Protest Coalitions' Dynamics in Armenia (2016-2018)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the comparison of two protest coalitions in Armenia: the coalition of Sasna Tsrer armed group supporters in 2016 and the coalition that arose around Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power as a result of the protests of April and May 2018. It was shown that the success of the protests led by Pashinyan can be explained by the fact that they, in contrast to the supporters of Sasna Crer, were less framed by the counter-statist understanding of the nation. It is also shown that the Pashinyan coalition, in contrast to the coalition of supporters of Sasna Tsrer, was not liberal-natiмonalist, but rather liberal-bureaucratic. This distinction turned out to be critical, since it made it possible to avoid reproducing the situation of "double powerlessness" - the polarization of public controversy between the adherents of the statist and counter-statist frames of the Armenian nation both parts having no sufficient resources to win.

Keywords

• armenia
• nationalism
• protests
• revolution
• nikol pashinyan