The Impact of Force Structures and the Army on Maintaining the Regime in Belarus

Abstract The article analyzes how the army and other Belarusian institutions constituting the architecture of security can make an impact on the stability of the regime. Two problematic issues are raised. The first issue deals with how the force structure system and its formal and informal control, management and definition of short-and medium-term functions determine the stability of the Belarusian regime. The second issue poses the question whether the centralization of internal and army management, definition of control and functions is the decisive factor or militarization. Attention is paid to institutional analysis. Attempts are made to reveal how and why functions of the army and security institutions are defined, which of them are formal and which are informal, and what informal institutions or organizations contribute to the efforts of formal institutions to ensure the stability of the regime.