Today’s political crisis in Belarus has given a rise to the phenomenon classified in political science as political illegitimacy. We argue that resolving the political crisis in a way that revives trust and legitimacy is the only ‘good’ solution.

We present new causal evidence that political connections to U.S. legislators are valuable for individual firms. We also estimate that almost all of the value generated by connections to the U.S. legislators can be attributed to their influence over and above their formal committee assignments in Congress.