On June 14, when the final results of Armenia’s parliamentary election were announced, the legitimacy of Nikol Pashinyan’s government was, in effect, reduced to rubble once and for all.
Of course, it is not as though that legitimacy had remained an unshakable and intact structure until June 14. In fact, in a fundamental and deeper sense, it had arguably ceased to exist as early as 2022, when Pashinyan openly embraced the logic and policy summed up by the phrase: “Artsakh was a noose around Armenia’s neck.”
After all, Pashinyan had also built his legitimacy on the famous slogan: “Artsakh is Armenia, period.”
When you begin proclaiming the exact opposite, the legitimacy you once possessed begins to disintegrate, yet a new legitimacy does not emerge automatically.
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Pashinyan then embarked on building a new source of legitimacy, placing at its center the philosophy that Artsakh had been a burden and presenting it within the framework of what he calls the “Real Armenia” concept. The entire process of dismantling state and national identity that Pashinyan has pursued under that banner has been aimed precisely at building a new structure of legitimacy.
Throughout this period, the factor preventing the complete collapse of the old, expired, and inverted legitimacy was electoral legitimacy. Having lost legitimacy politically—and even at the level of values, Pashinyan nonetheless managed, consciously or otherwise, to prevent the total collapse of his legitimacy by relying on his victories in the snap elections of 2018 and 2021.
His hope, or expectation, was likely that by the time of the 2026 election, sufficient progress would have been made in advancing this new identity project, making it possible to secure the minimum objective: preserving electoral legitimacy in 2026 and thereby continuing the construction of the new legitimacy framework thereafter.
Yet the election process itself, its outcome, and the evidently failed attempt to present and package that outcome demonstrated that not only had the authorities failed to establish a sufficient foundation for a new legitimacy structure, but they had also lost that minimum safeguard—their electoral legitimacy.
This creates a highly dangerous “paradox” for Armenia. According to the official results of the 2026 parliamentary election, Nikol Pashinyan achieved an overwhelming victory. De facto, however, the real outcome is the complete collapse of Nikol Pashinyan’s legitimacy.
Under such circumstances, Armenia becomes extremely vulnerable in its external environment.
Hakob BADALYAN
