https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6845-3602
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ABSTRACT
This research departs from conventional studies of citizen’s attitudes to parliament by utilising focus groups to interrogate the incredibly low levels of trust in Ukraine’s parliament during the Yanukovych and Poroshenko presidencies and explores how far they are related to the exceptionally high levels of disruptive protest in the chamber. Low trust is shaped primarily by citizens’ concerns about corruption, particularly the role of FIGs and of deputies’ rapacious and lawless behaviour (bezpredel). Disruptive protests were largely seen as inauthentic. Low trust was accompanied by support for democracy.
Acknowledgements
I am enormously indebted to Olia Antoniuk and Olena Zhelyentsova for improving my translations, to Olga, Olia, Andre, Veronika for organising the focus groups and to all the participants for their time and opinions. I would also like to thank Jon Wheatley, Barrie Axford and Joanna Szostak for kindly reading earlier drafts of this paper; the participants of BASEES Annual Conference at Robinson College Cambridge, 13-15th April 2019 and the seminar “Human capital and citizens’ mobilisation in Ukraine” at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, 13th May 2019 for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr Sarah Whitmore is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Oxford Brookes University and specialist in Ukrainian politics. She is author of State-Building in Ukraine: The Ukrainian Parliament, Routledge, 2004 and a number of journal articles including in Democratization, Europe-Asia Studies and The Journal of Legislative Studies.
ORCID
Sarah Whitmore http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6845-3602
Notes
1 See Saward (Citation2010) for elaboration of the helpful distinction between constituents and audience in representation.
2 Democratic Initiatives Foundation (2013) 2013-y: politychni pidumky i prohnozy (zahal’nonatsional’ne i ekspertne opytuvannia) https://dif.org.ua/article/2013-y-politichni-pidsumki-i-prognozi-zagalnonatsionalne-y-ekspertne-opituvannya (2016), and 2016-y: Politichni pidsumky – zahal’nonatsional’ne opytuvannia, www.dif.org.ua/article/2016-y-politichni-pidsumki-zagalnonationalne-opytuvannya.
3 Here I’m talking about the “trust” rating (as opposed to “trust” + “mostly trust”).
4 World Values Survey (data from 2011) placed Ukrainians with the lowest confidence levels in parliament in the post-Soviet space (−59.1). The next lowest were Armenia (−44.4), Georgia (−36.6) and Russia (−28). Author’s calculations from Inglehart et al Citation2014b.
5 Author’s calculations from Inglehart et al. Citation2014a. NB. World Values Surveys ask about “confidence” in parliament, rather than trust, but Easton (Citation1975, 449) uses these terms interchangeably.
6 Agency of Legislative Initiatives (2010), “Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine: Small Trust in Big Powers”, report.
7 For a more detailed overview, see Whitmore Citation2019.
8 Interviews with deputies, including Andriy Parubiy 11 June 2013; Volodymyr Yavorivskyi 5 June 2013 and Leonid Emets, 23 May 2013.
9 Coverage was variable. For example, on 7 February 2012, a “Free Yulia” protest that forced Yanukovych to quit the chamber unable to his deliver his planned speech was ignored in Holos Ukrainy’s detailed coverage of the session (8 February 2012), but was shown at least on the TV channels Rada, 112, 5Channel, 1+1.
10 In brackets is the name of the main “oligarch” or FIG controlling the channel as of June 2013. Ryabinska Citation2017, 60–1. According to Ukrains’ka Pravda, 7 December 2018, 80% of Ukrainians obtain their news from television https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2018/12/7/7200495/?fbclid=IwAR2dCDzElsiPfpm4OKs0tc9MZWpCjYcJp1nrFSiTLUiKjbOcYyxtplTykHA.
11 Focus groups were organised by four existing contacts in Kyiv. Participants were initially invited verbally to participate by my contact, who in each case was a person well-known to them. Focus groups took place on a voluntary, unpaid basis. I moderated the discussions in Russian and participants spoke Russian and/or Ukrainian according to preference. Group A was held in English, although some Ukrainian was spoken. A consent form at the outset asked participants whether and how they voted in the 2014 parliamentary elections. I did not collect data about ethnicity, though all participants were Ukrainian citizens and over half were originally from Kyiv or Kyiv region, with others coming from all over Ukraine, including one internally displaced by the war in Donbas. A majority (17/28) of participants (mainly) used Russian language. However, it is worth noting the cross-cutting and blurred nature of ethnicity, language use and political affiliation encountered. For example, two who chose to mention that in Soviet times they self-designated as Russian (group B) were enthusiastic participants in the Euromaidan Revolution, while other Russian speakers voted for L’viv-based Samopomich and radical right party Svoboda in 2014. Furthermore, two of the more politically informed participants mis-remembered whom they voted for in that election, mentioning previous or subsequent incarnations of parties. This draws attention to the extremely tenuous nature of party affiliation in Ukraine, which is complicated by parties’ short lifespans (see Rybiy Citation2013) and the fact that the parties who did well in 2014 were almost exclusively new formations.
