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Examines the process of bargaining over the creation of new rules and institutions after radical regime transitions. The analysis addresses the limited but important class of cases where a weakened central authority—whether constituted by the provinces or established as a legacy of imperial administration—must win the support or acquiescence of a minimal coalition of territorial actors in order to remain in power. It focuses on the relationship between cohesiveness achieved and impartiality of administration, with particular regard to the mode of the bargaining between central and provincial elites during the state‐building process. It then tests this theoretical account against the experiences of post‐communist Russia and Ukraine, of the consolidating Indian states in and around 1947, and of other post‐colonial cases.

Describes Ukraine's protracted and discontinued constitution‐making process. Wolczuk explains that the Ukrainian leaders’ initial decision to preserve the Constitution was due to the broad range of contentious issues, going far beyond institutional choices and involving issues of nationhood and territorial integrity. The sheer range of contested issues and the degree of disagreement account for the ad hoc manner in which the final institutional choices were constitutionalized. The chapter analyses the impact of the new constitution on the function of the political system. The result was that institutional rivalry between the parliament and the president continued. Thus, while the passage of the 1996 constitution was a pivotal state‐building document, it failed to bring about political stability.

Compares different paths of democratic consolidation in Belarus and Ukraine since the disintegration of the USSR. The author argues that Ukraine has evolved beyond ‘Electoral Democracy’ towards ‘ Liberal Democracy’. By contrast, after 1994 Belarus has seen democratic erosion and regression from ‘Electoral Democracy’ to authoritarianism. The chapter advances three propositions. Firstly, the strength of ethnicity and national identity at the start of transition process can have a direct impact upon the choice of strategy, speed, and domestic policies adopted by the ruling elites. Secondly, the elites have little choice but to choose a foreign policy orientated towards ‘returning to Europe’—the source of security assurance and technical and financial assistance. Thirdly, the international community can play a highly positive role by providing incentives and assistance that persuade countries that have embarked on democratization to continue the process in the hope of reaching the final destination of democratic consolidation. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first places the transition in Ukraine, Belarus, and the rest of the former USSR within a theoretical and comparative framework by focusing on domestic factors. The second part discusses the international influences faced by a country that has participated in the reform process (Ukraine), and Russian influences on a country that has not done so (Belarus). The last two parts examine Ukraine's ‘return to Europe’ and Belarus’ ‘return to Eurasia’.

This chapter examines female political representation in Ukraine. It is argued that although the number of women that have attained position of legislative power is relatively low, it is on the rise. This is attributed to three factors: increased party organisation, electoral reform, and the partisan distribution of electoral support.

Ukraine can be said to have a semi‐presidential system insofar as it has direct presidential elections combined with a prime minister and a government answerable to both president and parliament. Since winning independence in 1991, Ukraine has also gained a reputation for political gridlock: both of the presidents elected since independence disappointed the initial hopes of their supporters, building up an impressive array of powers on paper, but proving unable to match this in practice. Conflict between presidents, prime ministers, and the chairmen of parliament has been an endemic feature of Ukrainian politics, as have the frustrations of a weak and fractious post‐communist party system. This chapter seeks to explain why semi‐presidentialism has nevertheless provided an attractive form of political compromise in Ukraine's ethnically, linguistically, and regionally divided society, despite the problems of political stasis that it has both reflected and helped to promote. The aim is to explain why circumstances have made it difficult for Ukraine to choose any other regime type, despite the residual enthusiasm of the Ukrainian Left for a Soviet (i.e. parliamentary) republic. The chapter first examines how semi‐presidentialism was established in Ukraine and then looks at Duverger's other key criteria of semi‐presidentialism: the constitutional powers of the key political actors, the nature of the parliamentary majority, and the relations between the president and that majority.

Previous chapters have demonstrated that low and declining citizen respect for government institutions and political leaders is characteristic of contemporary industrialized societies. Evidence since the early 1970s reveals a trend toward growing distrust of government institutions in a number of countries. While this trend is evident, the interpretation of this phenomenon has proved far more controversial. One explanation focuses upon public dissatisfaction with government performance. This chapter explores this question. First, it examines the direct link between government performance, as measured by objective indicators of inflation, unemployment, or government deficits, and institutional confidence in support for government. It then considers the dynamics of political trust and government performance, before moving on to examine the role that expectations play in translating evaluations of government performance into political distrust in three countries where long‐term time‐series data are available—the US, Norway, and Sweden. The study explores how ethical expectations about government standards influence trust in politicians and the conclusion draws some general lessons from the results. The survey data employed in the analysis include the 1990–1 World Values Survey, the Norwegian, Swedish, and US Election Studies, surveys in the US, Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania; data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and OECD are used to measure inflation, unemployment, and government deficits.

