ABSTRACT
Belarus stipulated the provisional character of the punishment in the 1994 Constitution, enjoys a moderate crime rate, is ethnically homogeneous and stable, and was promised Council of Europe (CoE) membership and rapprochement with the European Union (EU) for abolishing the death penalty. This chapter attempts to explain why the abolition effort failed. It argues that the failure of the abolition effort in Belarus is a consequence of the weak European linkage and leverage in Belarus, and in particular of the deliberate European policy of isolation. The chapter shows that the EU's tendency to connect rewards to performance on several human rights and political issues at once increases the costs of Belarus's compliance. The Criminal Code of Belarus provides for capital punishment for 12 offences during peacetime and an additional two offences during wartime, and specifies the temporary nature of capital punishment. Schimmelfennig shows that adopting liberal norms becomes too costly for authoritarian governments if it endangers their grip on power.
