ABSTRACT
The 2006 presidential election in Belarus mobilized a large cross-section of society to protest against the Lukashenko regime. Although unprecedented, the mass mobilization was short-lived, failing to develop into another kind of coloured revolution in the region. The key to our understanding of the endurance of Lukashenko’s regime seems to lie in its internal environment, and notably, in the seemingly contradictory feature of the Belarusian electorate. Not only do they fully identify with the president, thus effectively legitimizing his politics and policies; they also do so knowingly, through their strategic learning of how to survive and even thrive under Lukashenko’s regime. This type of learning, however, may not necessarily lead to a critical reflection of the regime’s malpractice, and thus is unlikely to challenge its foundations.
