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Regional Political Divisions in Ukraine in 1991–2006

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ivan Katchanovski
Ivan Katchanovski*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada. [email protected]
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Extract

This article examines determinants of persistent regional political cleavages in post-Communist Ukraine. The question is how significant the role of culture is compared to ethnic, economic, and religious factors in the regional divisions. This study employs correlation, factor, and regression analyses of regional support for the Communist/pro-Russian parties and presidential candidates and pro-nationalist/pro-independence parties and candidates in all national elections held from 1991 to 2006, the vote for the preservation of the Soviet Union in the March 1991 referendum, and the vote for the independence of Ukraine in the December 1991 referendum. This study shows that the pattern of these regional differences remained relatively stable from 1991 to 2006. Historical experience has a major effect on regional electoral behavior in post-Communist Ukraine. The legacy of Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule is positively associated with the pro-nationalist and pro-independence vote; the same historical legacy has a negative effect on support for pro-Communist and pro-Russian parties and presidential candidates and on the vote for the preservation of the Soviet Union.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 34 , Issue 5 , November 2006 , pp. 507 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Although the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc included some former leaders of nationalist parties, these parties were not members of this bloc.Google Scholar

2. Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, <http://www.cvk.gov.ua>, 2004, 2006.,+2004,+2006.>Google Scholar

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4. Ibid., pp. 191–239.Google Scholar

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8. See Birch, Elections; Birch, “Interpreting the Regional Effect in Ukrainian Politics,” in Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996), pp. 138, 165; Katchanovski, Cleft Countries; Steven Roper and Florin Fesnic, “Historical Legacies and Their Impact on Post-Communist Voting Behaviour,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 55, 2003, pp. 119–131.Google Scholar

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10. Ukrainian- and Russian-language studies of regional cleavages in post-Soviet Ukraine are mostly descriptive in nature. See, for example, Politychna kul'tura: Teoria, problemy, perspektyvy (Kyiv: Parapan, 2004); Anatolii Romaniuk and Natalia Chernysh, “Shid-Zahid: Kompromis chy konfrontatsia,” Filosofs'ka i sotsiolohichna dumka, Vols 3–4, 1995, pp. 104–116. Ukrainian- and Russian-language studies often reflect political value judgments concerning the regional divisions. For example, publications by pro-nationalist scholars refer to Eastern Ukraine as an “ugly” and heavily criminalized region. See, for example, Mykola Riabchuk, Dvi Ukrainy: Realni mezhi, virtual'ni viiny (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2003). Similarly, publications by pro-Russian and pro-Communist scholars in Ukraine and Russia often brand Western Ukrainians as banderivtsi, or followers of the radical and militant nationalist organization active during World War II.Google Scholar

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13. Findings of such culturally-based stable patterns of regional political behavior provide evidence against rational choice theories, which maintain that it is self-interest and not values that motivates people to vote for political parties and candidates. See Green, Donald and Shapiro, Ian, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Similarly, such culturally-based stable voting patterns challenge theories of irrational voters, which, for example, attribute the narrow victory of George Bush, the Republican Party candidate in the 2000 US presidential elections, to several million voters who voted against Al Gore, the incumbent Democratic Party candidate, because they blamed the United States vice president for drought in their states. See Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, “Blind Retrospection: Electoral Responses to Drought, Flu, and Shark Attacks,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 29 August − 1 September 2002.Google Scholar

14. Diamond, Political Culture; Elazar, American Federalism; Katchanovski, Cleft Countries; Lipset, Continental Divide; Putnam et al., Making Democracy Work. Google Scholar

15. Max Weber, “Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences,” in Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch, eds, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949), pp. 181–183.Google Scholar

16. See Katchanovski, Ivan, “Divergence in Growth in Post-Communist Countries,” Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2000, pp. 55–81; Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments,” in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-national Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 1–64; Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Putnam et al., Making Democracy Work. Google Scholar

17. Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Katchanovski, Cleft Countries; Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).Google Scholar

18. See Katchanovski, Cleft Countries; Subtelny, Ukraine. Google Scholar

19. See Prizel, Ilya, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Subtelny, Ukraine; Orest Subtelny, “Russocentrism, Regionalism, and the Political Culture of Ukraine,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 189–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. See Katchanovski, Cleft Countries; Subtelny, Ukraine. Google Scholar

21. Ivan Katchanovski, “Small Nations but Great Differences: Political Orientations and Cultures of the Crimean Tatars and the Gagauz,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 57, No. 6, 2005, pp. 877–894.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Similarly, historical experience in many regions in the geographic Center, South, and East of Ukraine differed before their incorporation by the Russian Empire. There were also differences in settlement patterns in these regions during Russian and Soviet rule.Google Scholar

23. See Katchanovski, Cleft Countries. Google Scholar

24. Inglehart, Rondald et al., World Values Surveys and European Values Surveys, 1981–1984, 1990–1993, and 1995–1997 [computer file] (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 2000).Google Scholar

25. The inclusion of short periods of Russian and Soviet rule and non-Russian or non-Soviet rule does not significantly change regression results.Google Scholar

26. Regression results are not sensitive to choice of different base year for historical experience in regions of Ukraine.Google Scholar

27. See Barrington and Herron, “One Ukraine or Many?”Google Scholar

28. Because its population is much smaller than that of other regions of Ukraine, this study includes data for Sevastopol city, which has a special regional status, in data for Crimea.Google Scholar

29. See Inglehart et al., World Values Surveys and European Values Survey. A similar World Values Survey was conducted in Ukraine in December 1999, but this survey is not as suitable as the 1995 survey for regression analysis, because the 1999 survey did not include questions on ethnicity and language of the respondents.Google Scholar

30. In 2006, in contrast to the 2002 elections, the Ukrainian People's Party was not part of the “Our Ukraine” Bloc, but led the Ukrainian People's Bloc.Google Scholar

31. See Craumer and Clem, “Ukraine's Emerging Electoral Geography”; Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, <http://www.cvk.ukrpack.net>, 2000, 2002; Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, 2004; Katchanovski, Cleft Countries; Taras Kuzio and Andrew Wilson, Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).,+2000,+2002;+Central+Electoral+Commission+of+Ukraine,+2004;+Katchanovski,+Cleft+Countries;+Taras+Kuzio+and+Andrew+Wilson,+Ukraine:+Perestroika+to+Independence+(New+York:+St.+Martin's+Press,+1994).>Google Scholar

32. Ibid. and Andrew Wilson, “Ukrainian Left: In Transition to Social Democracy or Still in Thrall to the USSR?” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 49, No. 7, 1997, pp. 1293–1316. In contrast to the 1994 presidential elections, Leonid Kravchuk, who was the Soviet Communist Party ideology chief in Soviet Ukraine, during the 1991 elections advocated a relatively more pro-Russian political program compared to his nationalist opponents.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. The regional vote for the Civic Congress candidates in the 1994 parliamentary elections is not available. However, candidates from this party received only 0.4% of the national vote in the first round of the 1994 elections, and they won only two out of the 450 electoral districts in the second round.Google Scholar

34. The weakest correlation (0.33) between the vote for the independence of Ukraine and the vote for Leonid Kuchma in the 1999 presidential elections is statistically significant at the 0.1 level.Google Scholar