This is the first comparative article to investigate commonalities in Ukrainian and Irish history, identity, and politics. The article analyzes the broader Ukrainian and Irish experience with Russia/Soviet Union in the first and Britain in the second instance, as well as the regional similarities in conflicts in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine and the six of the nine counties of Ulster that are Northern Ireland. The similarity in the Ukrainian and Irish experiences of treatment under Russian/Soviet and British rule is starker when we take into account the large differences in the sizes of their territories, populations, and economies. The five factors that are used for this comparative study include post-colonialism and the “Other,” religion, history and memory politics, language and identities, and attitudes toward Europe.

This article explores the sources of legitimacy of private property in the means of production in Ukraine. The conceptualization of legitimacy of private property was made by analyzing theoretical approaches to the study of the foundations of private property relations in Western countries. The application of these approaches tests economic utilitarian, psychological, and sociocultural explanations of legitimacy of large and small private enterprises and private land in the process of activation of post-communist transition of Ukrainian society. The basic hypothesis was that the process of legitimation of private property in the means of production proceeds by uniting utilitarian and psychological adaptation with sociocultural agreement of ideological attitudes. This hypothesis was verified with the help of created legitimacy indices by comparison of linear regressions and data of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine for 2013 and 2017. The results indicate that the hypothesis has been held true only concerning legitimacy of small private enterprises. They have acquired a moderate extent of legitimacy owing to the fact that besides the factors of adaptation, social recognition has increased at the expense of people who support the multiparty system and the liberal and mixed methods of regulation of the economy. In contrast, the existence of large private enterprises and private land has not acquired the corresponding sociocultural foundation.

As participatory governance approaches find their way into the development agendas in transition countries, a key question is how to increase citizens' participation rates. This study examines how social trust and mental models inherited from the communist past shape individual decisions to participate in rural collective action. Using unique data from rural Ukraine, I approach these questions empirically distinguishing different types of participation. I find that social trust and mental models about the roles of communities and the state stemming from the Soviet past affect participation with some reservations. Results suggest that community-driven initiatives should invest more in educational and awareness-raising activities.

The Bologna Process is an international policy project for the convergence of higher education structures in the European Higher Education Area. Most of the literature on Bologna represents studies that focus on the implementation implications of the reforms. The focus on the reform process, particularly in relation to the development process of Bologna policy actors, has been under-represented in the literature. This article investigates the process of the development of the main policy actors involved in the Bologna reform in the case of Ukraine. The timeframe includes the pre-history of Bologna since Ukrainian independence in 1991 until after the introduction of the relevant policy changes in 2003, and through to the issue of 2014 Law on Higher Education. Empirical data were collected through interviews with higher education actors in Ukraine and policy document search. Both types of data were thematically analyzed. The analysis in this article is informed by the policy learning theory and demonstrates the interconnection between path-dependency and change in the development of policy actors in the Bologna reform in Ukraine. This article shows that the old clusters of higher education actors, and the pre-Bologna relationships amongst some of them have been reproduced during the Bologna reform. At the same time, such a reproduction of the old during the reform was only partial as the Bologna Process has also been altering the relationships among some actors to an extent.

This paper examines the process of how Crimean Tatars strived to attain group-differentiated rights since they have returned to their homeland in the early 1990s. Whereas the politics of minority rights were viewed through security lens in earlier literature, we emphasize the significance of cultural constructs in influencing the minority policies, based on qualitative content analysis of “speech acts” of elites, and movement and policy documents. Focusing on the interaction of the framing processes of Crimean Tatars with the Crimean regional government, Ukraine, and Russia, we argue that the “neo-Stalinist frame” has played a major role in denying the rights of Crimean Tatars for self-determination and preservation of their ethnic identity in both pre and post annexation Crimea. The Crimean Tatars counter-framed against neo-Stalinist frame both in the pre and post-annexation period by demanding their rights as “indigenous people”. Ukraine experienced a frame transformation after the Euromaidan protests, by shifting from a neo-Stalinist frame into a “multiculturalist frame”, which became evident in recognition of the Crimean Tatar status as indigenous people of Crimea.

What effects does a revolution have on the stability or change of a hybrid regime? Has the Ukraine’s regime changed since the 2014 revolution? To answer these questions I examine the changes in formal and informal institutions and the quantitative and qualitative composition of elites after the change of power in Ukraine in 2014. I argue that despite greater than in the post-orange period quantitative renewal of elites, qualitative change has not occurred. Meanwhile, the old operational code, or modus operandi , of elites’ political culture, composed of clientelism, secretive deals and quota based nominations to government positions continues to operate. The lack of elites’ renewal and the dominance of informal rules over formal procedures — two factors that keep the institutional core of Ukraine’s hybrid regime unchanged.

