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Youth Activism Before and During the Rose and Orange Revolutions In WHEN “IT’S TIME” TO SAY “ENOUGH!” Youth Activism before and during the Rose and Orange Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine by ALEKSANDRA DUDA A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Centre for Russian and East European Studies The University of Birmingham March 2010 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis focuses on the emergence and development of two youth opposition campaigns, Kmara in Georgia and Pora in Ukraine, campaigns which were part of the “coloured revolutions” which took place in Eastern Europe in 2003 and 2004. The thesis identifies, analyzes and compares the influence and the role of youth activism in post-communist countries, and attributes a new role to the Kmara and Pora campaigns as vanguards of oppositional protest and transmitters of public grievances in the under-researched context of semi-authoritarian regimes. Two sets of questions are answered in this study, which relate to how and why youth opposition campaigns occurred and developed in Georgia and Ukraine. These questions are addressed through a comparative analysis of the political and social contexts in which narratives on Kmara and Pora are placed. Based on the combination of four main approaches to the study of social movements – viz. political opportunities, resource mobilization, framing processes, and diffusion – the analysis enabled deep insight into various aspects of the emergence and development of Kmara and Pora's campaigns and exposed commonalities and differences between them. The study confirms that the fixed and volatile features that decided on the nature of Georgian and Ukrainian regime provide a key tool for understanding the outburst of youth political activism in a hybrid form of a political system. Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Stefania and Paweł. For their love, support, and encouragement. Acknowledgments First of all, I am greatly indebted to my two supervisors, Dr Katarzyna Wolczuk and Dr David J. White for their overall guidance, advice, and kind words of support, particularly during my moments of intellectual crisis. I would also like to express my gratitude to the CREES support staff for their help. I owe a huge amount to my friends in Tbilisi and Kiev, who helped me to arrange my fieldwork and who made my stay in Georgia and Ukraine an unforgettable experience. I am especially grateful to Sandro, Tea, Ako, Nina, Yuriy, and their friends for taking care of me during my study trips and allowing me to taste for a moment a real Georgian and Ukrainian life. I am also enormously grateful to my friends who supported me along my ups and downs while completing this thesis, particularly to Tomasz, Sylwia, Karenka, Claudinski, Nino, Ala, Mashka, and Aleko. I am grateful to the Liberty Institute in Tbilisi, the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting in Kiev, and the John. W. Kluge Center in Washington D.C. for providing me with a base from which I could undertake my interviews and research abroad. I would like to thank to my all interviewees for sharing their experiences and perspectives with me and for giving up their time to take part in this study. Last, but by no means least, this thesis could not have been completed without funding provided by the Economic Social and Research Council (award no. PTA-030-2005-00270). Precious support came also from the University of Birmingham and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. Table of Contents Chapter 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1 1. Research context ............................................................................................................. 1 2. Review of the relevant literature...................................................................................... 3 3. Rationale......................................................................................................................... 7 4. Research questions........................................................................................................ 11 5. Methodological approach and methods of enquiry......................................................... 13 5.1. Comparative analysis of two case studies........................................................... 15 5.2. Semi-structured interviews................................................................................. 18 6. Overview of the chapters............................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK............................................................... 21 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 21 2. Approaches to the study of social movements ............................................................... 24 2.1. Multifactor approach.......................................................................................... 27 2.1.1. Political opportunities .......................................................................... 30 2.1.2. Mobilizing resources ............................................................................ 38 2.1.3. Framing the action ............................................................................... 48 2.2. Activism beyond borders ................................................................................... 53 2.2.1. Cross-national diffusion ....................................................................... 55 3. Student political activism .............................................................................................. 59 3.1. Characteristics of student activism ..................................................................... 61 3.2. Student activism: constraints and opportunities.................................................. 63 4. From theory to observation ........................................................................................... 67 Chapter 3: SEMI-AUTHORITARIANISM IN GEORGIA AND UKRAINE AS A CONTEXT FOR MOBILIZATION .................................................. 69 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 69 2. The concept of semi-authoritarian regime type.............................................................. 71 2.1. Defining features ............................................................................................... 71 2.2. Key areas of uncertainty .................................................................................... 76 2.2.1. Elites.................................................................................................... 76 2.2.2. Elections .............................................................................................. 79 2.3. Prospects for regime change .............................................................................. 83 3. Shevardnadze’s Georgia and Ukraine under Kuchma .................................................... 85 3.1. Personalization of the old regime ....................................................................... 86 3.1.1. Georgia ................................................................................................ 86 3.1.2. Ukraine ................................................................................................ 90 3.2. Elite alignments................................................................................................. 94 3.2.1. Georgia ................................................................................................ 94 3.2.2. Ukraine ................................................................................................ 97 3.3. Mapping divisions in the political landscape .................................................... 100 3.3.1. Georgia .............................................................................................. 100 3.3.2. Ukraine .............................................................................................. 104 4. Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 108 Chapter 4: YOUTH POLITICAL ACTIVISM AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN GEORGIA AND UKRAINE................................ 113 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 113 2. Students and protest during the Soviet era ................................................................... 116 2.1. Georgia............................................................................................................ 117 2.2. Ukraine............................................................................................................ 120 3. Transformative events and protest experience after 1991............................................
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