Why Voters Rejected the 'Nakhkins': Dignity Over Economics

Dr. Grigoryan identifies a dimension of Armenian electoral behavior that often gets obscured in discussion of corruption and economic mismanagement: the deep, persistent memory of systematic humiliation. The pre-2018 regime was not simply corrupt; it was a system that destroyed the dignity of ordinary people through the unchecked power of oligarchs, local warlords, and their security apparatus.

Grigoryan offers specific examples. Oligarchs’ children could assault people in public without facing serious consequences. A prominent case involved a regional warlord’s son who beat someone so severely he lost an eye-and faced no criminal charge. The Poplavok Café incident involving security personnel targeting activists remains vivid in public memory. These were not aberrations but manifestations of a systematic problem: the permanent vulnerability of ordinary citizens to arbitrary harm from the powerful, with no recourse through law or justice.

This experience of helplessness and humiliation created a far more powerful motivator for political change than economic arguments. While the Pashinyan regime has produced its own instances of abuse and injustice-Sona Mnatsakanyan’s death at the hands of the prime minister’s motorcade, Alen Simonyan spitting on a critic-voters perceive these as episodes rather than systemic features. The key distinction is systemic versus episodic: under the pre-2018 system, humiliation was institutionalized; under Pashinyan, instances occur but lack the systematic quality.

This perception-whether objectively accurate or not-powerfully shaped electoral outcomes. Voters were willing to tolerate considerable flaws in the Pashinyan government because the alternative represented a return to the systematic indignity of the oligarchic era. Grigoryan notes that political science and psychology literature consistently show that threats to dignity and status are far more motivating than material or socioeconomic concerns. The opposition’s failure to meaningfully acknowledge or address this psychological reality-and Robert Kocharyan’s decision to present the pre-2018 era as a “golden age” rather than admitting to systemic problems-proved politically fatal.

Until opposition forces can credibly distance themselves from the oligarchic system and demonstrate understanding of the humiliation it inflicted, they remain bound by voters’ determination to avoid returning to that past.