In non-democratic regimes, the discourse on political ideology is generally a moot point, for autocrats are less concerned with ideational goals and objectives than they are with keeping and expanding their powers. Inherently, in autocratic regimes, there lies the presence of artificial ideology. In this context, it would not make much sense to assess the political ideology of Armenia’s past leaders or governments. The conservative-liberal continuum, or the right-wing versus left-wing polarity, remain incoherent: who cares where Levon Ter-Petrossian, Robert Kocharyan, or Serzh Sargsyan stood on any political ideology scale; their policies were not shaped by ideology, but rather, by a drive to consolidate illegitimate power through patronalistic politics.

This artificial ideology became most acute with the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), who utilized the ultra-nationalism of historic hero Garegin Nzhdeh to formulate a center-right party that extolled security and patriotism over all other social issues. Comically, this patriotism and security fell victim to a culture of corruption, abuse of power, and pure ideological incoherence. To this end, post-Soviet Armenia has been deprived of politics that offers ideological precepts: citizens, pundits, and politicians simply do not engage in ideological debates, they only engage in policy debates. This deficiency in Armenia’s non-democratic political culture reinforced the absence of substantive political ideology.

Enter Nikol Pashinyan upon being swept into power through the so-called Velvet Revolution, and the inquiry of pundits and political commentators on this same topic: What is the political ideology of this new government? For the average Armenian citizen, this is an awkward question, because, once again, the citizen is more concerned with practical, legal, and policy implications than they are with the ideological leanings or the underlying intellectual precepts of their new leader. The citizen’s relative indifference is understandable, but, at the same time, it should not be acceptable, for ideological indifference presupposes a lack of healthy development in a society’s political culture. More simply, as Armenia proceeds to develop and democratize, so must its political culture, and so must the intellectual and political acumen of its citizen. In this sense, we have finally reached a point in Armenia’s political history where not only will political ideology matter, but also, we must undertake the task of qualifying and defining what these political ideologies are.

Pashinyan stipulated that he did not fall into the conservatism-liberalism continuum, that the discourse on the various “-isms” that defined traditional political ideology is no longer applicable to the politics of the contemporary, globalizing world. Utilizing the epistemic tools of post-modernism, Pashinyan collapsed the conservatism-liberalism dichotomy: he did not subscribe to the ideological rigidity of any of the “-isms,” but rather embraced the very deconstruction of this dichotomy. Noting the lack of tenability in ideological rigidity, Pashinyan constructed the paradigmatic lens of his ideology through fluidity. More simply, whatever ideological “-ism” he may subscribe to, this subscription would not be rigid and inflexible, but rather, it will be fluid and accommodating. Well, so far so good, but again, how can we qualify and understand what exactly defines Pashinyan’s political ideology? To do so, we turn to French politics, that is, the extent to which Pashinyan is borrowing from the political ideology of France’s young President Emmanuel Macron.

Very much like Pashinyan, Macron is a young leader who was unexpectedly swept into power within a very short amount of time, thus facing the Herculean task of staving off the old, entrenched political interests, while at the same time meeting the very high expectations of a vibrant, dynamic society. Clearly French society is extremely different than Armenian society, whether in development, economic might, geopolitical issues, or in global stature; but the comparison here is not between the two countries or political systems, but rather, in the approaches by the two leaders. To a substantive level, Pashinyan has been emulating Macron, and doing so quite successfully. This successful emulation, then, has allowed us to cogently qualify what Pashinyan’s political ideology is, and more specifically, what it entails. Macron’s general ideational goals have posited emphasis on three main areas: reforming existing institutions, undertaking active and intense multilateralism, and extolling the soft power of French culture. These perimeters that shape his political ideology, Macron has labelled as “radical centrism.” As we will see, to a very large extent, the Pashinyan government has, in broad terms, emulated these grand strategies. In this context, if we are seeking to figure out what the political ideology of the Pashinyan government is, it quite simply falls within the confines of radical centrism.

Radical centrism, however, may come off as contradictory to many observers, for radicalism has connotations of being extreme, and as such, how can anything that is extreme be centrist? Macron, however, does not use the term “radical” as an adjective that explains his centrism (that, indeed, would be contradictory), but rather, he uses the term “radical” as a verb. Namely, “radical” explains the level and intensity of activity that his government will take to advance the ideological and policy goals of centrism. To avoid any confusions or analytical misunderstandings, we will re-label this ideological posturing for the Pashinyan Administration as “aggressive centrism.” Thus, Nikol Pashinyan’s political ideology, the one that collapsed the conservative-liberal continuum, the one that rejected the traditional rigidity of “-isms”, and the one that much of Armenia’s current political forces have difficulty in understanding, can best be defined as “aggressive centrism.”