12 For instance, WVS data shows almost identical levels of confidence in parliament in men and women in Ukraine (2.1% have “a great deal”, while 18.3% of men and 18.4% of women have “quite a lot”). Author’s calculations from Inglehart Citation2014b.
13 For the period from February 2012, see Akademiya Ukrains’koi Presy reports: Monitorinh politychnykh novyn: osnovni rezul’taty, http://www.aup.com.ua/en/results-of-researches-2/.
14 However, conclusions about group A’s general levels of awareness cannot be drawn given the relative youth of the group.
15 For example, on 15 May 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLY3mrsru90&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 20 December 2018.
16 These data are regrettably impressionistic, but internet searches found clips from Poroshenko’s 5Channel of these events, but could not find evidence of coverage by other TV stations, other than the parliament’s own channel. Expert interviewees often commented on the limited or unbalanced media coverage of the opposition at this time (Interviews with Oleksiy Haran’, 24 July 2012; Edward Rakhimkulov, 23 July 2012; Serhiy Taran’, 24 June 2013).
17 Akademiya Ukrains’koi Presy reports: Monitorinh politychnykh novyn: osnovni rezul’taty sichen’ 2013 http://www.aup.com.ua/upload/136031585213.pdf, liutiy 2013 http://www.aup.com.ua/upload/February_2013.pdf (accessed 14 December 2018)
18 Stenograma plenarnoho zasidannia 27 kvitnia 2010 roku.
19 Interview with Andriy Parubiy, 3 June 2013.
20 A criminal case was opened against Andriy Parubiy for throwing smoke-bombs. It was later dropped due to deputies’ immunity from prosecution.
21 According to a representative survey conducted 28 February–6 March 2013, 55.4% of citizens supported blocking parliamentary sessions to demand deputies’ personal voting. Razumkov Centre, Dumka hromadian Ukrainy pro situatsiiiu v kraini, otsinky diial’nosti vlady ta opozytsii, electoral’ni orientatsii, Kyiv, 2013.
22 E.g. Olga, 48 (B) stated, “At that moment we were convinced these people … could lead the country forward. … Back then we believed in them”.
23 Interviews in Kyiv at the time with experts concurred: Hanna Hopko, 25 June 2013; Ihor Zhdanov, 26 June 2013; Ihor Koliushko, 21 June 2013; Ihor Kohut’, 22 June 2013.
24 E.g. on 7 February 2012, he was forced to wait at the podium for 5 min and eventually quit the chamber unable to make his speech. See the report on Channel5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhJ1Q0Gp94o. Accessed 20 December 2018.
25 This slang Russian word is an amalgam of zakaz, an order, and pokazukha, window-dressing or for show.
26 Ukrains’ka Pravda, 11 October 2017 https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2017/10/11/7157940/, 1 August 2018 https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2018/08/1/7187933/.
27 Ukrains’ka Pravda, 11 October 2017, https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2017/10/11/7157940/.
28 I use Treisman’s definition of political corruption as “the abuse, misuse, or stealing of state or public office or resources by elected or appointed state and government officials for private gain” (cited in Collins and Gambrel Citation2017, 1283). Lobbying was the word more often used by participants, but in the sense of corrupt claim-making on behalf of one’s own or a FIG’s interests.
29 Agency of Legislative Initiatives (2010), “Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine: Small Trust in Big Powers”, report. The report provides a breakdown of responses by occupation, region and age, but not gender. Although levels of trust in parliament did not vary by gender in Ukraine (according to World Values Survey data, see above), there is evidence that globally women perceive corruption to be more acute than men (Swamy et al. Citation2000), so it is important to note that in the focus groups there did not seem to be any gender difference in the extent to which they spoke about corruption and bezpredel in their assessments of parliament.
30 This theme came out most strongly in focus group D, where both male and female participants spoke at length about their experiences with electoral bribery.
31 NB. the participants who lambasted deputies for not speaking Ukrainian in parliament were overwhelmingly Russophone and chose to speak Russian during the focus group.
32 Finifter cited in Easton Citation1975, 456.
33 Some deputies concurred. E.g. Andriy Pyshnyi (Fatherland) felt that the violent behaviour of some PRU deputies was a sign of their “lack of culture, poor upbringing”. Interview, 11 June 2013.
34 In a representative nationwide survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre and Democratic Initiatives Foundation in December 2012, 87.6% of respondents thought deputies should be deprived of their mandate for piano-voting. Ukrains’ka Pravda, 23 January 2013, https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2013/01/23/6982077/.