Planning the post-socialist ‘in-betweenness’: Emergence of an authoritarian post-political planning model in Great Stone Industrial Park

Source abstract

Situated within the discourse of post-socialist urbanism, this study investigates the interstitial ‘in-betweenness’ of Belarus to conceptualize the emergence of an ‘authoritarian post-political planning’ model. Through an empirical analysis of the China-Belarus Great Stone Industrial Park, we examine how the authoritarian state appropriates post-political governance to integrate transnational capital and ensure regime survival. Drawing on discourse analysis and in-depth interviews, the research reveals that the state bypasses explicit neoliberal narratives in favor of technical consensus and transnational policy mobility. It encloses decision-making through expert authority to structurally reorganize post-socialist assets, and utilizes procedural formalism to filter out dissent and significantly narrow the space for substantive public debate. However, this depoliticized planning framework does not resolve underlying socio-economic tensions; rather, it displaces them across spatial scales. At the micro-level, structural clashes over post-socialist welfare baselines manifest as passive labor friction, while at the macro-level, severe geopolitical ruptures force rapid strategic contractions that are masked by state narrative control. Ultimately, this article argues that while authoritarian post-politics serves as a powerful organizational device to suture state goals with global capital accumulation, its reliance on suspending and displacing conflict exposes profound spatial fragilities and the enduring paradoxes of the post-socialist transition.