Search

Abstract: This article analyzes two decades of contestation over Ukraine's constitutional provisions regulating executive-legislative relations using insights from the theories of interstate bargaining. It demonstrates how changes in the power [...]

Post-Soviet societies are similar in the asymmetry that defines various groups' access to resources and power and in the multiple salient cleavages that hinder collective action. These post-Soviet civic groups differ from civil society organizations in Central Europe in the absence of a strong unified social movement that can negotiate with the regime, their tendency to act as a conservative force, and the lack of intellectual leaders who can formulate a positive unifying agenda for the future. The result is that post-Soviet societies are vulnerable to state manipulation and ineffective in resisting authoritarian policies of state rulers., The final years of the Soviet Union were marked by the startling proliferation of societal actors and major popular mobilization in various Soviet republics, including the Russian Federation. (1) Although [...]

This article is the first to explore and compare the dynamics of party-building between the three main political forces that competed for power during the last decade in Ukraine - Viktor Yushchenko's Nasha Ukrayina (Our Ukraine), Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), and Viktor Yanukovych's Partiya Rehioniv (Party of Regions). We show that their political trajectories can be explained by differences in their organizational structure and distribution of resources within the party's leadership. When a party depends on resources linked primarily to one individual, it will develop a personalized decision-making structure advantaging its leader, and the party's fortunes will be tied to the popularity (or lack of same) of the leader. By contrast, when a party relies equally on resources from several groups, a more consociational style of decision-making is likely to emerge. Using Ukraine as a case study, the article shows that personality-led parties will be more vulnerable to defections and less capable of absorbing potential competitors. On the other hand, coalition-led parties are better capable of surviving defeats, maintaining internal cohesion, and merging with like-minded parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do warring sides in asymmetric conflicts always know what type of violence they use against civilians? This article relies on the case study of an anti-Soviet insurgency in Western Ukraine between 1944 and 1953 in order to demonstrate how selective violence used by insurgents can become indiscriminate under the influence of a counterinsurgency strategy rather than their conscious choice. It challenges two major theories of coercive violence that refer to exogenous factors to explain shifts in the character of violence and shows how insurgents may recognize such a shift only once they see its counterproductive effects. Using recently declassified documents, this article demonstrates how the insurgents’ decision to engage in a violent campaign against Soviet-led collectivization gradually turned the rural base of insurgency against them. Apart from shedding a new light on the Soviet–Ukrainian conflict in the late 1940s, the article has broader implications for the studies of insurgency campaigns and the reasons for civilian defection to the incumbent side. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]