Political Factors of the Choice of Economic Strategy in the Republic of Belarus

The political regime in Belarus can be called exceptional in a certain way. Developing within the framework of a European state, it refers to such a form of immature authoritarian regimes as a personalist regime, while having a non-resource economy.Today, there are a great many studies that describe in detail the characteristics of economic systems and business development in authoritarian and transitional regimes, however, most of them explore countries with economies linked to the export of natural resources. The study of the business environment of the Republic of Belarus is of particular interest: the political regime is personalistic, while the economy does not depend on the export of natural resources. The peculiarity of the Belarusian case is the fact that the authorities are engaged in discrediting the business in order to increase loyalty to the existing regime.Analyzing a large amount of literature from classical comparative political science that studies authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, their categories and types, we conclude that there is no single logic of action in the behavior of authoritarian leaders. In this regard, it is particularly interesting to understand how environmental factors influence the behaviour of an autocrat in a still little-studied Belarusian case and describe the logic of his actions. Keywords: Entrepreneurial environment of Belarus, non-resource personalistic regime, political regime of the Republic of Belarus, expert interviews, market of intellectual services, IT sphere of Belarus, personalistic regimes, logic of making state decisions in authoritarian regimes