Aleksandar Lukashenko - Slobodan Milosevic: A comparison

Abstract

The first period of Milošević's rule, dominated by plebiscitary-populist legitimacy, bears an uncanny resemblance to the rule of Napoleon III. But there is also one contemporary whose regime can also be taken for a close cousin of Milošević's - the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Like Milošević Lukashenko also represents a relict of dogmatic communism. Lukashenko, too used populism in his rise to power. And though this populism had no nationalist traits, its basic idea also rested on a kind of anti-bureaucratic revolution - the struggle against corruption. Lukashenko's rise, too, was accompanied by support or silent passivity of the strategic elites. He, too, acted in conditions with weakened social and political institutions. He, too, enjoyed (and still largely enjoys) support from the population. As soon as he gained power, he, too, started reorganizing the main political institutions according to his own measure. He, too, created an authoritarian system of personal power, with a dependent and controlled political elite. He, too, first stopped privatization, then annulled its previous results, taking control of economic resources and making the economic elite dependent on the power center. It can be said for his regime as well, that the longer it lasts, the harder it will be for the country to turn from an authoritarian to a democratic system afterwards. In the structural sense, the histories of Milošević's and Lukashenko's regimes are the same - a history of an ambitious agent taking advantage of a historically rare occasion, with weakened political institutions and strategic elites, to fundamentally influence the shaping of social structures. And they took advantage of this occasion, to the disadvantage and sorrow of their own people.