‘Why protest now?’ Changing discourses within the Belarusian political opposition and the enabling of protest after the 2020 Belarusian presidential election

Abstract

In the wake of the mass protests in Belarus following the 2020 presidential election, this thesis seeks to investigate how discursive mobilisation happens in authoritarian contexts, in turn leading to protest behaviour. To answer the two-fold research question, this study investigates the discursive representations within the Belarusian political opposition between 2001 and 2020. More specifically, this thesis examines the discourses of the opposition leaders that participated in the five Belarusian presidential elections of 2001, 2006, 2010, 2015 and 2020, analysing the discourses of the five opposition leaders: Vladimir Goncharik (2001), Aleksander Milnkevich (2006), Andrei Sannikov (2010), Tatsiana Korotkevich (2015) and Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya (2020). Conducting a poststructuralist discourse analysis using Lene Hansen’s (2006) framework of identity construction, the thesis found that all candidates apart from one candidate forwarded a discourse of democratization in Belarus. Tsikhanovskaya, however, was unique in her case as her discourse was based on identification between her and the Belarusian people through her emphasis on her role as a ‘mother, wife, and simple Belarusian’. In turn, this identification made protest behaviour seem legitimate and a possible course of action, thus enabling the 2020 protests in Belarus.