Overview

Beyond the Euromaidan examines the prospects for advancing reform in Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution and Russian invasion. It examines six crucial areas where reform is needed: deep internal identity divisions, corruption, the constitution, the judiciary, plutocratic ""oligarchs,"" and the economy. On each of these topics, the book provides one chapter that focuses on Ukraine's own experience and one chapter that examines the issue in the broader context of international practice. Placing Ukraine in comparative perspective shows that many of the country's problems are not unique and that other countries have been able to address many of the issues currently confronting Ukraine. As with the constitution, there are no easy answers, but careful analysis shows that some solutions are better than others. Ultimately, the authors propose a series of reforms that can help Ukraine make the best of a bad situation. The book stresses the need to focus on reforms that might not have immediate effect, but that comparative experience shows can solve fundamental contextual challenges. Finally, the book shows that pressures from outside Ukraine can have a strong positive influence on reform efforts inside the country.

Full Product Details

Author:   Henry E. Hale ,  Robert W. Orttung
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9780804798457

ISBN 10:   0804798451
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   07 September 2016
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Contents and Abstracts1Establishing Ukraine's Fourth Republic: Reform after Revolution chapter abstractPaul D'Anieri examines the prospects for reform in Ukraine's fourth republic. He lays out the reasons for reform failure in the past, using the lenses of rational choice, institutional design, historical institutionalism, state-society relations, modernization theory, identity issues and democracy promotion. After examining some past successes, he addresses issues of who will be the crucial agents of reform (state, civil society, external agents) and sequencing. Ultimately, Ukraine has been more successful at overturning previous systems than building the kind of government and economy that many people think are necessary. 2No Way Out? Post-Soviet Ukraine's Memory Wars in Comparative Perspective chapter abstractOxana Shevel takes up the theme of historical memory as a central component of Ukrainian identity. Conceptions of history have become pivotal in understanding what it means to be Ukrainian, and in particular the nature of the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Shevel seeks to explain why these issues have become so polarized and what paths might be open to handling the politics of memory in a way that is less divisive. She sees potential in the fact that a significant minority of survey respondents favors a pluralism in which individuals are free to maintain different interpretations of historical events. She examines Spain's successful efforts to overcome the divides in that country as a possible positive model for Ukraine. 3Democracy and Governance in Divided Societies chapter abstractLucan Way examines regional aspects of Ukrainian identity by comparing it with similar phenomena in Bangladesh, Albania, and Kyrgyzstan. He points out that in each of these cases, regionalism makes it difficult to consolidate democratic government and carry out reforms. However, regionalism also undermines efforts by authoritarian leaders to consolidate their power because it helps opposition to mobilize. As regionalism becomes less pronounced in Ukraine following the Russian annexation of Crimea and the fighting in the Donbas, the key challenge is to promote reform without excluding groups central to Ukraine's democratic future. One promising reform would reverse the strongest curbs on Soviet era symbolism, and some form of decentralization might also help. 4Corruption in Ukraine: Perpetuum Mobile or the Endplay of Post-Soviet Elites? chapter abstractSerhiy Kudelia takes an institutional approach to understanding corruption in Ukraine, arguing that as Ukraine's institutional model has changed, patterns of corruption have changed along with it. Despite Ukraine's turbulent post-Soviet evolution, neither the fact of corruption nor the extent of it has changed dramatically. This continuity he attributes to permissive conditions, in terms of weak institutionalization, and to powerful incentives for actors to engage in venality. His analysis is troubling in that it shows that political competition, the goal of democratization, tends to spur corruption on the part of leaders. He offers some suggestions for reform, including through changing the campaign financing laws. 5Corruption in Ukraine in Comparative Perspective chapter abstractDaphne Athanasouli compares corruption in Ukraine to that in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, and Russia using the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators and then examines the firm level, using the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey. She shows that Ukraine's problems are quite similar to those elsewhere in the region, and confirms that corruption in Ukraine rivals that in Russia and Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, she points to policies like improving the use of egovernance techniques and the role of a free media as potentially helping to ensure that anti-corruption efforts are fully implemented in the future. 6Ukrainian Constitutional Politics: Neopatrimonialism, Rent-seeking, and Regime Change chapter abstractUkraine has changed its constitution repeatedly since independence in 1991. Oleksandr Fisun focuses on the repeated renegotiation of constitutional arrangements as the political power of patronal presidents rises and falls. In this view, constitutions are effects more than causes. He then considers the various contextual shortcomings that undercut any constitutional arrangement in Ukraine. These include penetration of the government by powerful rent-seekers, the absence of a balanced tax base, and the weakness of the Weberian state. He points out that now the focus should not be on redistributing power between the president, prime minister, and parliament, but rather on subverting the ability of politicians and rent-seeking entrepreneurs to ""play with the rules"" and conduct frequent constitutional experiments. 7Constitutional Performance after Communism: Implications for Ukraine chapter abstractHenry Hale looks at patronal presidentialism across the post-communist space, and concludes that where patronalism prevails, divided-executive constitutions are more conducive to democracy than those with strong presidencies. In this sense, Ukraine moved forward in 2004, backwards when those constitutional changes were subsequently overturned, and forward again when the 2004 constitution was restored in 2014. However, as Hale points out, constitutional provisions are not all-determining. Whether divided executives are effective at promoting other kinds of reform, such as market reforms, is unclear. Nevertheless, a divided executive is the best alternative in a bad situation. 