Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's decision to call a snap presidential election for February 7 puzzled observers at home and abroad.

His current term had been set to expire in spring 2025. Some had expected him to move up the parliamentary elections, also scheduled for that year, or possibly hold a referendum on empowering local municipal governments.

But Aliyev, who has been in office since 2003 and is at now the pinnacle of his popularity following Azerbaijan's recent takeover of Karabakh, decided he needed to renew his own mandate instead.

Limited time to secure legitimacy as economy stagnates

In authoritarian contexts, leaders' sources of legitimacy are either ideological or economic. In the case of Azerbaijan, Aliyev has proved his faithfulness to the Azerbaijani national cause by securing complete victory in Nagorno-Karabakh and the region's de-Armenization. In so doing he reached the peak of possible legitimacy.

Now is a prime moment to supplement this legitimacy with an electoral win, as the idea of "victorious president" will slowly lose its value over time.

For three decades "Karabakh grief" was the dominant unifying principle of Azerbaijani society, but now that the matter is settled, this source of legitimacy has been fully exhausted.

Meanwhile, on the economic front, Azerbaijan is stagnating. In its report on the period from January to November 2023, the State Statistics Committee says that GDP increased by only 0.8% compared to the same period in 2022 (growth from 2021 to 2022 was 6.2 percent for the same period) and the non-oil and gas GDP increased by 3.1 percent (compared to 9.6 percent for 2021-22). GDP per capita is up to 0.2 percent. In other words, there is practically no economic growth.

Similarly, the minimum wage, which is currently 345 manats ($203) per month, is set to remain the same for 2024.

Risk of internal conflict

Current economic and social issues will lead to the emergence of new internal antagonisms. One source of antagonism bubbling beneath the surface is inter-regional resentment.

The government has allocated billions for the restoration and construction of the newly created Karabakh Economic Region within the "Great Return" ideology that envisages the settlement of hundreds of thousands of people (and their descendants) who lost their homes in the First Karabakh War of the 1990s. Meanwhile, residents of other regions of the country increasingly feel the state is ignoring their social and economic issues like unemployment and poor education.

The government's special focus on Karabakh, to the detriment of other regions, is causing growing resentment. This can be seen in the popularity of a meme first posted by a satirical Facebook page that juxtaposes an image of a dilapidated secondary school in the town of Imishli, in south-central Azerbaijan, with a newly refurbished barn on a goat farm featuring a piano in Lachin, in the reclaimed territories.

Members of Aliyev's rubber-stamp parliament appear to be acknowledging the looming threat of unemployment in rural areas and overall economic stagnation. The solution they're mulling so far is to "shift the burden of the state," i.e. devolve economic responsibilities, to municipal governments.

Repressive elections

Under President Heydar Aliyev, the incumbent's father and immediate predecessor, Azerbaijan used to position itself as a rational state with a "balanced foreign policy." While under the current regime Baku still strives to balance disparate interests, the emphasis now is on an "independent" foreign policy.

This means that the country is now independent from Western democracy- and civil society-building efforts. In this conception, Azerbaijan should have a transactional relationship with the West on economic matters while being free from Western political influence.

Recently, U.S. objections to Azerbaijan's military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh led to a downturn in relations which in turn led to a wave of repressions against journalists, civil society representatives and opposition politicians who allegedly received funding from the U.S. A number of Azerbaijani journalists have been arrested amid state media rhetoric about an "American spy network." Abzas Media, so far the main target of the sweep, was explicitly identified by pro-government media as part of the supposed spy network.

Interestingly, the snap election was announced a day after the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien's visit to Baku, which eased the bilateral tensions somewhat but did nothing to stop the repressive state machinery. On December 14, prominent opposition politician Tofig Yagublu, was the 13th person to be arrested in the current wave. The US Embassy in Baku has called for his release.

It is clear that the government does not want to face any serious or even slight challenges during the pre-election period even as the main opposition parties have already announced that they're boycotting the polls. Activists on social media make dark jokes about those who have not been arrested "yet."

The Azerbaijani state faces growing internal tensions and is responding by becoming more repressive and staging an election with an entirely predictable outcome.