In developing countries, the fight against corruption entails purges of political and business elites and the restructuring of electoral, financial, and social provision systems, all of which are costly for the incumbents and, therefore, unlikely without sustained pressure from civil society. In the absence of empirical analyses, scholars and practitioners have, therefore, assumes that civil society plays an unequivocally positive role in anticorruptionism. In this article, we challenge this dominant assumption. Instead, we show that, under certain conditions, an engaged non-governmental community may, in fact, undermine the fight against corruption. Using the data from forty interviews with anticorruption practitioners in Ukraine and Russia, as well as primary documentary sources, we present two models of anti-corruptionism whereby active civil engagement produces suboptimal outcomes. One is faux collaboration, defined as a façade of cooperation between the state and civil society, which hides the reality of one-sided reforms. The other model is that of non-collaborative co-presence, whereby the governance role is shared by the government and non-governmental activists without compromise-based solutions. In both cases, civil engagement helps perpetuate abuses of power and subvert such long-term goals of anti-corruption reforms as democratization and effective governance.

This article is the first comparative study of the policies taken by Russian and Ukrainian émigré’s, governments and intellectuals towards the legacy of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The article analyses how these differing approaches have contributed to diverging national identities in Russia and Ukraine which preceded, and were reinforced by, the 2014 crisis in their relations and war between both countries. Stalinization was not a central question for Russian émigrés and was supported by 50 out of 69 years of the USSR and since 2000 by the Russian state. Ukrainian émigrés were more influential and the state actively supported de-Stalinization over the majority of 25 years of independent statehood that integrated de-Stalinisation with national identity and since 2015, de-communization.

In this article, I adopt a structural approach to Russian soft power, switching focus from the supposed agent of power (Russia), towards the subjects of power (Ukrainians). I outline the applicability of this approach to empirical studies into soft power, demonstrating how soft power can be examined from bottom-up, discursively-focused perspectives. The empirical analysis then traces how Ukrainians (do not) link their self-identities to discursive understanding of “Russia”. Reviewing recent insights into the relationship between soft power and affect, I argue that Ukrainians’ cultural, historical and linguistic ties with Russia often lack necessary emotional force to generate meaningful soft power.

The authors compare civil society development in Russia and Ukraine in recent years in terms of civil society’s structure and relationships with the state and the broader society. They find major differences in 1) the treatment of civil society by state actors and 2) the level of trust placed in civil society by the population. They use these and other findings to assess civil society’s ability to play economic, political and social roles as defined by Michael Edwards in Civil Society (Edwards, 2009) and discover important differences emerging with regard to the political and social roles.

Issues of university autonomy, self-governance, and centralization and decentralization are still at the forefront of higher education in Ukraine. This study of university governance suggests that the state is a major foe of university autonomy, though certainly not the only one. The system of centralized university governance is experiencing changes in its content, function, mechanisms, and approaches, while maintaining its unity and highly centralized structure. Thus, it is difficult to adapt and respond to free market forces and challenges brought to the fore by the Euromaidan political turmoil and the war that followed. Such phenomena as corruption in education and internal pressures, marketization of educational services and financial integrity, changing organizational and managerial structures of universities present challenges to university governance and force it to change. They may also facilitate strengthening of university autonomy. However, as long as the disease of corruption exists, all attempts to reform higher education are unlikely to be successful.

The ongoing health crisis in the Ukraine has persisted for 48 years with a clear division of gender-based outcomes as seen in the decline of male life expectancy and stagnation of female longevity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in self-rated health and system barriers to health care applicable to gender and its intersections because of the differing negative health outcomes for men and women. Intersectionality theory provides an analytic framework for interpreting our results. Utilizing a nationwide sample of the Ukrainian population (N ¼ 1908), we found that low socioeconomic status (SES) women rate their health worse than men generally and any other socioeconomic group. Yet women also face the greatest barriers to health care until older ages when the ailments of men cause them to likewise face the obstacles. In reviewing the barrier to health care scale, one barrier—that of health care services being too expensive—dominated the responses with some 52.5 percent of the sample reporting it. Consequently, the greatest problem in Ukraine with respect to health reform reported by the population is the out-of-pocket costs for care in a system that is officially free. These costs, constituting some 40 percent of all national health expenditures, affect women and the aged the most.

