic features and practice” noted that having been trying to keep the balance between Russian and the West, his country cannot integrate in one system only; because of that, integration is changing from the conscious choice to compulsion.

Sergej Sumlenny, the head of the Heinrich Boell Foundation Representative Office in Ukraine, stated that the Crimea’s experience is important for the common European stability in other conflict zones. He presented a report “Central European security after the Crimea”. According to Sergej Sumlenny, there is quite a number of states at the European territory in which radical politicians don’t mind warming up nationalistic wishes of borders’ redivision. Thus, borders in Central and Eastern Europe that have recently seemed to be unshakable can be reconsidered by radical politicians within the borders before the World War I and even II.

Elena Ostanina, journalist and media-researcher, who has recently moved from Russian to Ukraine, in the report “Spreading influence: Russian information-political campaign abroad” presented mechanisms of dissemination of Russian influence in Europe, political goals of creating a single anti-democratic and authoritarian front, as well as financial and information mechanisms of this phenomena.

The conference was taking place in the form of discussion rather than reports. The participants of the conference tried to go deeper in the questions that experts presented to the audience. According to Sergej Sumlenny, the aim of the conference was to understand “what processes are going on in the modern societies, what world are we living in and how to make it better”.