Alla Leukavets

Research Area 5

Stay at EEGA: February – May 2021

Research Project: Elections and Protest Movements in Non-democratic Regimes: Cementing Stability or Triggering Change?

Alla Leukavets is a Policy Analyst at the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies in Minsk, Belarus. She holds a PhD in political science from Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences focusing on integration policy of Belarus and Ukraine vis-à-vis the EU and Russia. In addition, Alla Leukavets has recently finished a post-doc programme in electoral studies at the University of Tartu and has completed several traineeships, inter alia, at the European Parliament in Brussels and the UK Parliament in London. Alla Leukavets specializes in domestic and foreign policy of Belarus and other Eastern Partnership countries, Eurasian integration, and elections in non-democratic regimes. She has published in, among other outlets, New Perspectives, Ibidem Verlag, Caucasus Survey, Belarus Digest and Russian Analytical Digest.

Alla Leukavets‘ research project „Elections and Protest Movements in Non-democratic Regimes: Cementing Stability or Triggering Change?“ focuses on functions of elections in authoritarian regimes, the strategies and interests of various stakeholders as well as the menu of electoral manipulations based on the case study of 2020 presidential elections in Belarus and post-electoral protests.

The relevance of this study is increased by the overall lack of scientific attention devoted to comprehensive analysis of Belarus’ domestic politics and, in particular, its electoral processes. Most of the existing research on elections in Belarus recognises the failure of elections to correspond to international standards, but it does not go deep enough to uncover the nuanced aspects of the electoral processes there.  The proposed study aims to close this research gap and contribute to developing three strands of scholarship: on the micro-dynamics of authoritarian elections, electoral integrity in non-democratic regimes as well as theories of political regime change.