Energy policy in Belarus: authoritarian resilience, social contracts, and patronage in a post-Soviet environment

This paper explores energy policy in Belarus during the Presidency of Aleksander Lukashenka (1994–present), focusing on his adroit use of revenues produced by that sector of the economy to secure the loyalty of his political base and the country’s elites. With a valuable energy infrastructure (pipelines and refineries) inherited from the Soviet period and subsidized commodity imports from Russia, Lukashenka has taken advantage of price differentials, transit fees, taxes, and re-exports to generate rents that are then redistributed among domestic actors, enhancing the popularity of the incumbent and the furtherance of the social contract obtaining there. This is contrasted with the case of neighboring Ukraine, where the same geographic energy legacy resulted instead in an era of rampant corruption and political instability.