Civil society and external actors: how linkages with the EU and Russia interact with socio-political orders in Belarus and Ukraine

ABSTRACT

What is the importance of linkages between civil society and external actors? In this article we map the landscape of civil society organisations in Belarus and Ukraine linked to the EU or Russia. Compiling an extensive dataset of organisations, we identify which domains they belong to. We find that linkages with Russia prevail in the culture domain and are based on shared past and exclusive identities. By contrast, linkages with the EU operate in domains related to a democratic future and include diverse groups. These linkages interact dynamically with limited access orders: where they can contribute to opening, they are often restricted.

KEYWORDS:

• External actors
• domains
• civil society
• linkages
• Russia
• EU
• Ukraine
• Belarus

Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 693382. This article reflects solely the views of the authors and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers, the editors of the journal, and Dr. Dimiter Toshkov for their insightful comments. We are very grateful to the experts who participated in the data validation process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors .

Notes

1 Even though we do not explore their links here, we recognise that businesses are of great importance for societal dynamics and that civil and business elites often overlap, especially in the post-Soviet context (Mazepus et al. 2020).

2 To keep our comparison neutral, we do not include organisations that do not explicitly self-identify with either Russia or the EU or have no institutional affiliation with one or the other, such as USAID or multiple grassroots organisations. We fully acknowledge that other organisations can emerge and develop links promoting similar goals.

3 To be included, organisations had to be active at some point in this period.

4 We are grateful to Yuliya Bidenko for the valuable additions to the list of EU-related organisations and to Mariia Symonova and Kateryna Zarembo for their comments on our selection strategy for the Ukrainian case. We also thank Ivan Bakalov for tips on the search strategy for Russia-related organisations in Ukraine. We thank Tatiana Kouzina for her help with the Europe-related organisations. We thank two experts who wished to remain anonymous for their help with Russia-related organisations in Belarus.

5 We have considered using the source of funding as an organisational selection criterion. There were, however, several problems that prevented us from using this strategy. First, many organisations receive funding from multiple sources and it is therefore difficult to associate them with one external actor. Second, information about funding is not always accessible and transparent. Third, revealing sources of foreign funding in non-democratic context creates problems for some organisations.

6 More detailed information about the selection of organisations and analysis grouping organisations into categories is available in the online Appendix 1 and 2.

7 For official information about the Regional Forum, see http://www.sovrep.gov.by/ru/forumy-ru/ (accessed April 10, 2020).

8 Effectively, the BOC does not have autonomy from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC): the BOC is a branch of the ROC. However, it is important to note that the ROC is not the only orthodox church in Belarus, neither is it entirely homogeneous. Within it the Christian Orthodox community, a small minority of different (pro-Belarusian and pro-European) denominations and voices exist.

9 This was reported by Nasha Niva and other national media outlets. For more see https://nn.by/?c=ar&i=212920&lang=ru (accessed April 9, 2020).

10 For more see: http://sobor.by/page/V_Belarusi_sozdan_Obshchestvenniy_sovet_po_nravstvennosti (accessed April 10, 2020).

11 In many cases, the partnership of Belarusian GONGOs with Russian actors might be purely formal and may not go beyond official affiliation. Therefore, linkages between GONGOs in Belarus and Russia need further investigation.

12 Examples of such events are the annual youth summer camp “Be-La-Rus’”. See the Russian media report at https://rg.ru/2019/07/31/kurgan-druzhby-na-granice-treh-stran-sobral-500-tvorcheskih-iunoshej-i-devushek.html (accessed April 4, 2020).

13 While in the past Belarusian authorities used to be quite supportive of the “Nights Wolves”, this has changed in 2018–2019. The arrival of Russian bikers in Belarus is no longer welcomed by Belarusian officials (Belsat 2018).

14 With some exceptions, for example the Faculty of International Relations of the Belarusian State University is open to international contacts.

15 Around 10,000 students studied at European universities in 2017 (UNESCO 2019).

16 MOST programme: https://most-belarus.eu (accessed March 26, 2019).

17 There are notable exceptions among environmental groups: for example, actors dealing with nuclear threats face repression from the authorities.

18 See the following official acts: Annex II to the Decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine as of 28 April 2017. Available at: https://www.president.gov.ua/storage/j-files-storage/00/40/30/6f76b8df9d0716da74bb4ae6a900d483_1494864914.pdf; Annex II to the Decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine as of 21.06.2018. Available at: https://www.president.gov.ua/storage/j-files-storage/00/61/50/f5678abf43bcb17ce6b232500e9a7312_1529676085.pdf. Accessed 18 March 2020.

19 Neither Russian nor the EU elites are the only actors that foster cooperation with organisations in these domains. For example, Turkey’s authorities emphasise cultural ties between Turkic people in different regions of Europe and Asia (Frahm, Hoffmann, and Lehmkuhl 2018, 21).

20 Although we took measures to avoid sampling bias, given that not all information about registration, funding, and functioning of organisations is easily or even openly available, we might have omitted CSOs that function in other domains.

21 We do not list organisations that have linkages with individual member states of the EU or any other external actor that might also impact socio-political orders of the target countries. Moreover, we compared Russia and the EU as two major actors that build links in the region, but there are drawbacks to this comparison between a state and international organisation. The EU is restricted in what linkages it can build to what the member states are interested in or agree on. Russia does not face such limitation. The comparison is also slightly asymmetric: although Russia could build linkages in the domains of democratic reform and human rights, the EU as an international organisation is less likely to build linkages based on common language.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Horizon 2020 Framework Programme [grant number 693382].

Notes on contributors

Honorata Mazepus

Dr. Honorata Mazepus is an assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, Netherlands.

Antoaneta Dimitrova

Dr. Antoaneta Dimitrova is Professor of Comparative Governance at Leiden University's Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in the Hague, at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs. E-mail: [email protected].

Matthew Frear

Dr. Matthew Frear is an assistant professor at the Institute of History, Leiden University, Netherlands.

Tatsiana Chulitskaya

Dr. Tatsiana Chulitskaya is Researcher at the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Lithuania and Academic director and expert at the School of Young Managers in Public Administration (SYMPA), Belarus.

Oleksandra Keudel

Oleksandra Keudel is a PhD candidate at the Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her major research interest is the power dynamics between civil society and political elites in post-Soviet hybrid regimes at the national and local levels.

Nina Onopriychuk

Nina Onopriychuk is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Natallia Rabava

Natallia Rabava is the Founding Director of SYMPA (The School of Young Managers in Public Administration) in Minsk, Belarus.