My current research examines the everyday nationalism of electoral authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet Eurasia. After nationalist mobilization dismantled the Soviet Union in 1991, only the Baltic states underwent thorough democratization. The remaining post-Soviet states came to occupy nebulous half-way houses between democracy and authoritarianism or became fully autocratic. Where ballot boxes are stuffed or otherwise shut down, I argue that nationalist domestication constitutes a potent force that cultivates public support for authoritarian rule and replaces popular sovereignty with regime legitimacy. The investigation of everyday nationalism in Eurasia complements the growing literature on hybrid regimes in political science and draws attention to an important and under-studied dimension of authoritarian politics: why citizens accept non-democratic rule. The “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan were hailed as a second chance at democratization in the region, though often overlooked is that authoritarian incumbents still received much support. Similarly, the popularity of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Alexander Lukashenka in Belarus does not mean that citizens are merely duped or coerced where electoral revolutions have not occurred. Rather, they are genuinely viewed as legitimate by substantial portions of the population. A focus on everyday nationalism provides clues to the nature of this success, as well as the vulnerabilities of hybrid regimes—whether to internal defections among elites or opposition attempts to transform ritualized electoral participation into social resistance.
