This chapter examines the trajectory of six competitive authoritarian regimes that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. By 2008, two patterns had emerged. First, with the exception of Ukraine, competitive authoritarian regimes in the former Soviet Union failed to democratize. Second, whereas regimes broke down repeatedly in some countries (Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine), they were relatively stable in others (Armenia, Russia, and post-1994 Belarus). This chapter explains these outcomes.

The recent literature on regime change in the former Soviet Union has been dominated by two approaches: those that focus on constitutional design and, more recently, those that focus on opposition tactics and mobilization. The fall of communism generated a vast literature exploring the effects of institutional design. For example, scholars linked presidentialism or semi-presidentialism to democratic failure in the region. Our analysis highlights two problems with this approach. First, as Gerald Easter shows, presidential power is often a product, rather than a cause, of authoritarianism. In Russia and Belarus, for example, super-presidentialist constitutions were imposed after Boris Yeltsin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka had suppressed parliament. More generally, constitutions often did not constrain politicians' behavior sufficiently to determine regime outcomes. As the case studies show, constitutional rules such as executive term limits were frequently changed (Belarus in 2004), sidestepped (Ukraine in 2003–2004), or divorced from de facto power distributions (Russia in 2008).