Masculinity has long been Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calling card. At the center of Putin’s macho aura is his image as a tough leader who will not allow Western countries to weaken Russia or dictate what Russia’s domestic and foreign policies should look like. This article draws attention to the role of masculinity in the Putin regime’s legitimation strategy, and how it became more obvious during the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 and the Russian annexation of Crimea. To the extent that there is a “personality cult” in contemporary Russia, the personality at the center of it is defined in highly gendered terms, shaping the tenor of both domestic and foreign policy.

This article investigates voters and sympathizers of Ukraine’s radical right party, Svoboda. Using an original survey conducted in 2010, it shows that support for Svoboda was rooted less in extreme levels of xenophobia vis-à-vis Russians, and more in concerns about the support that the Russian minority receives from the state, fear of losing Ukrainian sovereignty, and economic anxiety. In contrast to the conventional view, the analysis suggests that support for Svoboda was not a function of inter-group ethnic hostilities; instead, it originated in perceived threats and anxieties about the character of the Ukrainian state.

In this article the author examines the political development and activities, ideological and political positions, networks and relationships of the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) since 1990 to 2004. The party’s successor, the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (VO Svoboda), joined the Ukrainian parliament since 2012 to 2014. VO Svoboda was part of the opposition to the Party of Regions and former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. The SNPU has ethnocentric and nationalist positions that are expressed in political statements and documents published by the leadership and functionaries of the party. Much attention is paid to the party’s ideology and the way it positions itself. The official and disparate ideological views of SNPU functionaries will also be illustrated. These views became consolidated due to the changes within the party leadership, and the party finally changed its name and image, in order to appeal to the wider masses.

This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations’ involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”

The ideology of Ukrainian nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s was a contested arena in which three dominant currents fought for hegemony: the national democrats grouped around the UNDO party, the authoritarian nationalists who supported the OUN movement, and the more extreme brand of authoritarianism espoused by the publicist Dmytro Dontsov. The three currents can be distinguished by analyzing both ideological writings and the myth-system that underpinned creative literature of this period. Distinguishing between the three currents allows for a better understanding of ideological shifts among those calling themselves nationalists, particularly shifts which occurred during the Second WorldWar and its aftermath. It also helps to explain some of the confusions that surround the term “Ukrainian nationalism” in the present day.

This article is devoted to the problem of the reaction to the Eastern Partnership by Russia’s both the political establishment and the expert community. The question of reactions to the Eastern Partnership in the target countries has been extensively posed in academic literature. However, the question of Russia’s reaction to the Eastern Partnership, one of the most important actors of the region, has been rarely raised by the academic community. A wide array of factors impacted Russian elites’ perception of the Eastern Partnership — from problematic issues in the EU-Russia relations to the post-Soviet states’ political and economic transformation. Studying the dynamics and peculiarities of Russia’s perspective on the Eastern Partnership makes it possible to draw meaningful conclusions on the nature of Russia's phobias that fuel its domestic and foreign policy.

This article surveys and discusses the latest wave of mass protests in Ukraine, the Euromaydan. This study situates the Euromaydan within the history of the other protests in post-communist Ukraine and makes a comparison to the Orange Revolution (the Orange Revolution). The authors recognize the importance of international factors, but argue that Ukrainian domestic political factors contributed significantly not only to the emergence, but also to escalation of the latest conflict in Ukraine. This study tests a theory about the role of institutional factors versus the role of cultural-historic legacies in the process of mass protest formation and conflict development. We argue that institutional factors, such as: governmental policies; the composition of governmental, opposition, and civil society groups; corruption; and timing of legislative activity on most divisive issues in Ukraine have contributed to the conflict escalation in Ukraine.

This article traces the on-the-ground mobilization and recruitment strategies of Ukraine’s radical right party, Svoboda (Freedom) in the years prior to its 2012 electoral breakthrough. Ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Svoboda party leaders and activists in Galicia show how party leaders strategically created an organizational structure aimed at recruiting young people, making linkages with pre-existing nationalist groups, and shifting the ideological focus away from cultural and toward economic issues. Interviews with party activists reveal how personal networks were key in the recruitment and radicalization process, showing that radical right activists were radicalized, or “made,” through political participation. Consequently, Svoboda’s organizational capacity allowed the party to take advantage of a political opportunity — Yanukovych’s unpopularity and weakened national democratic parties — in the 2012 parliamentary elections.