Class Voting and the Orange Revolution: A Cultural Political Economy Perspective on Ukraine's Electoral Geography

Abstract

The coloured revolutions in the post-communist countries are widely regarded as bourgeois democratic breakthroughs in a classical liberal tradition. Statistical analysis of the structural side of the Orange electoral success in Ukraine – examining in a range of regions the effect on electoral support for an anti-regime candidate of a district's class composition, the activity of non-governmental organizations, ethic-linguistic characteristics, the prevailing mode of human settlement, the church influence, and economic links with Europe – shows the class composition of an electoral district to be the single most important factor behind Viktor Yushchenko's electoral success. However, the Orange victory in 2004 was achieved with support from the least bourgeois areas rather than those where the urban capitalist class had been the most developed.

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the BASEES Annual Conference, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK, April 2007, and at the ‘Rethinking Coloured Revolutions’ Conference, University of Glasgow, UK, May 2008. The author wishes to thank the participants on these panels, especially Terry Cox, Philip Hanson, Ronald Hill, and Adam Swain, and also the editors for the thoughtful comments and suggestions. The author is indebted to John Moffat for his generous assistance with econometric modelling.

Notes

Anders Åslund and Michael McFaul, ‘Introduction: Perspectives on the Orange Revolution’, in Anders Åslund and Michael McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 2006), pp.1–8 (p.4).

Anders Åslund, ‘Ukraine Whole and Free: What I Saw at the Orange Revolution’, The Weekly Standard, Vol.19, No.15 (27 Dec. 2004); see also Anders Åslund, ‘The Orange Velvet Revolution’, Project Syndicate, December 2004, available at <http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/aslund18/English>, accessed 1 March 2007.

Nadia Diuk, ‘The Triumph of Civil Society’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.69–83.

Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1966).

Similar to the Orange hagiography, accounts of the events provided by sceptical or hostile ‘counter-revolutionary’ commentators are also fairly partisan and normative. While recognizing the ‘objective reality’ of the previous regime, these authors consider the coloured revolutions mostly as a geo-political technology, skilfully applied by the USA and its Western allies in the struggle for the post-Soviet space. For a view from the opposing side, see Valerie Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion and Postcommunist Electoral Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.39, No.3 (2006), pp.283–304; Michael McFaul, ‘Ukraine Imports Democracy: External Influences on the Orange Revolution’, International Security, Vol.32, No.2 (2007), pp.45–83; Oleksandr Sushko and Olena Prystayko, ‘Western Influence’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.125–43.

David Lane, ‘The Orange Revolution: “People's Revolution” or Revolutionary Coup?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol.10, No.4 (2008), pp.525–49 (p.526). On the Western media bias, see Andrés Schipani-Adúriz, ‘Through an Orange-Colored Lens: Western Media, Constructed Imagery, and Color Revolutions’, Demokratizatsiya, Vol.15, No.1 (2007), pp.87–115.

See Pippa Norris, Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

For recent applications of rational-choice institutionalism, see Paul D'Anieri, Understanding Ukrainian Politics: Power, Politics, and Institutional Design (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007); Raymond M. Duch and Randolph T. Stevenson, The Economic Vote: How Political and Economic Institutions Condition Election Results (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Joshua A. Tucker, Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp.78–89.

For example, see W. Jefferson West II, ‘Regional Cleavages in Turkish Politics: An Electoral Geography of the 1999 and 2002 National Elections’, Political Geography, Vol.24, No.4 (2005), pp.499–532; Stephen Whitefield, ‘Political Cleavages and Post-Communist Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol.5 (2002), pp.181–200.

See the back cover praise for Anders Åslund, How Capitalism Was Built: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Dennis Smith, Barrington Moore: Violence, Morality and Political Change (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983), p.9.