The main problem of Ukrainian ethnic policy is balancing Ukrainian majority nation-building with respect for ethnic minority rights. This explains a paradoxical, but logical mixture of liberal and illiberal elements in the nation-building process. The more illiberal elements are rooted in a post-colonial ‘Russian syndrome’, which drives Ukrainians to distances themselves from Russia. At the same time, the policy of nation-building in Ukraine is moderate and open to compromise, reflecting the balance of forces between the political elite of the country and the country’s different regions and main ethnocultural groups.

This chapter explores and explains: ‘what type of capitalism has emerged in post-communist Europe?’ and, ultimately, ‘does it work?’. It also critically examines the suitability and applicability of essentially Western neo-institutionalist theories of comparative capitalism for the study of post-communist phenomena. On the basis of empirical evidence and comparative analysis of the two largest neighbouring political economies of eastern Europe (Russia apart), it is argued that notwithstanding the world-wide neo-liberalising pressures, the changeable politics of post-communist transformation, and the unstable nature of eastern European institutions, both Polish and Ukrainian national variants of capitalism can be described as mixed- or ‘weakly’ coordinated market economies. In spite of the prevailing perceptions and popular media praise given to post-communist nations for adopting a deregulated, privatised, liberal type of capitalism, neither Polish nor Ukrainian political economy generally resembles the liberal market-based model. It is contended, however, that despite the apparent system-wise detachment of the eastern European economies of Poland and Ukraine from the ideal types of a coordinated-market economy (CME) and, especially, of a liberal-market economy (LME), the institutional structures of the two post-communist countries are not necessarily of a ‘low-level’, ‘dysfunctional’, or ‘suboptimal equilibrium’ type.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union had one of the world's leading computer industries. At the end of the 1960s, the possibility of merging the USSR's scientific and industrial potential with that of Western European countries was proposed by British computer company ICL. This mutual effort was aimed at helping Europe outpace the United States in the field of fourth-generation computers. Prominent USSR computer scientists approved the idea, but in 1970, the Soviet government decided to cease contact with ICL and adopt the American IBM-360 system (without US permission) as an industry model. This was huge mistake with dramatic consequences. The system soon became obsolete and the Soviet Union went from being a computer leader in the 1950s and 1960s, to being an outsider in the computer industry.

This chapter examines the development of political parties in the Ukraine. It focuses on their popular legitimacy, organizational strength, and role in the process of government, in particular, governance, political recruitment, political participation, and political communication and education.

This book examines how government and scientific interventions have recast the Chernobyl aftermath as a complex political and health experience with its own bureaucratic and legal ramifications. In Ukraine, a decade after the Chernobyl disaster, waves of citizens poured into medical offices for care and compensation. Their “idiosyncratic” diseases would now encode different kinds of treatment discriminations and different kinds of neglect. The book shows how the Chernobyl explosion has been shaped as a tekhnohenna katastrofa, or technogenic catastrophe, and how Ukraine's response to the disaster combines humanism with strategies of governance and state building, market strategies with forms of economic and political corruption. The book focuses on the emergence of a collective and individual survival strategy known as biological citizenship, which it argues reflects a failure of politics and science to account for human welfare, particularly the welfare of Chernobyl sufferers.

This chapter examines the sciences, politics, and international cooperations that informed Soviet state responses to the Chernobyl disaster and how they produced an image of control over unpredictable and largely unassessed circumstances of risk. More specifically, it investigates the relationship between individual suffering caused by the Chernobyl accident and the technical measures and scales of expertise used to assess radiation-related biological injury in Ukraine. To this end, the chapter considers the work of international scientific networks in patterning initial Soviet remediation strategies and public health responses. It highlights key aspects of the initial Soviet management of the Chernobyl disaster and shows how ambiguities related to the interpretation of radiation-related physical damage subjected post-Chernobyl state interventions and medical surveillance to a variety of competing scientific and political interests. It also considers the so-called Safe Living Concept regarding radiation dose exposure and Soviet-American bioscientific collaboration report on radioactive fallout.

