Abstract

Abstract:

This article is devoted to the comparison of two Armenian protest coalitions: the 2016 coalition of Sasna Tsrer supporters and Nikol Pashinyan's My Step coalition of 2018. The analysis shows that Pashinyan's coalition, unlike the coalition of Sasna Tsrer supporters, was not a liberal-nationalist alliance, but rather a liberal-bureaucratic one. This difference turns out to be crucial, as the Sasna Tsrer polemic was heavily polarized by the clash between the statist and counter-statist frames of the Armenian nation, with none of the sides possessing enough symbolic or political resources to win. The generally successful outcome of Pashinyan's protest can thus be explained by the fact that it was not so strongly framed by a counter-statist understanding of the Armenian nation.

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