Anders Åslund, ‘The Economic Policy of Ukraine after the Orange Revolution’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Vol.46, No.5 (2005), pp.327–53 (p.330); and Anders Åslund, ‘The Ancien Régime: Kuchma and the Oligarchs’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.9–28 (p.25). Michael McFaul is fully supportive of this claim: ‘In the long run, modernization theorists have identified a positive correlation between the rising wealth of a country and (in particular) the emergence of a middle class and democratization. In Ukraine, recent economic growth and an expanding middle class were causes of the Orange Revolution. Åslund has noted, however, that the real class drama in that breakthrough was the clash between billionaires and millionaires’: see Michael McFaul, ‘Conclusion: The Orange Revolution in a Comparative Perspective’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.165–95 (p.186). In the same volume, Adrian Karatnycky considers the Orange revolution as a fight of ‘minigarchs’ against ‘oligarchs’, emphasizing that ‘support for the mass protests came from domestic Our Ukraine donors, who were mainly the country's emerging upper middle class and new millionaires’: see Adrian Karatnycky, ‘From Kuchmagate to the Orange Revolution’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.29–44 (p.41). Similarly, Igor Yurgens, head of a Muscovite neo-liberal advocacy group and President Medvedev's chief lobbyist, expressed the opinion in Financial Times (27 April 2008): ‘Give a chance to a new generation of Russian leaders who want to modernize the country. Just as middle class people want a choice when they shop in Moscow's boutiques, they will want a choice in politics’.

Åslund, ‘The Economic Policy of Ukraine’, pp.334, 337.

For recent studies on economic voting, see Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Martin Paldam (eds.), ‘Economic Voting: An Introduction’, Electoral Studies, Vol.19, Nos.2-3 (2000), pp.113–22; Raymond M. Duch and Randy Stevenson, ‘Assessing the Magnitude of the Economic Vote Over Time and Across Nations’, Electoral Studies, Vol.25, No.3 (2006), pp.528–47; Jan Fidrmuc, ‘Political Support for Reforms: Economics of Voting in Transition Countries, European Economic Review, Vol.44, No.8 (2000), pp.1491–513; Marcus A.G. Harper, ‘Economic Voting in Postcommunist Eastern Europe’, Comparative Political Studies, Vol.33, No.9 (2000), pp.1191–227; Robert S. Kravchuk and Victor Chudowsky, ‘Ukraine's 1994 Elections as an Economic Event’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.38, No.2 (2005), pp.131–65; Andrew Roberst, ‘Hyperaccountability: Economic Voting in Central and Eastern Europe’, Electoral Studies, Vol.27, No.3 (2008), pp.533–46; Tucker, Regional Economic Voting; Guy D. Whitten and Harvey D. Palmer, ‘Cross-National Analyses of Economic Voting’, Electoral Studies, Vol.18, No.1 (1999), pp.49–67.

Tak Wing Chan and John H. Goldthorpe, ‘Class and Status: The Conceptual Distinction and its Empirical Relevance’, American Sociological Review, Vol.72, No.4 (2007), pp.512-32; Daniel Oesch, ‘The Changing Shape of Class Voting: An Individual-level Analysis of Party Support in Britain, Germany and Switzerland’, European Societies, Vol.10, No.3 (2008), pp.329–55; Charles Pattie and Ron Johnston, ‘Positional Issues, Valence Issues and the Economic Geography of Voting in British Elections’, Journal of Economic Geography, Vol.8, No.1 (2008), pp.105–26.

Geoffrey Evans and Stephen Whitefield, ‘Explaining the Emergence and Persistence of Class Voting for Presidential Candidates in Post-Soviet Russia, 1993–2001', Political Research Quarterly, Vol.59, No.1 (2006), pp.23–34.

Fredo Arias-King, ‘Orange People: A Brief History of Transnational Liberation Networks in East Central Europe’, Demokratizatsiya, Vol.15, No.4 (2007), pp.29–71; Paul D'Anieri, ‘The Last Hurrah: The 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections and the Limits of Machine Politics’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.38, No.2 (2005), pp.231–49; Pavol Demeš and Joerg Forbig, ‘Pora – “It's Time” for Democracy in Ukraine’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.85–101; Diuk, ‘The Triumph’; Adrian Karatnycky, ‘Ukraine's Orange Revolution’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.84, No.2 (2005), pp.35–52; Taras Kuzio, ‘Ukraine's Orange Revolution: The Opposition Road to Success’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.16, No.2 (2005), pp.117–30; Taras Kuzio, ‘Kravchuk to the Orange Revolution: The Victory of Civic Nationalism in Post-Soviet Ukraine’, in L.W. Barrington (ed.), After Independence: Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial and Postcommunist States (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp.187–224; Taras Kuzio, ‘Everyday Ukrainians and the Orange Revolution’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.45–68 (pp.62–7); Olena Prytula, ‘The Ukrainian Media Rebellion’, in Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange, pp.103–23. For a critical account, see Lane, ‘The Orange Revolution’.