This chapter explores some of the prehistory of reception of the Chernobyl disaster in various aspects of Soviet-era life from the perspective of individuals and families living outside state-designated zones. The discussion focuses on events in a time when bureaucratic lines between sufferers and nonsufferers were just beginning to be drawn, and when other informal structures of accountability regarding state-related abuses were in place. From the perspective of one family, the chapter shows how individuals reached the limits of their ability to reason, narrate, and project futures in the context of an invisible nuclear hazard. It explains how life narratives and family histories reflected a vexed and complex history of Ukraine, but also how these histories informed interpretations of the Chernobyl experience.

This chapter examines the “epidemic” of disability in post-Soviet Ukraine, and more specifically how state laws on the social protection of Chernobyl sufferers have turned suffering and disability into a resource affecting family, work, and social identity. It shows how the line between sickness and health becomes a highly politicized one as traditional forms of Soviet social organization, particularly the labor collective, are being replaced by a new architecture of welfare claims, privileges, laws, and identities. It also discusses the role of the Exclusion Zone in an informal Soviet economy and capitalist transition, as well as the ways in which workers micromanage inflation with a sick role sociality in their everyday lives. Finally, it considers the establishment of medical-labor committees to handle the growing number of disability claims related to the Chernobyl explosion and highlights a city of sufferers where so many individuals have gained their illnesses for life.

This chapter examines the experiential and political aspects of biological citizenship in post-Soviet Ukraine, with particular emphasis on the relationship between an emerging medical classification of the ill effects of the Chernobyl disaster and the social process of distribution of disability entitlements. Drawing on the experiences of three sufferers, the chapter considers the kind of experiences and social initiatives that have emerged between state medical classification and the redistribution of social welfare goods. It also explores the importance that Soviet administrators placed on the environment as a political tool to “normalize” catastrophe, and how that normalized environment influenced life stories and medical case histories. Finally, it discusses the ways that law, medicine, and corruption intersected with respect to the processing of disability claims.

This chapter examines the ethical positions of local scientists and clinicians from the perspective of Soviet and post-Soviet scientific trajectories as well as in relation to international scientific influences. More specifically, it considers how the radiation research process makes connections between ailments and the Chernobyl disaster real—that is, organic. It also explores how scientific and political pressures at the international level restrict local discourses on the health effects of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster and influence the processes through which the biology of such effects becomes an object of contested scientific understanding and research. Finally, it shows how patients become captives of a new sociality in Ukraine and describes the changing doctor–patient relations, along with the in utero research carried out, at the Radiation Research Center.

This chapter examines how the self and social identity have been transformed in post-Soviet Ukraine within the legal and medical context of claiming illness from radiation dose exposure. It shows how the political and bureaucratic aspects of Chernobyl pervaded sufferers' lives, bringing to the fore the complexity of life's disruption by unstable parental and marital relations, unpredictable physical symptoms and emotional stress, patterns of hospitalization, unemployment, and bureaucratic transactions. The chapter tells the story of an elderly couple, using the concept of lichnost', or personhood, to shed light on some of the social and personal dynamics that influenced their life. It explains how the husband's pains, truths, instincts, and acts became key components in realization of his biological citizenship. It also considers how the deep intrusion of illness into personal lives fostered a type of violence that went beyond the line of what could be policed.

This chapter summarizes the book's main findings and their implications. It describes the Chernobyl aftermath as a prism that reflects, contains, and reconfigures the vexed political-economic, scientific, legal, and social circumstances in post-Soviet Ukraine. It emphasizes the disharmony among lawmakers, radiation scientists, health professionals, and sufferers as they stood along the continuum of knowledge production, power, moral sensibility, and self-disclosure. It considers how the radiation research process facilitated the naturalization of illnesses in bodies as a matter of “social health.” The chapter also discusses a number of ethical issues that bear on the fate of Chernobyl sufferers; for example, how future changes in social and economic contexts will affect the legitimacy of compensation mechanisms and categories of suffering. Biological citizenship, it argues, represents a complex intersection of social institutions and the intense vulnerabilities of populations exposed to the determinations of the international political economy.