Political representation in autocratic regimes. How does Svietlana Tsikhanouskaya claim to be a representative of the Belarusian people's will towards the EU? Belarus case study.

The topic of this research paper is the political representation in autocratic regimes. For this, I ask the main research question: How does Svietlana Tsikhanouskaya claim to be a representative of the Belarusian people’s will towards the EU? I answer the research question through a case study of Belarus as an autocratic state. Through the theory of political representation - claim-making by Michael Saward and empirical data of Svietlana Tsikhanouskaya speeches, I argue that non-electoral representatives can construct the same level of political validity as conventionally elected officials through representative claims. In this, aesthetic and cultural representation plays a crucial role. This finding can help to examine political representation in autocratic regimes more easily in the future. At the same time, the finding questions the epistemological boundaries of political representation. Further theory-based research is needed to examine the boundaries of the epistemology of political representation. Claim-making as a non-electoral representation might not meet a traditional definition of political representation.