Civil society as an anti-corruption actor in post-Euromaidan Ukraine

Of the instruments available in the anti-corruption arsenal of nations, civil society usually plays an ambivalent role. It may or may not be decisive in helping to counter corruption, depending on other circumstances, although in developed societies with a strong tradition of rule of law it can make a definite contribution. In post-communist Ukraine, where political leadership for reasons of self-interest has been reluctant to pursue anti-corruption policy effectively, and where agencies created specifically for the purpose have been compromised by political interference, infighting, and lack of co-ordination, the question urgently arises whether civil society could compensate for these shortcomings so as to make a significantly positive change. Is civil society Ukraine’s “last best hope” to control political corruption and salvage the legitimacy of the regime? For this to happen, according to the theory put forward by Marcia Grimes and applied here, press freedom, political party competition, and government transparency must all be at a high level. Without these critical sources of support Ukrainian civil society cannot be counted on to manage the struggle against corruption successfully alone. The findings can be applied to other post-communist states.     

Elections in Post-Communist Ukraine, 1994–2004: An Overview

The paper attempts a comprehensive and theoretically grounded analysis of all parliamentary and presidential elections carried out in Ukraine in the decade 1994 to 2004. It is organized into four sections. The first deals with the electoral system, how it came into being and has been amended, how it translates votes into seats, the "effective number" of political parties in the electorate and the legislature, and the battle over the electoral system itself during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma. In the second section, voting behaviour of the Ukrainian electorate is examined. Using voting data, along with the results of public opinion surveys and reports on the conduct of the various election campaigns, the paper sorts through the relevant determinants of voting choice to identify the most pertinent ones as they operate in the Ukrainian context. Generally speaking, such determinants are: (1) background social characteristics of the voters, including the regional and ethnic factors; (2) the public's assessments of the current political and economic conditions in the country; (3) individual voters' partisan identification and opinions on prominent issues; (4) their retrospective evaluations of the incumbents; (5) leadership qualities of the contenders; and (6) prospective evaluations of parties and candidates as to their expected performance in office. To determine which of these are consistently more important is an essential aim of the paper. The third section assesses the degree to which accountability has been achieved in any of these elections—those to the Verkhovna Rada of 1994, 1998, and 2002, and the presidential elections of 1994, 1999, and 2004. A penultimate section is devoted to evaluating the policy consequences of these elections: what difference have Ukraine's elections made to policies over the past decade? In the concluding portion, a characterization of the emerging party system is given along with a summing-up on the voting behaviour of Ukrainians in the post-communist era.