See A. Litvinenko, ‘“Oranzhevaya revolyutsiya”: prichiny, kharakter i rezul’taty’ [The Orange revolution: causes, character and outcomes], in Mikhail Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya: Versii, khronika, dokumenty [The ‘Orange’ Revolution: Versions, Chronicle, Documents] (Kyiv: Optima, 2005), pp.9–18; V. Malinkovich, ‘O prichinakh “oranzhevoi” revolyutsii v Ukraine’ [On the origins of the ‘orange’ revolution in Ukraine], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revolution], pp.19– 51; S. Markov, “Oranzhevaya” revolyutsiya – primer revolyutsii global’nogo soobshchestva XXI veka, revolyutsii nepravitel'stvennykh organizatsii’ [The ‘Orange’ Revolution – an example of a 21st Century's global community revolution, a revolution of non-governmental organizations], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revolution], pp.52–75; M. Pogrebinskii, ‘Kak Ukraina shla k “oranzhevoi” revolyutsii’ [How has Ukraine come to an ‘orange’ revolution], in Pogrebinskii (edj, ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revolution], pp.106–18; A. Tolpygo, ‘Chto proizoshlo v noyabre–dekabre 2004 goda?’ [What has happened in November–December 2004?], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revolution], pp.164–70; V. Fesenko, ‘Vybory popolam s revolyutsiei’ [In half election, in half revolution], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revoltuion], pp.171–81; A. Fin’ko, “Vybory 2004 goda: osnovnye konflikty i ikh posledstviya’ [The 2004 elections: primary conflicts and their consequences], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revoltuion], pp.182–203.

V. Nikonov, ‘“Oranzhevaya revolyutsiya” v kontekste zhanra’ [The ‘Orange’ revolution in context of the genre], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revoltuion], pp.95–105; A. Popov, ‘Paradoksy revoliutsii’ [The revolution's paradox], in Pogrebinskii (ed.), ‘Oranzhevaya’ revolyutsiya [The ‘Orange’ Revoltuion], pp.119–49.

Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). In his account of the 2004 events, Wilson stresses the religious dimension of the conflict as well, by showing how Ukraine's rural electorate, the peasantry, ‘responded warmly to Yushchenko's rebranding of the national idea, which mined older traditions, not of ethno-nationalism, but of Christian rhetoric and traditional values’: see Andrew Wilson, Ukraine's Orange Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p.200.

For the most recent studies of Ukraine's regionalism and cultural division, see Dominique Arel, ‘La face cachée de la Révolution Orange: l'Ukraine en négation face à son problème régional’ [The hidden face of the ‘Orange’ revolution: Ukraine in denial regarding its regional problem], Revue d'études comparatives Est–Ouest, Vol.37, No.4 (2006), pp.11–46, available in translation from the author as Dominique Arel, ‘The Hidden Face of the Orange Revolution: Ukraine in Denial Towards Its Regional Problem’, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada; Alfred Stepan, ‘Ukraine: Improbable Democratic “Nation-State” But Possible Democratic “State-Nation”?’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol.21, No.4 (2005), pp.279–308; Adam Swain and Vlad Mykhnenko, ‘The Ukrainian Donbas in “Transition”’, in Adam Swain (ed.), Reconstructing the Post-Soviet Industrial Region: The Donbas in Transition (London: Routledge, 2007), pp.7–46.

Lowell W. Barrington and Erik S. Herron, ‘One Ukraine or Many? Regionalism in Ukraine and Its Political Consequences’, Nationalities Papers, Vol.32, No.1 (2004), pp.53–86.

Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer, ‘Shades of Orange: The Electoral Geography of Ukraine's 2004 Presidential Elections’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Vol.46, No.6 (2005), pp.364–85 (p.383).

