Why does authoritarian rule persist in the Eastern European neighbourhood despite the advances of democracy brought by the ‘colour revolutions’ in Eastern Europe? The aim of this paper is to investigate how and when external actors are able to influence authoritarian rule in the Eastern European neighbourhood. What are the conditions under which authoritarian regimes in the region survive, reform or breakdown when faced with policies of external actors that either support democratization (the EU in particular) or de facto encourage authoritarianism (Russia in particular)? To achieve this, the paper uses a theoretical framework that can be applied to the policies of both actors that support democracy and those that back authoritarian regimes. It derives five distinct mechanisms of external influence from different literatures that have so far remained fragmented and disengaged form one another - coercion, sanctions, conditionality, socialisation and diffusion of ideas. Through a controlled comparison of defiant (Belarus), reforming (Armenia) and collapsing authoritarian regimes (Ukraine), the paper specifies the pathways through which these five external mechanisms have influenced the domestic patterns of political change or non-change in Eastern Europe.