8Ukraine's Politicized Courts chapter abstractMany other aspects of reform, including economic reform and democratization, depend in large part on a functioning judicial system. Maria Popova's findings reported in this chapter on politicized prosecution in Ukraine are sobering. Looking at a series of cases from 2001 to 2010, she determines that under the Yanukovych administration, political prosecution became a more effective means to sideline one's rivals. While this might be explained in terms of Yanukovych's greater enmity to democracy, Popova hypothesizes that a process of authoritarian learning is at work, in that Yanukovych and others have learned over time how to use the prosecution process more effectively. This outcome highlights that not all actors are interested in reform; and that policy innovation can be for the worse as well as the better. 9Judicial Reform in Comparative Perspective: Assessing the Prospects for Ukraine chapter abstractDaniel Beers looks at the experience of judicial reform across the post-communist cases, and gleans several lessons. Among the most important is that ""institutional solutions have important limitations as drivers of the reform process."" Not only do informal practices sometimes negate the effects of institutional reforms, but when they do, the entire concept of judicial reform is undermined by cynicism. Moreover, highly autonomous courts can be as hazardous as dependent ones, because they can become targets of politicians jealous of their authority. Beers finds two important sources of meaningful reform. First, the European Union has played a widely acknowledged role in judicial reform in the post-communist region. More surprisingly, Beers finds a strong positive role for low-level actors—individuals and firms who turn to the courts to resolve disputes and court employees committed to improvement. 10Oligarchs, the Partial Reform Equilibrium and the Euromaidan Revolution chapter abstractIn contrast to many other scholars, Taras Kuzio shows how the corruption, shadow economy, and organized crime that plague Ukraine today emerged in the late Soviet period and then took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through a detailed analysis of oligarchs' roles in a wide range of enterprises, he shows empirically how corruption works at the micro-level. He also shows why the foundations of the Donetsk group in organized crime networks prepared it to outcompete the Dnipropetrovsk oligarchs for power in post-Soviet Ukraine. Kuzio's chapter leaves it clear that the current patterns of ""non-reform"" that we see in Ukraine are deeply entrenched and resistant to change. While the 2014 revolution opened space for reform, many actors are striving to take advantage of the current turmoil to gain control over economic assets. 11Missing the China Exit: A World-Systems Perspective on the Ukrainian State chapter abstractGeorgi Derluguian helps explain why Ukraine wound up with this oligarch problem in the first place, identifying the cause as a Ukraine's peripheral position in the world economy and the failure of its elites to cooperate for a larger good during the critical moment of the USSR's collapse. Here a comparison with China proves useful. Derluguian argues that China succeeded because its relatively simple state allowed its leaders to work together to orient the country toward the needs of the global economy, while the complexity of Soviet institutions (including its division into multiple federal units) made such cooperation much more challenging. After the USSR collapsed, various ""violent entrepreneurs"" were able to take advantage of the resulting chaos to their own advantage, becoming oligarchs or state-based predators that have vested individual interests in subverting reforms. 12Stuck in Transition: Successes and Failures of Economic Reform in Ukraine chapter abstractIn addressing the central issue of economic reform, Alexander Pivovarsky points out that Ukraine succeeded in making the basic market reforms by reducing the state's role in the economy, but he sees these as necessary but not sufficient conditions for a well-functioning economy. Ukraine, he finds, lacks necessary ""market enhancing"" institutions that are needed to make markets effective, including rule of law, competition policies, and market institutions specific to particular economic sectors. 13Economic Reforms in Ukraine in Comparative Perspective: Formal and Informal Dimensions chapter abstractAlexander Libman and Anastassia Obydenkova set out inductively to identify the countries whose economies are most similar to Ukraine's using a hierarchical cluster analysis of indicators of the micro-level institutions, such as obtaining permits, registering property, and enforcing contracts. This analysis indicates that in terms of formal institutions, Ukraine performs like a country of southeastern Europe, while in informal terms, it looks more like the other post-Soviet states. While the formal institutional environment in Ukraine has improved, perceptions of the business climate have worsened. This highlights the disconnect between formal institutions and informal practices. They stress that government cannot directly change informal practices—it can only change formal rules or personnel. 14Conclusion: The Comparative Politics of Reform and Lessons for Ukraine chapter abstractThe concluding chapter by Henry Hale and Robert Orttung identifies several common threads running through the chapters in the volume. Among these are the importance of taking into account that formal institutions will not work the same way they do in Western countries thanks to local informal practices, the difference between deeply embedded obstacles to reform and those that are more contingent, the need to focus on long-term solutions, how realistic various reform proposals are in light of the incentives of political actors who have the power to enact them, and the notion that many of the reforms discussed in the volume can reinforce each other. Ultimately, perhaps the single most important driver for change in Ukraine is the European Union."

Reviews

This excellent volume identifies the principal obstacles that have restrained reform in Ukraine over the past twenty-five years. It offers smart recommendations for overcoming those barriers and, using a comparative approach, suggests models from other countries that could help put Ukraine on the path endorsed by the Maidan Revolutionto become a normal European state. Steven Pifer, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; former US Ambassador to Ukraine

Author Information

Henry E. Hale is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. Robert W. Orttung is Associate Research Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University.

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