Valeriy Khmel'ko, ‘Dinamika reitingov i sotsial'nyi sostav elektoratov V. Yushchenko i V. Yanukovycha v izbiratel'noi kampanii 2004 goda’ [The dynamics of ratings and social composition of the electorates of V. Yanukovych in the 2004 electoral campaign], Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya: Dannye. Analiz, Diskussii, 2005, No.2, pp.15–21, available at <http://www.ecsocman.edu.ru/vestnik/msg/291405.html>, accessed 26 Nov. 2008; Lane, ‘The Orange Revolution’, pp.535–9; Stephen White and Ian McAllister, ‘Rethinking the Orange Revolution’, paper presented at the ‘Rethinking Coloured Revolutions’ Conference, University of Glasgow, UK, May 2008 (this collection, pp.227–54).

See Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum, Beyond the Regulation Approach: Putting Capitalist Economies in their Place (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2006), p.10; Robert J. Holton, Economy and Society (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.215–71; Andrew Sayer, ‘For a Critical Cultural Political Economy’, Antipode, Vol.33, No.4 (2001), pp.687–708.

Peter Achterberg, ‘Class Voting in the New Political Culture: Economic, Cultural and Environmental Voting in 20 Western Countries’, International Sociology, Vol.21, No.2 (2006), pp.237–62; Peter Achterberg and Dick Houtman, ‘Why Do So Many People Vote “Unnaturally”? A Cultural Explanation for Voting Behaviour’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.45, No.1 (2006), pp.75–92.

Lane, ‘The Orange Revolution’.

Tsentral'na Vyborcha Komisiya Ukrainy [Ukraine's Central Electoral Committee], Vybory Prezydenta Ukrainy 2004 [The President of Ukraine Elections 2004] (Kyiv: TsVK, 2005).

See Chan and Goldthorpe, ‘Class and Status’; Robert Erikson and John H. Goldthorpe, The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Erik Olin Wright, ‘Foundations of a Neo-Marxist Class Analysis’, in Erik Olin Wright (ed.), Approaches to Class Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.4–30. For a wider overview, see Richard Breen and David R. Rottman, Class Stratification: A Comparative Perspective (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995), and Anthony Giddens and David Held (eds.), Classes, Power, and Conflict: Classical and Contemporary Debates (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982).

See note 16.

Derzhavnyi Komitet Statystyky Ukrainy [Ukraine's State Statistics Council], Zainiate naselennia Ukrainy: Naselennia, zainiate ekonomichnoyu diyal'nistyu, za statusom zainyatosti za danymy Vseurkains'koho perepysu naselennia 2001 roku [The employed population of Ukraine: economically active population by status of employment according to results of the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001] (Kyiv: Derzhkomstat, 2004).

Derzhavnyi Komitet Statystyky Ukrainy [Ukraine's State Statistics Council], Statystychnyi zbirnyk ‘Regiony Ukrainy’ 2005 [The 2005 Regions of Ukraine Statistical Yearbook] (Kyiv: Derzhkomstat, 2005), Vols. I–II.

Derzhavnyi Komitet Statystyky Ukrainy [Ukraine's State Statistics Council], Pro kil'kist' ta sklad naselennia Ukrainy za pidsumkamy Vseukrains'koho perepysu naselennia 2001 roku: Movnyi sklad naselennia Ukrainy [On the number and composition of the population of Ukraine according to the results of the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001: language attributes of the population of Ukraine] (Kyiv: Derzhkomstat, 2004), available at <http://www.ukrcensus.gov.ua/results/general/language/>, accessed 25 March 2006.

Derzhavnyi Komitet Statystyky Ukrainy [Ukraine's State Statistics Council], Demografichna sytuatsiya v Ukraini u 2004 rotsi: Ekspres-informatsiya [Demographic situation in Ukraine in 2004: express information] (Kyiv: Derzhkomstat, 2005).

Derzhavnyi Komitet Ukrainy u Spravakh Natsional'nostei ta Relihii [Ukraine's State Nationalities and Religion Committee], Zvit pro merezhu tserkov i relihiinykh orhanizatsii v Ukraini stanom na 1 sichna 2004 roku [Report on the network of churches and religious organisations in Ukraine on 1 January 2004] (Kyiv: Derzhkomnatsrelihii, 2004); Relihiino-informatsiina sluzhba Ukrainy [Ukraine's Religious Information Service], Relihiini orhanizatsii v Ukraini (stanom na 1 sichna 2004 r.) [Religious organisations in Ukraine on 1 January 2004] (Kyiv: RISU, 2001–2008), available at <http://www.risu.org.ua/ukr/resourses/statistics/ukr2004/>, accessed 26 Jan. 2007; Relihiino-informatsiina sluzhba Ukrainy [Ukraine's Religious Information Service], Relihiini orhanizatsii u regionakh Ukrainy (stanom na 1 sichna 2004 r.) [Religious organisations in Ukraine's regions on 1 January 2004] (Kyiv: RISU, 2001-2008), available at <http://www.risu.org.ua/ukr/resourses/statistics/regions2004/>, accessed 26 Jan. 2007.

See note 33.

This section was prepared jointly with John Moffat, CPPR, University of Glasgow.

L.E. Papke and Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, ‘Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401 (K) Plan Participation Rates’, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Vol.11, No.6 (1996), pp.619–32.

Note that because of the specification of the model, the coefficients inform us by how many percentage points the Yushchenko vote increases in response to an increase of one percentage point in the explanatory variable rather than the percentage increase in the Yushchenko vote associated with a 1 per cent increase in the explanatory variable.

See the following literature on the ecological fallacy and inference problem: D.A. Freedman, ‘Ecological Inference’, in N.J. Smelser and Paul B. Bates (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Oxford: Elsevier, 2001), Vol.6, pp.4027–30; D.A. Freedman, ‘The Ecological Fallacy’, in M.S. Lewis-Beck, Alan Bryman and Tim Futing Liao (eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2004), Vol.1, p.293; G. King, A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); G.H. Kramer, ‘The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- Versus Individual-Level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting’, The American Political Science Review, Vol.77, No.1 (1983), pp.92–111.

Lane, ‘The Orange Revolution’.

Vlad Mykhnenko, ‘Review of Åslund and McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.60, No.5 (2008), pp.867–9.

Vlad Mykhnenko, ‘What Type of Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe?’, Les Actes du GERPISA, 2005, No.39, pp.83–112, available at <http://www.gerpisa.univ-evry.fr/actes/39/gerpisa_actes39.html>, accessed 10 Feb. 2009; Vlad Mykhnenko, ‘Poland and Ukraine: Institutional Structures and Economic Performance’, in David Lane and Martin Myant (eds.), Varieties of Capitalism in Post-Communist Countries (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), pp.124–45; Vlad Mykhnenko, ‘Strengths and Weaknesses of “Weak Co-ordination”: Economic Institutions, Revealed Comparative Advantages, and Socio-Economic Performance of Mixed Market Economies in Poland and Ukraine’, in Bob Hancké, Martin Rhodes and Mark Thatcher (eds.), Beyond Varieties of Capitalism: Conflict, Contradictions and Complementarities in the European Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.351–78.

For details, see Aleksandr Paskhaver and Lidia Verkhovoda, ‘Privatization Before and After the Orange Revolution’, Problems of Economic Transition, Vol.50, No.3 (2007), pp.5–40; Heiko Pleines, ‘Manipulating Politics: Domestic Investors in Ukrainian Privatization Auctions 2000–2004’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.60, No.7 (2008), pp.1177–97.

One commentator was deeply puzzled: ‘Rather unexpectedly, this liberal revolution yielded an outburst of socialist populism. How could this happen?’: Åslund, ‘Economic Policy of Ukraine’, p.327.

See Oleh Havrylyshyn, Divergent Paths in Post-communist Transformation: Capitalism for All or Capitalism for the Few? (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006).

Åslund, ‘Economic Policy of Ukraine’, p.331.

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Notes on contributors

Vlad Mykhnenko

Vlad Mykhnenko is a Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, engaged in exploring the fields of critical political economy, post-communist studies, and economic geography. Previously, he acted as an International Policy Fellow at the Open Society Institute – Budapest, before working as a Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow.