GOVERNANCE AND PARTICIPATION

Editor

Professor Dr Melanie Sully

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CONTENTS

Preface Ambassador Martin EICHTINGER Director General for Cultural Policy Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs Oskar WAWRA, Director, International Relations Department, City of Vienna 5 Introduction Melanie SULLY Executive Director, Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna Professor, Political Science, formerly Diplomatic Academy, Vienna 9 Civil Society, Participation 1989-2014 Jakub FORST-BATTAGLIA Director, Austrian Cultural Forum, Kiev Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs 15 Governance in the Black Sea Basin and Cross Border Cooperation Agnès CICCARONE Director of the Academic and Training Center, Assembly of European Regions 29 EUBAM – Euroregion “Dniester”: cooperation for development Jean VAN ACKER Strategy, Planning and Performance Adviser, EUBAM Volodymyr MEREZHKO Director of Coordination Center of Euroregion “Dniester” Dmytro DIDYK, Deputy Director of Coordination Center of Euroregion “Dniester” 39 Participatory Democracy (#Ukraine, #Moldova, #Romania) Sergiy GERASYMCHUK Strategic and Security Studies Group, Kyiv, Ukraine Ukraine-Romania International Experts’ Consortium 49 Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU Sergii GLEBOV Associate Professor, Department of International Relations Odesa Mechnikov National University, Ukraine 63 Federal Centre, Governors and Municipality (Russia) Maria PONOMAREVA Southern Federal University, Russia 73

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Model of Securitization Triangle: the Ukrainian Crisis and Russia Victor APRYSHCHENKO Director of the Institute of History and International Relations, Southern Federal University, Rostov, Russia 85 Patterns of Participation in Georgia Levan KAKHISHVILI MSc Russian and East European Studies St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford 101 Development of E-Government in Azerbaijan Kamal MAKILI-ALIYEV Leading Research Fellow, Baku, Azerbaijan 113 Why Participation Matters: Armenia Gevorg MELIKYAN Independent Political Analyst, Yerevan, Armenia 121 Turkey’s Challenges Hikmet KIRIK Assoc Prof Political Science, Istanbul University 131 The 2012-14 Protest Movements in Bulgaria Stefan RALCHEV Programme Director and Policy Analyst, Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS) Sofia, Bulgaria 147 Environments: the art of the possible Alexandra DANCASIU Executive Board, Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna 161

4 PREFACE PREFACE Ambassador Martin EICHTINGER Ambassador Martin EICHTINGER Director General for Cultural Policy in the Austrian Federal Ministry for Director General for Cultural Policy in the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Policy1 Europe, Integration and Foreign Policy1 Oskar WAWRA Oskar WAWRA Director, International Relations Department, City of Vienna Director, International Relations Department, City of Vienna

This book forms part of a series looking at democratic governance and political This book forms part of a series looking at democratic governance and political culture in different countries where Austrian foreign policy seeks to promote culture in different countries where Austrian foreign policy seeks to promote stability, peace and European values. Good governance forms an essential part stability, peace and European values. Good governance forms an essential part of this work relating to issues such as the rule of law, anti-corruption measures, of this work relating to issues such as the rule of law, anti-corruption measures, transparency, accountability, responsibility, parliamentary standards and free transparency, accountability, responsibility, parliamentary standards and free media as well as the business environment which is so important for prosperity media as well as the business environment which is so important for prosperity and welfare. and welfare. To date the project has focussed on the Black Sea Region including the littoral To date the project has focussed on the Black Sea Region including the littoral countries and the Republic of Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan. countries and the Republic of Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Over the last five years scientists and experts from the region with first-hand Over the last five years scientists and experts from the region with first-hand experience have come together at conferences, seminars, Summer Schools and experience have come together at conferences, seminars, Summer Schools and workshops to exchange information and experience. The project initially kicked workshops to exchange information and experience. The project initially kicked off at the end of 2009 with a small brain-storming session with a few experts off at the end of 2009 with a small brain-storming session with a few experts from the Region eg from Georgia and Ukraine, in the Austrian Federal Ministry from the Region eg from Georgia and Ukraine, in the Austrian Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna2. From this grew the idea of regular meetings, for Foreign Affairs in Vienna2. From this grew the idea of regular meetings, publications and conferences which were duly held in Odessa, Ukraine (2011), publications and conferences which were duly held in Odessa, Ukraine (2011), Tbilisi, Georgia with concluding Summer School in the Black Sea resort of Tbilisi, Georgia with concluding Summer School in the Black Sea resort of Batumi (2012), Istanbul, Turkey (2013) and Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova Batumi (2012), Istanbul, Turkey (2013) and Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova (2014). Annual book publications stemmed from these meetings with The




























































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5 (2014). Annual book publications stemmed from these meetings with The Culture of Governance, Governance and Dialogue and Governance and Sustainability. A lynchpin for much of the coordination work in between annual conferences was provided by the Institute for Go-Governance (www.go- governance.com) run by Prof Dr Melanie Sully and Dr Josef Mantl in Vienna. Via social media and Internet the Institute could offer a platform for debate and disseminate information on topics of mutual interest in a region undergoing dramatic transformation. Independent experts from the region joined the Black Sea network of the Institute which is constantly being widened.3 Not only experienced academics, civil servants, diplomats, journalists, civil society workers have taken part in the project series but also young people and students from the Region as assistants who could offer their own insight.

The project could rely from the beginning on support from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs and, thanks to a steadfast partnership, from the International Relations Department of the City of Vienna with the untiring work of Thomas Resch. City-to-city contacts and Vienna’s own wide network, the respect it enjoys on the international scene and the hard work of the department, were all of vital importance in realising these projects.

In addition there are many other international and domestic partners such as the European Union Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) based in Odessa where over many years we have enjoyed close contact and fruitful relations with the strategy, planning and performance advisor, Jean Van Acker. With the support of the Assembly of European Regions under the leadership of Dr Hande Bozatli (www.aer.eu) we were able to expand the project to organise an Awards scheme bringing governance experts from Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine to Vienna for expert training sessions at the OSCE, the United Nations, the City of Vienna, the Austrian Industrialist



        

6 Federation and the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs.4 In addition we have worked with the Black Sea Trust and the German Marshall Fund to organise a Summer School in the region.

The 2014 good governance conference was held in Chisinau with the support not only of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs and the City of Vienna but also with the valuable efforts and logistics provided by the City of Chisinau and the Mayor and the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Moldova. As usual a press conference was held to present the annual book which received widespread comment in the media5. Of particular interest to participants was the situation in Ukraine where experts from Kyiv, Odessa , Crimea and Rostov, southern Russia, were able to present their views. One of the aims of the project is to enable objective discussion between experts of different countries where there are special controversial issues in an effort to promote mutual understanding.

This book is concerned with an important ingredient of democratic sustainability viz. the nature and scope of participation in the political process. The authors here present their own views, analysis, hopes and reservations which provide us with a better insight and understanding of problems beyond day-to-day reports. We are grateful to the authors for providing this wider picture and also to the editor of the book political scientist Dr Melanie Sully who originally began work on the region as a professor at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. We are confident that the book, this series and the good governance project will receive a wide readership and contribute to comparative best practices for other regions and countries eager to improve the quality of their democracies.



 
      



          

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Introduction

Melanie SULLY Executive Director, Go-Governance Institute Professor, Political Science, formerly Diplomatic Academy, Vienna This book1 continues the series looking at good governance in the Black Sea Region and builds on the last conference held in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova based on the theme of sustainability. For a democracy to have any hope of sustainability it requires legitimacy through political participation2.

This year our series took the theme of participation in the light of declining political engagement which has become a feature of many democracies. For civic participation to work, citizens need access to information and also to decision-makers, something which is not always evident even in EU member states. Much has been made of the supposed lack of interest in the political process especially by young people but examples arise which demonstrate the opposite. The referendum on Scottish independence was an outstanding case where social networks, civic groups and others campaigned hard and long even throughout the Summer with evening meetings and packed halls. The debate left few untouched and the turnout was a staggering 85% showing that when a topic is of real interest people do and will engage.3 Social media, digital democracy can all play their part in reaching out to those with a thirst for politics looking at the subject matter in a different way from the past. It is the task of politicians to respond to this challenge as many do via facebook, twitter but this does not act as a substitute for the door to door and personal contact and campaign meetings. Citizens can be involved in the political process through consultations via parliaments, active engagement even in parliamentary committees and hearings at regional, local and national levels. Increasingly direct democracy is

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9 sharpening the focus for groups with a political agenda disseminating information on topical issues.

The Black Sea region is faced with a number of challenges on governance and participation with cases of mounting frustration where street protests seem the only alternative, with weak parliamentary democracies and too often violent rather than peaceful engagement. The last year has witnessed some monumental changes in the region opening up hopes of building a better future clouded by blockages, economic hardship and lack of trust. The authors here had a free hand to interpret the topic of participation as they wished. Where possible we have tried to include different sides and perspectives from many countries and of course the views expressed are those of the individual authors.

Jakub Forst-Battaglia sets the scene by looking at cases of participation in central and eastern Europe giving a background for comparative analysis. His contribution is especially vibrant representing an eye-witness account of historical moments of participation which have shaped the course of European history. The author relates a never-ending story of participation right up to the present and Ukraine where he currently serves as an Austrian diplomat.

Agnes Ciccarone although working for the Assembly of European Regions expresses her own views here as an expert with a wealth of experience in projects where participation and cross border cooperation feature high on the list. Active programmes to enhance participation in the Region are described but also there are some critical remarks on management and a plea for improvements.

Jean Van Acker for EUBAM together with Volodymyr Merezhko and Dmytro Didyk of the Euroregion “Dniester” look at a regional project in Ukraine with Moldova and how governance has played a role encouraged by the work of the EU Border Assistance Mission to the two countries. This particular cooperation project involved the participation of citizens in the region as key partners not

10 only in voicing dissatisfaction but also in providing new ideas for improvements.

Sergiy Gerasymchuk leads projects concerned with the relationships between Romania, Moldova and Ukraine and here examines the increasingly important role of social media in civic participation. Organised protest and participation have greatly benefited from such means of communication and he points to, in this context at least, the weaknesses of representative democracy. Not surprisingly the events surrounding the Euromaydan play a central role in his analysis where Apps and smart phones featured prominently.

Sergii Glebov having experienced the mood in Odessa looks at the issue which originally sparked off the protests viz. the association agreement as well as providing an insight into the strategy of the Kremlin.

Maria Ponomareva recounts from just across the border in Rostov, Russia to where the former President of Ukraine sought initial refuge, the peculiarities of politics in her country with reference to the regions and relation to the centre. In this part of Russia not so far from the shores of the Black Sea, the governors as she puts it are part of a “vertical power system of governance” but there are complexities which she also notes.

Her colleague, Victor Apryshchenko looks at the Crimean issue, Russian security in a theoretical framework of security studies. He applies it to contemporary Russia, Ukraine and the “annexation of Crimea” at the same time analysing the complicated historical past of the region.

Levan Kakhishvili looks at patterns of participation in Georgia and explains the low level of participation in the context of the Soviet legacy and lack of trust in democratic institutions. He continues to review different types of political activity from signing petitions, going to political meetings and using the internet as a tool for information and engagement.

11 Kamal Makili-Aliyev from Baku tackles the question of participation by looking at the progress his country has made in E-government, a tool for modern participation and dialogue between governments and the citizens. Azerbaijan is a member of the Open Government Partnership initiative and understands that effective participation needs an informed public. Here again modern technology is fulfilling an important role in the participation process. Still there are challenges that a country like Azerbaijan has to face such as the comprehensiveness criteria of data.

Gevorg Melikyan also sees his country, Armenia, as still suffering from the Soviet past when it comes to participation but it is a vital tool for democratic governance. Importantly he refers to the rather different views of democracy in the “east” and the “west”. Very often the values of the west including democracy are deliberately discredited and presented as a caricature. Yet the writer describes concrete examples of where people have become engaged and concludes that participation is not just a smart piece of decoration but essential for the future of Armenia.

Hikmet Kirik a political science professor in Istanbul traces the ups and downs of participation in Turkey, the challenges for political parties and the elites. He links this with the problems in drafting a new constitution for the country and the difficulties in establishing effective parliamentary controls and institutions such as the Ombudsman. Despite this progress has been made on some fronts so it would be wrong to think the country is standing still.

Stefan Ralchev writing in Bulgaria presents quite an optimistic picture of the development of participation and political engagement. Here civic society awoke and there were even results with resignations and a rethink by elites on how they should act. Here it seems the people were able by their participation to send a strong signal that old bad habits would no longer be tolerated thus reshaping the elite mindset. This shows that indeed change can be brought about

12 and that there need be no grounds for resignation. Change for the better can occur and political participation can be that catalyst.

Alexandra Dancasiu looks at “environments”, social, natural and political, all of which are important for the future of the Black Sea Region, and discovers some unexpected participants. She argues that multi-level governance has the chance to fill a gap left by shortcomings of some traditional political actors.

13

CIVIL SOCIETY AND PARTICIPATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, 1989-2014

Jakub FORST-BATTAGLIA

Director, Austrian Cultural Forum, Kiev; Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs

Annus Mirabilis, the year of miracles, that is how 1989 is sometimes called, to illustrate the incredible changes in the political and mental map of Europe that occurred within a comparatively short period of time, making the speed of History almost physically palpable to everybody, directly or indirectly linked with all the events aimed at ending the artificial partition of our continent after 1945. When I talk to you today I do so as an eye-witness, as an historian, as a diplomat and as someone who, although an Austrian and a “Westerner”, looks back on a long experience of the former Communist world in theory and practice.

Today if we summarize the different reasons leading to the downfall of Communism, the following elements seem crucial:

 The economic collapse that could no longer hidden by propaganda and repression: in the seventies, Poland, the GDR and Hungary had all tried to create small consumerism to calm down possible unrest- in the eighties, they could not afford any more debt. In Romania, instead of debt, general misery meant people were freezing and starving;  The moral and intellectual crisis : except for a minority nobody believed any more in a system based on empty phrases and repetitive lies;  The course of armaments, evidently won by the West, meaning the US and NATO;  The lost war in Afghanistan, a Soviet defeat even worse than the previous American one in Vietnam;  The social and intellectual movements in Central Europe: even if 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia and 1980/81 in Poland with quite different reform movements failed in a first attempt to change the regime or even to get rid of it, they had a long-lasting deep influence on collective memory and consciousness ;  In particular, the Polish Pope John Paul II radiated an enormous moral authority and represented an expression of hope in his native Poland and beyond;

15  In the Czech lands, the dissidents around Vaclav Havel met deep and growing discontent in society;  In East Germany, artificially stabilized by the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the example of a prosperous and free West Germany remained strong: perestroika in Moscow created an uncontrollable mass flight to the West;  Above all, deep changes in the Soviet Union itself, where Mikhail Gorbachev tried to modernize and rationalize the regime unable to continue the policy of armament: he simply let go the so-called satellite countries but failed in his efforts to reform Communism, a system condemned to collapse despite all means of power it still had: the old rule that anything basic could change in the Eastern Block only if tolerated by Moscow came to be true. The Brezhnev doctrine, allowing the USSR to intervene militarily in any Warsaw Pact country becoming too independent was over. Gorbachev gave a clear message to the whole Pact that every national Party is responsible for its own fate, thus no more intervention will take place. In Hungary as well, the reformers in the Party just waited for a signal from the Kremlin to carry out a political transition towards pluralistic democracy. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself fell apart giving way to several national states partly with strong Russian minorities creating a problem hardly settled until now.

Henceforth coming back to my personal experience as an eye witness and close observer:

In Summer 1989 I switched from the Austrian Embassy in Madrid to the one in Prague. A few years earlier, I had the opportunity to serve in old Soviet Moscow more or less between the end of the Brezhnev period and before the Gorbachev era started, a late era of Cold War, very tense international relations and growing isolation of a Communist system deeply afraid of any changes to the one-party rule and any breath of fresh air in society. In the early eighties, martial law existed in Poland, heavy normalization in Czechoslovakia, East Germany remained in bureaucratic stagnation, Hungary seemed a little more pragmatic and Romania would starve under the yoke of Ceausescu’s personal despotism. By mid-1989, semi-free elections already had occurred in Poland and Hungary wanted to show a more liberal face. Czechoslovakia was still not moving but you felt the nervousness of an apparatus pretending to modernize socialism as a kind of “change” (prestavba) thus adapting some teaching of the Soviet comrades who were unfortunately talking, in the eyes of obedient orthodox

16 Prague communists, of “glasnost” and “perestroika”: one couldn’t oppose the Moscow Party line but felt really worried. The eternal class enemy, masked as civil rights activists, had had the impunity from January 1977 on, to ask for human rights guaranteed not just theoretically by the Czechoslovak constitution, but also by the CSSR’s signature under the Final Helsinki Act of 1975. The CSCE should have underlined the eternal character of borders and of political systems in Europe. The anti-socialist elements tried instead to exploit this in order to undermine the great achievements of socialism. The Secret Police in its best Chekist tradition saw its task to track down the self-appointed usurpers living a luxury life paid by foreign diversion services whose only goal was to slander socialism: that was the usual language of “Rude Pravo”, the Party newspaper and official ‘agitprop’.

In January 1989, those nasty elements had laid wreaths and flowers commemorating Jan Palach, a student who burned himself twenty years earlier to protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops smashing the Prague Spring movement of 1968. A “dangerous” individual called Vaclav Havel had to be imprisoned once more, but the beautiful period of massive repression against human rights activists around 1980 and after was now over. In an open letter called “A few sentences” (Nekolik vet) a few thousand people had signed an appeal for more openness, freedom and democracy.

Although the average Czech citizen, sharing his grey little material existence between his “panelak” (prefabricated slab-buildings) and “chata” (small country-house), working in some factory or office, tried to ignore the state but not engage in politics, the unrest grew. In a country once leading in Central Europe with its industrial and commercial traditions, it was now at a stand-still with outdated factories and pollution of the environment. Despite its rather egalitarian and leftist heritage, the Czech intellectuals, initially inclined towards socialism or even communism, were often genuinely anticlerical, and had been deeply disappointed by the collapse of Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring and remained either purely opportunist or totally alienated from the Party. Now a hibernation of twenty years slowly ceased to work. In Summer 89, despite events to commemorate the invasion on August 21, society was mostly dissatisfied, but seemed quiet. The Church, thanks to the unbroken firm attitude of old Cardinal Tomasek, could obtain some moral prestige in spite of persecutions.

17 At the same time, things were going on in Poland. Here, the Solidarity movement of 1980/81, although interrupted by the establishment of martial law in December 1981 and a period of military dictatorship, had regained importance as a result of Gorbachev’s more liberal policy in Moscow and the deep economic crisis in the country. Unlike Czechoslovakia, where the Church had kept some influence only in Moravia and Slovakia but much less in Bohemia, the Catholic Church in Poland still had an enormous moral impact on society. The election of Cracow archbishop Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978 was considered a miracle and his first visit to Poland in his new capacity was felt like an earthquake. I had the chance to experience this on the ground working by then as a free-lancer for the Austrian TV ORF as an expert on Eastern Europe and Polish affairs in particular. We had to cover this visit in 1979, an outburst of collective enthusiasm independent of State authorities unknown so far in the Communist world.

A year later, the Solidarity movement under the leadership of Lech Walesa, an electrician from Gdansk/Danzig took its moral strength from the Holy Father’s message who taught the people “Don’t be afraid”, quoting Christ, but people took this as a political, not just a religious appeal. In Poland, social unrest went far deeper than in Czechoslovakia, the material situation being worse. For many Western observers, in particular for those with more leftist convictions it was incredible to see Catholic trade unions whose adherents liked using the Virgin Mary as a symbol. It was indeed unique to have trade unions with up to ten million members (many of them Party members at the same time) recognized as partners by their Communist State authorities. The “Ethics of Solidarity” formulated by the Cracow Auxiliary Bishop Jozef Tischner was based on a humanist, Christian vision of society calling for justice, tolerance and a transparent, honest society. This Catholic belief was in fact quite similar to the Czech Charta model elaborated by the philosopher Jan Patocka, whose ethics were rooted in old Hussite Bohemian Brethren traditions and the humanist political thought of the late Founding President Tomas Masaryk.

The Communist regime could be introduced in Czechoslovakia back in 1948 thanks to a “coup de Prague” by Klement Gottwald imposing a harsh Stalinist regime after a seemingly multi-party left wing democracy led by the old Edvard Benes as President who came back from London exile. It was for long one of the strictest Communist regimes in Europe, before a slow opening course started with some cultural liberalization under Antonin Novotny in the sixties, giving way to the famous Prague Spring under Alexander Dubcek in 1968, an attempt

18 of Communist believers to establish “socialism with a human face”. This experience was brutally interrupted in late August 1968, followed by years of isolation and stagnation called “normalizace”, that lasted almost unchanged until late 1989.

In Poland, the horrors of World War II and the tragedy of the directly anti- German and indirectly anti-Soviet Warsaw uprising of 1944 left a society exhausted by terror and losses. The Soviets liberated and occupied the country, under their auspices a Communist regime and after a transitional period of a pseudo-coalition with political leaders from Peasant and Centrist orientation under Stanislaw Mikolajczyk who had come back from London. Stalinism and repression was personalized by Boleslaw Bierut until the mid-fifties. Finally after Stalin’s death in 1953 and Khrushtchev’s 20th Party Congress in early 1956 a wave of unrest allowed Wladyslaw Gomulka to gain power in the so-called Polish October of 1956. Great hopes were later followed by disappointment, with Gomulka becoming again more and more repressive. In March 1968, another reform movement was growing at Warsaw University, influenced by rumors from Prague and the West in this turbulent year. It gave way to an antisemitic campaign within the Party, whose nationalists removed the Jewish comrades accused of Zionist conspiracy. By the end of 1970, social riots on the Baltic Coast curtailed Gomulkas sclerotic rule which was replaced by Edward Gierek, whose consumerist, comparatively open-minded policy gave the illusion of improvements before new problems in a badly managed central economy emerged and with it new unrest by 1976 leading to the Solidarity Summer of 1980.

Under pressure of the Warsaw Pact allies, the Soviet, East German and Czech leaders in particular, General Wojciech Jaruzelski had to interrupt this “carnival of freedom” after sixteen months under threat of military intervention from the East. In Poland, thousands were interned, lines of communications cut and borders closed. Local resistance caused several casualties.

Society was used to well-organized, passive opposition, leading to a whole underground world of secret networks and samizdat publications. Towards the end of the eighties, the regime had no other choice than to look for a dialogue with society, that meant with representatives of the opposition whereas the church played an important role as mediator. General Jaruzelski, who always claimed to act as a true Polish patriot trying to save his home country from disaster, was seen as a traitor by many, but he allowed a Round Table solution to

19 take place that led to elections on 4 June 1989, the same day when in China the army carried out the infamous massacre against demonstrating students on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

A Catholic journalist, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became the first non-Communist Prime Minister in a Warsaw Pact country under Jaruzelski still President. He had served as one of the main advisers to the Solidarity movement in 1980/81, together with the historian Bronislaw Geremek, the publicists Jacek Kuron, Adam Michnik and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski among others. His drawing of a “thick red line” towards the past, meaning a necessary compromise with the former Communist regime, was easily criticized by people who found one should have acted more severely towards the old Party ‘nomenklatura’ responsible for illegitimate repression and eagerly serving a foreign power. Also the question of unclear privatization of the economy and the creating of new fortunes out of public properties was put forward later on by tenants of a “Fourth” instead of a “Third” Republic. In the meantime, Lech Walesa became president after Wojciech Jaruzelski, also recognized as such by the former exile government in London. In the years to come, different right and left wing governments alternated in Poland, a country that succeeded in introducing deep economic reforms under Leszek Balcerowicz despite great difficulties in the first years of new democracy.

Back to Czechoslovakia, people saw how East Germans fled by thousands to the West German Embassy in Lobkowicz Palace during late Summer and early Autumn 89, leaving behind their Trabis and Wartburgs wherever this seemed possible. The Czech police looked ironically at these people after first attempts to stop them jumping over the Embassy fences. On October 28, there were clashes in Prague during Republican Day’s events. The regime held on although the growing East German unrest and the changes in Poland encouraged more and more Czechs and Slovaks to try something similar.

A growing opposition movement gathered with the previous Reform Communists, Trotskyists, Social Democrats, Liberals, Catholics and Hussites, intellectuals, scientists, writers, actors, priests and journalists, students and all kinds of human rights activists in many private discussion circles. Western diplomats used to join them in different flats for fascinating debates about past, present and future. We had the opportunity to meet the elite of the nation of all political orientations united in the firm intention of preparing the country for change. Sasha Vondra, later Vice Prime Minister, Jiri Dienstbier, then Foreign

20 Minister, Vaclav Maly, after that an Auxiliary Bishop of Prague, Petr Uhl, then Director of CTK News Agency and his wife Anna Sabatova, Dana Nemcova, the leading Helsinki Committee representative, Vaclav Benda, a Moravian Catholic thinker or Jaroslava Moserova, the medical doctor who had to take care of Jan Palach before he died of his wounds in 1969 or Jan Ruml, then Minister of the Interior or the sociologist Ivan Gabal counted among them to name just a few. As an old adviser for international affairs, the former Foreign Minister under Dubcek in 1968, Jiri Hajek, still acted behind the scenes, suspicious of any unforeseeable dirty tricks from Moscow and the Czech Party hardliners.

I met Havel in a Prague Theatre for the first time in September ‘89, a modest, kind and warm-hearted man full of charisma. On November 17, the official Youth Organization and a group of tolerated “free” youth representatives were allowed to march according to a given route to commemorate Jan Opletal, an Anti-Nazi student leader of 1939. The demonstration took another route than the one allowed by the authorities which led to severe clashes with police in the city centre. That is how the famous Velvet Revolution started. What Vaclav Havel had described in his great essay “The Power of the Powerless” (Moc bezmocnych) how the moral strength and conviction of people united to act for “living in truth” instead of permanent lies and empty phraseology of the Communist Party proved to be a formidable weapon against the totalitarian regime. On November 19, the Civic Forum was created and used to meet every evening at the Laterna Magica theatre, where I had the chance not only to listen to open debates but to discuss repeatedly with Havel and other leaders, who wanted to deliver messages to the outer world and the neighbours of Czechoslovakia.

The Communist Party, whose Post-Stalinist First Secretary Milos Jakes had to resign opened talks with the opposition imitating the Polish Round Table model. The government’s Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec suddenly was ready to talk to the former “non-person” Havel and his friends. After many discussions and regular huge public demonstrations with up to a million people in the streets ringing with their keys to signalize the end of the old system finally on 10 December, UN Human Rights day, a new coalition government under the moderate Slovak communist Marian Calfa was formed, who immediately left the Party.

Not a single window had been broken during all the frequent street demonstrations. A general strike lasted for one hour only because nobody

21 wanted to disrupt the economy. People gathered in the streets after 4 o’clock in the afternoon after normal working hours. But then, they would sing the national anthem with full fervour.

The Czechs being strict legalists in the good old Austrian tradition wanted the President of the Republic, a former non-Communist Slovak lawyer named Gustav Husak, to nominate the new government and then to resign, which he did. On December 29, the Federal Assembly, dominated by the Communists and other National Front parties, unanimously voted for Vaclav Havel as President. In June 1990, a new parliament was elected and in the two years to come, a whole new political landscape emerged out of the initial Civic Forum embracing different political orientations. The new Czechoslovak democracy was born. The first spring of freedom was unforgettable with its blossoming of nature and of an open, creative society full of imagination and fresh ideas. The differences between the Czech and the Slovak Republic despite many rounds of talks led further on to a peaceful separation of the common state by January 1, 1993.

Time had come for technocrats, economists and practitioners, symbolized by Vaclav Klaus, who disliked the dissidents around Havel, accused of romanticism and attempts to look for a “third way” between communism and capitalism. If this attitude truly applied to someone it was much more to the Slovak Alexander Dubcek, who became President of Federal Assembly, still convinced of being the only good and pure Communist than the playwright and moralist Havel, who acted as a new conscience of society. Havel again liked to disagree with the economist Klaus. He had a heavy task to answer grievances and proposals from the population still unused to address freely an administration made up so far of obedient party apparatchiks. He remained in office then as mere Czech President until 2003. The country, despite less pleasant childhood sickness of democracy and a young market economy, became a well-functioning and prosperous Central European State looking back to rule of law habits from the First Czechoslovak Republic of the interwar period.

In Hungary, after a dark period of Stalinist terror under Matyas Rakosi from 1949 on, terrible repression with death sentences followed the 1956 revolution which had been influenced by the Polish October changes: in the first years of Janos Kadar life was very hard. Later from the sixties on Kadar tried to find a pragmatic modus vivendi with the population according to the principle “who is not against us is with us”. By 1988, new faces took over the leadership, Karoly Grosz and Imre Pozsgay at the top, Rezsö Nyers for the economy, György Aczel

22 for culture, and Gyula Horn as Foreign Minister. The Hungarian Democratic Forum was created, a kind of a huge national club parallel to the Party and able to discuss changes in society on a larger scale. The new wave became clear internationally when by mid-1989, barbed wires and fences were removed at the Austrian border and in August, Hungary let go East Germans who wanted to cross the Austrian border without valid passports, thus openly opposing the East Berlin government. A Hungarian Round Table led to parliamentary elections in March 1990. As a consequence, the Conservative Jozsef Antall from the Hungarian Democratic Forum became Prime Minister of a coalition government, whereas the Liberal Arpad Göncz from the Free Democrats was chosen as President of the Republic.

For the German Democratic Republic, its 40th birthday on October 7, 1989, happened to be the last celebration before total collapse. A month and two days later, on November 9th, a momentous day in Germany’s history of the 20th century, the Berlin Wall was suddenly opened for a population living in effect in a big prison, were allowed to travel freely only to the socialist brother countries except for pensioners who could go to the West. Political prisoners had been from time to time bought for money by the Federal Republic and expelled from the worker’s paradise. The East Germans now in Summer and Autumn of 1989 had voted with their feet, fleeing to West German Embassies in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw. In Prague, negotiations between the Federal Republic and the still Communist CSSR authorities and their GDR colleagues permitted the refugees firstly to take the train from Prague through Saxony, thus East Germany, to the West German border station Hof, then, as the trains were usually stormed by people in Dresden, directly from Prague to Bavaria. The helpless East Berlin authorities totally closed the borders. Thus they could not impede public demonstrations in Leipzig and other cities, often organized under the supervision of active Lutheran pastors, Christian and leftist, non-Communist intellectuals from Neues Forum. The old Erich Honecker was replaced as Party chief by Egon Krenz. Events went quicker than the West German leadership Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscher could believe. They used the unique open window opportunity to bring about reunification, good for Germany and for the whole Eastern Block, including Poland and Czechoslovakia in view of their own future development. The breathtaking speed of History started sweeping away the Prague regime between November and December, followed by Sofia and, more bloodily, by Bucharest. A year later, Germany was united and most of the old countries beyond the former Iron Curtain were free. In the

23 Baltic States, the Singing Revolution brought about the reintroduction of free and independent national states that had been occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and after German rule during wartime, again in 1944. New democratic leaders emerged like Lennart Meri in Estonia or Vytautas Landsbergis in Lithuania.

The Warsaw Pact, ironically led by strict anti-communists in its last period, was dissolved in 1991. Poland, the CSR and Hungary, now forming the Visegrad Group, later joined NATO and the European Union.

Ukrainian Case

In 2014, we saw a new movement emerging in the large country where I now serve - Ukraine. Independent in 1991, its way to democracy, rule of law and a sane market economy seems particularly difficult. The Orange Revolution of 2004/2005 was a great wave of hope. Many things happened, but the hopes proved to be disappointed nonetheless.

In November 2013, a wave of protests started in Kiev and in other cities when President Yanukovich acting under Russian pressure refrained from signing the Association Agreement with the EU at the very last moment, an agreement previously negotiated by his own government. In view of the President’s unwillingness to come forward conflicts in society already brewing switched into open opposition against the whole regime itself, accused of massive corruption and arbitrariness. By rejecting the EU Agreement the President had, in the general opinion, betrayed the hopes for a paradigmatic change of the country towards Western civilization in many spheres of life, meaning much more than mere economic cooperation. Whoever has been a witness to the bold engagement of many younger and not so young Ukrainians for freedom and human rights, against violence and oppression, ready to withstand under bad weather conditions and ready to die for a dream of Europe, must admire those true heroes of Maidan. Over one hundred died, killed by snipers in February 2014. There were also policemen among the victims, some protesters defending themselves with weapons. A huge disinformation campaign coming from Moscow denounced all of them as “fascists” and in fact everybody openly opposing Russian influence. Separatists in some Eastern regions around Donezk were encouraged to revolt against the common state in Spring 2014, whereas “little green men” organized the secession of Crimea and its annexation by Russia within a few days in March 2014.

24 Now, the country is under extreme pressure. It removed from power a President that had grossly abused his competences and left his post overnight, but the new transitional government, was not recognized by the Kremlin and had to face enormous challenges. Presidential elections on May 25 brought about a clear vote in favour of Petro Poroshenko, a more modern, pragmatic and European- minded industrialist therefore opening the way to a stable and fully legitimate constitutional order despite the numerous weighty problems, both political und economic, that must be resolved in the shorter or in the longer run. Civil society cannot be ignored .It created a new and strong consciousness of national identity and is able to bring about sustainable change.

Alone, the Big Neighbour, who permitted 25 years ago other countries under his influence to become free talking of a “Common European House” tries again to act as a Big Brother and to dominate by all means a large country he considers as being a natural part of his domain over Eastern Europe. We shall see in the period to come whether there is a roll back by old imperial methods dropped after the end of Cold War or whether a cooperative partnership has a chance again to prevail in our common interest.

When after 1989, ideas emerged to dismantle the Warsaw Pact as well as NATO there was an illusion of the “End of History” which proved to be a grave mistake. Old certainties have disappeared. A so called “Return to Europe” had been for long the main goal of all dissident movements in Central and Eastern Europe. The new NATO and EU members from Estonia to Bulgaria feel happy now to be on the safe side. As non-members they would feel defenseless. Even if many things are still far from ideal, their fate is a clear success story and time is working in favour of our European values to which there is no alternative because Europe means peace, freedom and the rule of law.

Let us hope that countries like Ukraine and Moldova will both be able to work for a secure and independent future according to their needs and wishes even if a strong outer safety umbrella is lacking for them as masters of their own destiny clearly supported by their friends and partners.

Selected Bibliography:

Als der Eiserne Vorhang fiel. Texte aus dem Wiener Journal und der Europäischen Rundschau aus dem Annus Mirabilis 1989. Hrsg. von Rudolf Bretschneider und Paul Lendvai. Wien 2009

25 Anne APPLEBAUM: Iron Curtain. The crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56. London 2012 Wladyslaw BARTOSZEWSKI: Herbst der Hoffnungen: es lohnt sich, anständig zu sein. Freiburg im Breisgau 1983 Wlodzimierz BORODZIEJ: Geschichte Polens im 20.Jahrhundert. München 2010 Traudl BRANDSTALLER und Erwin A.SCHMIDL: Vorhang auf. Vom Kalten Krieg zum geeinten Europa: Europa 1989 geteilt – 2009 geeint. Wien 2009 Stéphane COURTOIS et al.(Hrsg.): Das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus. Unterdrückung, Verbrechen und Terror (1). München 2004 Idem: Das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus 2.Das schwere Erbe der Ideologie. München 2004 Norman DAVIES: Im Herzen Europas. Geschichte Polens. München 2000 Der Donauraum. 20 Jahr Fall des Eisernen Vorhangs. 2009 Alexander DUBCEK: Leben für die Freiheit. München 1993 Martin EICHTINGER/Helmut WOHNOUT: Alois Mock – ein Politiker schreibt Geschichte. Wien-Graz-Klagenfurt 2008 Europäische Rundschau: 91/1 Winter, 2009/2, 2009/4, 2009 Sondernummer Europa 1989 geteilt/2009 geeint Otto FORST de BATTAGLIA: Zwischeneuropa. Von der Ostsee bis zur Adria. Frankfurt/Main 1954 Andrzej FRISZKE: Polska. Losy Panstwa i Narodu 1939-1989. Warszawa 2003 Timothy GARTON ASH: Ein Jahrhundert wird abgewählt. München 1990 Geschichte Ungarns. Herausgegeben von István György Tóth. Budapest 2005 Stefan KARNER etc. (Ed.): Prager Frühling. Das internationale Krisenjahr 1968.1. Auflage. Bd. I (Beiträge) und Bd. 2 (Dokumente). Köln 2008 Stefan KARNER etc (Ed): Der Kreml und die „Wende“ 1989. Interne Analysen der sowjetischen Führung zum Fall der kommunistischen Regime. Dokumente, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2014 John KEANE: Vaclav Havel. Biographie eines tragischen Helden. München 2000

26 Zigmantas KIAUPA, Ain MÄESALU, Ago PAJUR, Guido STRAUBE: Geschichte des Baltikums. Tallinn 2002 Paul LENDVAI: Die Ungarn. Ein Jahrtausend Sieger in Niederlagen. München 1999 Osteuropa. Durchschaut. Der Kommunismus in seiner Epoche.63.Jahrgang/Heft 5-6/Mai-Juni 2013 Jaroslav PANEK, Oldrich TUMA et al : A History of the Czech Lands. Prague 2011 Religion und Wende in Ostmittel-und Südosteuropa 1989-2009. Pro Oriente Band XXXIII. Innsbruck 2010 Revolutionen in Ostmitteleuropa 1789-1989. Schwerpunkt Ungarn. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Karlheinz Mack. Wien-München 1995 Ota SIK: Prager Frühlingserwachen. Erinnerungen. Herford 1988 The End of Yalta. Breakthrough in Eastern Europe 1989/90. Warsaw 1999 Pavel TIGRID: Le Printemps de Prague. Paris 1968 Józef TISCHNER: Ethik der Solidarität. Prinzipien einer Hoffnung. Graz 1982 Transit. Europäische Revue /21/33

27

GOVERNANCE IN THE BLACK SEA BASIN: To what extent does the EU Black Sea Basin CBC programme contribute to strengthen Regions as key governance partners in the area?

Agnès CICCARONE Director of the Academic and Training Center, in charge of institutional affairs, Assembly of European Regions (AER: www.aer.eu) Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of AER.

The Assembly of European Regions (AER) is a private non-profit organisation active since 1985. AER is politically independent and, with members from 35 countries of the wider Europe, it is the biggest interregional network in Europe. It was also the first interregional organisation to include member Regions from the former Eastern Block and has accompanied many Regions on their way to the European Union. Since 2010, AER has been deepening its activities in the Black Sea area, conscious of the shortcomings of the Black Sea Euroregion1 and of the need to promote dialogue at regional level, to complete the existing intergovernmental fora – such as PABSEC2 - and thereby contribute to more peace and stability in the region. As entities acting very close to citizens, regional authorities can indeed play a major role in fostering civil society participation among Black Sea countries and mutual understanding, by acting for instance as drivers of cooperation projects. The activities run by AER therefore consist of Summits and partnership fairs, gathering each year relevant stakeholders from all Black Sea countries, in particular regional authorities, to enhance networking and help them take up opportunities offered by EU funds to enhance cooperation. AER also actively supports the work of the Go- Governance Institute to promote the dialogue among Black Sea countries.

1 The Black Sea Euroregion was launched in 2008 in Varna (BG), with the support of the Congress of the Council of Europe but de facto ceased its activities : https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet&InstranetImage =1023559&SecMode=1&DocId=1290636&Usage=2 2 Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation : http://www.pabsec.org/

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The present paper aims at giving a critical look at the main programme set up by the European Union to support cross-border cooperation in the Black Sea, i.e., the Black Sea CBC programme3, by assessing its impact in strengthening regions as key partners in the area. It will conclude by reflecting on how this programme could/should be completed to better promote sound and vibrant multilevel governance in the Black Sea, in which Regions can fully play their role. The specific part which AER endorses in this context will be highlighted.

Background: why a programme for Black Sea Countries? The Black Sea CBC programme is one of 15 cross-border cooperation programmes of the EU, and seeks, as each CBC programme, to reinforce cooperation between EU Member States and Partner countries along the external EU borders4. The Black Sea CBC programme contributes to the overall ENI objective of progress towards 'an area of shared prosperity and good neighbourliness' between EU Member States and their neighbours. In 2007- 2013, the programme had
17,306 million at its disposal, and focussed on three main strands. Two calls for projects took place, and the programme acquired additional funding during the period (11 million EUR). The new programme, which is being finalised at the time of writing, will focus on two specific strategic objectives, and four sub-priorities5. The financial envelope foresees an increase of the available budget by 40%, with an EU contribution (ENI-+IPA) of 49 million EUR as for the EU contribution (plus national co-financing (10%)).

Has the Programme helped in strengthening Regions as Governance Actors in the Black Sea Area?

A rapid analysis of the partners involved in the current financed projects would show that the rate of participation of regional authorities, as full partners in the

3 Full name: Black Sea Cross-Border-Cooperation Joint Operational Programme, called Black Sea CBC programme in this paper, for purpose of simplification. 4 See : http://www.enpi-info.eu/maineast.php?id=322&id_type=10 5 For further details, see : http://81.12.208.42/

30 projects, is relatively low. Indeed, according to the fact sheets available for each selected project, only four regions took part in the first call, and two in the second call6. The participation of municipalities is a little bit better, with three participating municipalities in the first call and 22 in the second call (with a majority from Turkey and Greece). Turkish regional authorities – or special provinces as they were called – also had to face extra challenges due to the fact that they were depending on IPA funds, and not ENPI funds as the rest of the eligible partners from other countries. This extra piece of red tape can be considered as an obstacle in their stronger involvement in the programme.7 Beyond that, the structure of the programme could explain that, rather than regional authorities, economic chambers, NGOs and research institutes grasped the opportunities offered by the programme. Indeed, the objectives of the programme were quite specific and required a certain expertise in the fields concerned, especially concerning its priorities 1 and 28. Also priority 39, and the concept of people-to-people action could seem more attractive to civil society actors than to institutional ones. More generally, one could assume that the complexity of the programme in its procedures and requirements could have seemed quite off putting to regional authorities that sometimes have limited resources when it comes to interregional cooperation, whilst NGOs are more flexible structures and keen on peer-to-peer exchanges. One relevant element mentioned during conversations with stakeholders further highlighted the cautious attitude of NGOs and civil society representatives

6 Project call 1, 19 projects, 4 regions from 4 countries (1 from MD, 1 from RO, 1 from UA, 1 from BG) and Project call 2, 43 projects, 2 regions from Greece. Information based on the analysis of the fact sheets of all projects, available on the Black Sea CBC programme website. 7 At municipal level, though, Turkish partners became increasingly involved in the programme: whilst none took part in the first call, 9 out of the 22 municipalities involved in the projects financed under the second call were from Turkey. 8 Priority 1: supporting cross-border partnerships for economic and social development based on common resources. Priority 2: Sharing resources and competencies for environmental protection and conservation. 9 Priority 3: Supporting cultural and educational networks for the establishment of a common cultural environment in the Basin

31 towards regional authorities. Many commented that they did not want to involve regional authorities in their projects, or get involved with them, because of corruption concerns. They preferred to apply directly for funds themselves and were doubtful that funds received by regional authorities would be properly used. Further considerations on the programme and the Recommendations made by AER in that context, following its first two Black Sea Summits (Paris, January 2010, Batumi, April 2011), can be found under: http://www.aer.eu/en/events/standing-committee-on-institutional- affairs/2011/second-aer-black-sea-regional-policy-conference.html

What are the Perspectives under the New Programme? The new ENI CBC programme is not definitely finalised yet, but the strategy behind it has already been adopted. Regarding governance issues, one can applaud the way the new programme was prepared. A large and extended (in time) consultation process took place among the interested stakeholders and regional authorities were given the opportunity to give their opinion, as all other stakeholders. AER acted as a catalyst in this context, urging Regions to take up positions and make proposals on the programme. Many features of the new programme provide positive answers to the requests formulated by Regions via the AER Batumi Statement (April 2011, see link mentioned above), and can be considered as satisfactory for Regions willing to get involved in cooperation projects in the Black Sea Basin. First of all, one can consider encouraging that capacity building for regional authorities is now considered as a horizontal issue for the future programme. As pointed out by some partners involved in the region, there is no point in providing people with money if they do not know what to do with it. Capacity

32 building is a crucial issue, and AER is strongly involved to help enhance capacities of regional authorities (see below). Formal requirements regarding the application process will be simplified, which would result in less red tape which will also be positive for Regions’ participation in the programme. Clearly, Turkish regions – special provinces or newly established Metropoles – will benefit from the fusion of funds and the fact that they now can apply to lead projects. The possibility to include major urban centres and adjoining regions can also be seen as a positive sign to promote the participation of regions in the future programme, even if this measure might have minimum impact, due to a limited budget. Still, the fact that the new programme will focus on even more specific issues than the previous one10, leaving aside big societal issues linked to youth, health, or education, seems relatively disappointing. Whilst we understand the wish of the EU and partner countries to narrow down the cooperation field, to earmark funds on specific issues rather than spreading them too much, it seems that the new programme might be even less relevant to regional authorities. Surely the new objectives of the programme are relevant as such for regions, for their overall economic and sustainable development. However, the way the priorities are formulated rather target specific actors such as universities, chambers of commerce and industry, research institutes, NGOs. Unless regional authorities find relevant partners to run a project, it is unlikely that many of them can take part as full partners in projects. Conscious of this challenge, the Assembly of European Regions has therefore decided to continue its involvement in the Black Sea area, to help Regions in finding the right partners for their projects and strengthening their positions in the overall Black Sea governance.

10 The new programme will have two main objectives and 4 priorities : - Objective 1 : Promote business and entrepreneurship within the Black Sea Basin. - Objective 2 : Promote coordination of environmental protection and joint reduction of marine litter in the Black Sea Basin

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The AER Contribution: helping Regions to enhance their place as key governance actors

Not only has AER influenced the content of the Black Sea CBC programme, by taking an active part in the consultation process, but it has also worked on raising the awareness of Black Sea Regions on alternative ways to cooperate, by informing them about other sources of funding in particular (other EU programmes or private funding). Specific training sessions on financial opportunities available to Regions to cooperate with each other were organised in Rize, Turkey, in October 2013, and more recently in Bucharest, in October 201411. By providing such capacity-building services, AER is helping Regions to find their way and act as partners in interregional cooperation projects around the Black Sea. This, in turn, should help reinforce the place and status of Regions in their own countries, which is crucial. Indeed, whilst the European Neighbourhood policy surely provides regional authorities with a sound basis to cooperate, it is up to national authorities to approve the programmes set up in the context of this policy. With regard to the Black Sea CBC programme, the content whilst submitted to all relevant stakeholders for consultation, is ultimately decided by the Joint Monitoring Committee, where representatives from the national level of all involved countries sit together. It is therefore vital to help Regions to strengthen their position in their country, so that they can effectively lobby their governments and influence the content of the programme. Helping Regions to affirming their place in their own country also contributes to embedding them as key governance actors, able to cooperate with other partners beyond the frame offered by programmes such as the Black Sea CBC programme.

11 See for Bucharest : http://www.aer.eu/en/events/aer-training-academy/2014/aer-black-sea-training- academy.html and for Rize : http://www.aer.eu/en/events/aer-training-academy/2013/aer-black-sea-training- academy.html

34

AER therefore accompanies its networking, information and training activities targeted at Black Sea countries with specific actions aiming at strengthening Regions as political actors in these countries. Ukraine is particularly challenging at this time. Whilst two Ukrainian Oblasts (Odessa and Zaporizka) were at least involved as information points in the former Black Sea CBC programme, the current situation in the country puts this participation at risk. AER is therefore actively involved in accompanying Ukrainian partners in their efforts to redesign the territorial structure of the country, and provide expertise, based on its knowledge of the European situation, on how to decentralise the country. It has taken part in Post- Monitoring Units of the Council of Europe in December 2014, and ran a three- day mission in three regions to exchange with partners. AER was also in Georgia, which is carrying out a reform of its territorial structure, to meet with national authorities and insisted on the need for the Georgian authorities to benefit from more financial leeway. Turkey has also gone through a reform with the replacement of many of its Special Province Administrations by Metropoles, and Turkish partners are traditionally quite active in the Black Sea area. This reform and the fact that the new Black Sea CBC programme allows them to apply as lead beneficiaries should be favourable in that context. AER is closely working with its Turkish members to improve their position as main governance actors in the Black Sea. However, there are still challenging countries. Bulgaria is one of them. There the districts have no financial autonomy; their participation in interregional cooperation projects could be increased if they had more competences. Moldova is in a similar position. As far as Romania is concerned, it remains to be seen if the territorial reform in Romania, which failed in 2014 might reappear on the agenda. In any case, the fact that the Joint Technical Secretariat of the new Black Sea BC programme will be located in Romania (in the South-East

35 development region) is surely an asset in encouraging Romanian regions to take part in the programme, more than was the case in the previous programme. As far as Russian regions are concerned, they could not take part in the former Black Sea CBC programme, as the Russian Federation did not sign the financial agreement for the programme. In its Bucharest Declaration – October 2014 – AER has therefore called upon the Russian Federation to sign this time the financial agreement, to allow eligible Russian Regions to participate in the programme and take up their role as main governance actors in the area.

Conclusion Whilst the Black Sea CBC programme certainly is an interesting tool to encourage interregional cooperation in the Black Sea Basin, its impact in raising the role of Regions as main governance actors remains, in our eyes, rather limited. The features of the new 2014-2020 programme look unlikely to bring many changes in that context. AER, since its creation, has set as one of its main goals the promotion of strong Regions, as actors closest to the citizens and best aware of their strengths and needs. Since 2010, AER has established itself as a major platform for the promotion of strong and active Regions in the Black Sea area, by accompanying them in their capacity building efforts, raising their awareness of opportunities offered by the EU for financing their projects, and voicing their concerns and demands towards the EU and national authorities regarding the Black Sea CBC and other relevant programmes. In its last Bucharest Declaration (October 2014), AER called upon the creation of a Youth Black Sea Centre, on the model of what already exists in Strasbourg and Budapest. This was born after a long discussion about the importance, for peace and stability in Europe, of a sound cooperation and mutual understanding among the leaders of tomorrow. AER will organise its 6th Black Sea Summit in October 2015: let us hope that, by

36 then, some progress has been made towards the setting up of this Centre, with strong involvement of all Black Sea Regions.

Strasbourg, End of 2014

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EUBAM - EUROREGION "DNIESTER": cooperation for development Jean VAN ACKER, Strategy, Planning and Performance Adviser, EUBAM Volodymyr MEREZHKO, Director of Coordination Center of Euroregion “Dniester” Dmytro DIDYK, Deputy Director of Coordination Center of Euroregion “Dniester”

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. – Henry Ford

On February 2, 2012 in Kyiv, Ukraine, during the bilateral governmental meeting between the Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov and Prime Minister of Moldova Vladimir Filat, the statutory document of the Euroregion “Dniester”, namely, the memorandum of association, was signed. According to the Memorandum, Vinnytsia region entered into the composition of the Euroregion “Dniester” from the side of Ukraine, and Soroca district, Donduseni district, Ocnita district, Rezina district, Floresti district and Soldanesti district – from the side of the Republic of Moldova. Dubasari district of the Republic of Moldova joined the Euroregion “Dniester” later. This initiative started as a body of trans-border cooperation, as an association of local authorities of the administrative-territorial units of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. The main objective of the creation and activity of Euroregion “Dniester” was the implementation of the programmes of complex harmonized development of the areas adjoining the Dniester River. For the benefit of the local population of both countries the following areas were chosen for particular focus: development of economy, infrastructure, enhancement of cooperation in the agricultural sphere, participation in EU projects of development; coordination of ecological programmes for Dniester basin and landscape natural reserved areas; development of tourism, exchange programmes for educational institutions; coordination of efforts in fighting organised crime and in protection of citizens' rights and freedoms. Based on the knowledge that partners can stimulate the external focus of their organisation

39 and that expertise can be beneficial for all parties, the Euroregion “Dniester” and the European Union Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) joined forces because of a number of common goals: improving the management of the Ukrainian-Moldovan border; improving the control of the border guard and customs services of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova; raising awareness of civil society and the population of the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine in terms of the rules of crossing the border; introducing European standards of border management in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova; promoting the border guard/police and customs services to attract and coordinate support of donors. On 16 August 2012 a Joint statement was signed between the Euroregion “Dniester” and the EUBAM. In particular, the Joint statement stipulated that both parties agreed to cooperate in the following areas: training and lectures in matters related to EU standards in border management, trade facilitation and customs issues for border related public agencies, public institutions and public organisations; exchange of information with the Council of the Euroregion “Dniester” about EU standards in border management and customs matters such as Schengen Acquis and EU Customs Blueprints; involvement of EUBAM experts in Euroregion “Dniester” seminars and workshops in areas of common interest; cooperation in the implementation of anti-corruption and other good governance initiatives; cooperation in the implementation of initiatives related to respect for human dignity and fundamental rights of the citizens when crossing the border; and support in raising public awareness and public communication on EU values at local and regional level. In the short term, within the framework of celebrating Europe day, EUBAM was invited to set up information stands in Vinnitsa to make people more aware of the European Union initiatives and institutions. The first experience of cooperation between Euroregion “Dniester” and EUBAM in the area of public awareness and cooperation with citizens proved to be a success. Both partners

40 were aware that the involvement of representatives of civil society is not just an option for consideration but fundamental criteria for success. For a public service, in particular for a law enforcement service, it is vital to have a culture of being externally oriented so as to understand the real problems of the people to whom they render their service. This culture should not be in opposition to the need for effective and efficient control towardstravellers. Because EUBAM is focussing on the improvement of the border management along the border between the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, the idea arose to set up a project with the involvement of different players where civil society representatives would play an essential role. Such an approach was also in line with the EU guidelines to pay more attention to the involvement of citizens, non-governmental organisations, and business representative organisations - in general the citizens. The proposal was discussed with the chair and members of the Euroregion “Dniester” and the establishment of the “Community oriented project to improve the process of crossing the border between Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova on the territory of the Euroregion “Dniester” was agreed. The Euroregion “Dniester” considered the project as the highest priority. The sponsor of the project was the Chair of the Euroregion “Dniester” represented by the Euroregion “Dniester” Coordination Center, with EUBAM taking the role of facilitator. The project was launched in June 2012. The first step in setting up the project was to agree on the members of the project team and to explain the project methodology. An exercise was made to identify the different players relevant for the project e.g. partners from civil society such as representatives of business and NGO’s, local administrations, and customs and border police/border guard services, all of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, taking into account also the nature of the relationship (e.g. receiver of services, provider of services, decision makers, ….). The initial group agreed to ensure participation from the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine representatives of local and national non-governmental

41 organisations, local administrations, officers and managers of local – regional – central level of border police / border guards and customs services. The composition of the project team was considered to be very important to ensure a maximum of success for the development of the project. The participants agreed that an open communication from the project to the public would be organised mainly through the Euroregion “Dniester” Coordination Center. The results of the meetings, as well as the agreements made for further development of the project, were shared with the public. Such an approach required from all participants a willingness to be open, transparent and accountable. Therefore, the necessary procedures to conduct the meetings of the project team were discussed and agreed. Public organisations were at first not inclined to consider the direct input from the citizens. Civil servants were convinced that they already knew the expectations of citizens (in this case the travellers).

Problem Identification Once the scope of the project was clearly defined, an exercise was made to identity the problems which were encountered by different types of travellers. Use was made of some problem solving and analytic tools. The cause and effect diagram served the team to point out the main problems experienced by the different representatives in the project team. It appeared that the different participants were not always aware of the problems experienced by the others. It was obvious that such an exercise led to a better understanding of each other’s expectations. Problems were linked with the following areas: methods / procedures; people; infrastructure; and environment. In the area of ‘methods and procedures’ such problems as too long control time for business, no road information signs about the presence of the Border Crossing Point (BCP) and its status at the side of the Republic of Moldova, inefficient process of control of documents, etc. were mentioned. As regards the problems related to the ‘people’ area, such issues as inadequate professional level of officers, lack of personnel,

42 no attention to (good) quality of service, inefficient rotation of personnel, etc. were identified. Concerning the ‘infrastructure’ the participants pointed out issues such as: lack of technical equipment, no integrated IT data bases, lack of service zones for travellers, etc. In the area of the ‘environment’ such problems as: at BCP Yampil-Cosauti the river boat was often not operational, the schedule for the ferry was not developed, BCP Otaci - centre of town often crowded with trucks, control procedures of pedestrians at BCP Mogyliv-Podilsky was rated as problematic, and so on. The results of the analytic exercise were published on the website of the Euroregion “Dniester” to inform the population / the citizens of the Euroregion “Dniester” area in a transparent way on the progress made. Also people were able to notice that the problems were related to the process of crossing the border in their geographical zone and to observe that the authorities are dealing with their concerns. Needless to say such an approach put some pressure on the different organisations participating in the project. Contributing to a change of culture of public organisations was part of the expected results of the project. One of these seeks to bring about an attitude of accountability by the involved services. Working in partnership means also to stimulate the partners to do what has been promised. In the short run an evaluation / assessment report was made by the experts of the EUBAM which gave a comprehensive overview of information provided to border crossers in BCPs in Euroregion ‘Dniester’ area of responsibility. Without going into detail, it was noticed that within the Euroregion “Dniester” segment of the border different levels of involvement and modernisation of BCPs existed. The development and progress in the installation of measures aligned to EU best practises border signs varied from one BCP to another and from country to country. A considerable number of targeted BCPs required immediate revision. The available billboards and signs with regulation and instructions on border crossing procedures were outdated and in a deplorable condition. It was noticed

43 that there was no technical organization on the location of border police and customs information stands. At that time it should be mentioned that the Ukrainian partners proved to have delegated more attention to the importance and availability of information signs at the BCPs. Partners took the results of the assessment seriously and started to improve the provision of information to the travellers immediately. In line with the project methodology a further important step was realized. Participants were invited to come up with ideas to solve the listed problems. It can be said that there was a willingness to consider the ideas of other involved parties. Participants demonstrated respect for each other. The feasibility of the ideas was discussed and by the end the project team supported by the Coordination Center of the Euroregion “Dniester” drew up a list of 45 points for action. Each action was split up into sub-actions which were agreed to be implemented by the various services and organizations according to specified deadlines. Thus, the responsibility was distributed among state border guard / police and customs services and among the public and civil society organisation of both countries. The points were selected through a matrix formation Ishikawa, followed by priority ranking and the real feasibility of their implementation. All the items were categorized as follows: infrastructure improvement of transport connections and border crossing points; increase in the level of cooperation of border guard and customs services of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova; technical improvements of border guard and customs equipment / infrastructure; training of border guard and customs services staff; anti-corruption policy; improvement of the provision of information on crossing the border; attraction of experience of the European Union. As a non-exhaustive list of examples of actions and sub-actions the following can be mentioned: - to compose an information package taking into consideration the most common problems and frequently asked questions by travellers,

44 - to contact school committees of parents and to give presentations jointly with border guard/border police and EUBAM, - to estimate the trends in the workload of the different tasks during periods of the year and to plan the allocation of staff according to these trends, at regional and local level - to ensure the proper use of technology at working places, - to communicate reforms to all levels and staff member of the Service, - to establish access to the Service’s Intranet at all BCPs, - to find relevant opportunities for financial aid from donors, - to communicate the BCPs measures to fight corruption, - to establish a one-stop-shop at a maximum number of BCPs, - to reduce waiting times by using risk profiles and selectivity - to evaluate (e.g. polling) periodically the implementation of measuring the time for crossing the border by all kinds of travellers, - to install public councils to evaluate the work of the border services on the territory of Euroregion “Dniester”, - to publish the numbers of hotlines on the web-site of Euroregion “Dniester” and other web-sites, - to search for finance from donors by using the European Union and other possibilities for financial support, - to organize a study visit to the Euroregion “Dniester” for representatives from the EU, - to include in the plans of the services the reconstruction / building documents for BCPs and construction of comfortable service zones and modern sanitary facilities, etc. In addition to these actions agreed, requests were also made to make an evaluation of security and control procedures at Marculesti airport. The action plan was presented for consideration by the leadership of the State Customs Service of Ukraine (later - the Ministry of Revenues and Duties of Ukraine,

45 currently the Ukrainian State Fiscal Service), State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, the Border Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova, and the Customs Service of the Republic of Moldova. A few comments were received on the plan, and in general the services expressed their support for implementation. In parallel to the development of the project, the council of the Euroregion “Dniester” planned a visit to the EU in Brussels from 10-12 October 2012. Contacts with different departments of the EU were agreed upon such as the Division Eastern Partnership-Bilateral of the European External Action Service, and the Regional Policy DG of the European Commission. In this period the visitors also participated in the seminar “Eastern Partnership territorial and parliamentary cooperation: an asset for Europe” and a presentation of Euroregion “Dniester” was given. EUBAM supported and participated in the visit which offered opportunities to find for the future support from the EU and other potential donors. On the occasion of the visit the Euroregion “Dniester” opened also an office in Brussels which would be in a position to establish direct and sustainable contacts with relevant partners. As it is essential that regularly monitoring and evaluating of the implementation and results of partnerships are updated, evaluation sessions were organized as a follow up. It was observed that such evaluations were needed to ensure that partners were kept accountable for the engagements taken. The progress analysis showed that a number of actions were implemented but some other actions, in particular related to the improvement of the infrastructure of BCPs and long- term issues such as construction of roads and railways have yet to be implemented. Nevertheless considering the content of the project itself it was motivating to see that all participating organisations and their representatives learned to know and to respect each other. They were eager to listen, to discuss challenges, and to see that both countries have similar goals to be achieved.

46

Conclusion The cooperation between the Euroregion “Dniester” and EUBAM proved to be successful. Such an experience can be taken as an opportunity to exchange ‘good practices’ with different partners and using this approach for learning and benchmarking. This cooperation demonstrated that the involvement of citizens plays an increasingly active role as key partners in the work of the public sector not only in expressing complaints but more importantly in providing information and ideas for improvement of the services rendered to them e.g. the “travellers crossing the border”.

47

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AND RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS IN A TURBULENT ENVIRONMENT: #UKRAINE, #MOLDOVA, #ROMANIA

Sergiy GERASYMCHUK Strategic and Security Studies Group, Kyiv, Ukraine; Ukraine-Romania International Experts’ Consortium

In Ukraine, Romania and the Republic of Moldova – three neighbouring countries of the Black Sea region elections were held at the end of 2014. In Ukraine and Moldova these were parliamentary elections whereas in Romania – presidential. In any other year this news would mean little for the citizens in the rest of the world. Very often even elections in their own countries mean little and in particular in the case of established Western democracies the interest towards the elections is decreasing. The same is true for the European Union as a whole. The most recent example is the elections to the European Parliament which also took place in 2014. That was the first time since 1979 when Europeans have averted yet another decline in voter turnout in the European Parliament elections, which remained stable at 43.1%1 (however, bearing in mind that the number of voters in the EU exceeds 375 million eligible voters and over half of them have not voted this represents a rather alarming fact for democratic development). However 2014 is somehow different for the Eastern Europe.

Ukrainian Crisis as a Key to Understanding the Region The year started with the “Ukrainian crisis” and these dramatic events in Ukraine deserve broader analysis. When we say “Ukrainian crisis” we mean both the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity which was the first case in world history of violent clashes between the supporters of European integration and the authoritarian pro-Russian regime. Never before in the world were the EU




























































1 http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-elections-2014/slightly-higher-election-turnout-averted-big-disaster-302383

49 flags and anthem used as the inspiration in the fight for democracy. However even after the victory of the protestors and escape of the leader of authoritarian regime Victor Yanukovich to Russia the crisis continued and stretched both in terms of geography and the outcomes for the international system. First, the Russian Federation responded to the victory of pro-democratic forces in Ukraine by brutal violation of international law and annexed Crimea. Moreover, the Russian Federation continues to provide support to separatist/terrorist movements in the East of Ukraine. Ignoring international public opinion Putin still tries to promote the concept of “Novorossiya”2 to build the region into the broader construct of “russkiy mir”. There were also attempts to destabilize the situation in the Southern regions of Ukraine to stretch the belt of instability to secessionist Transnistrian region in Moldova and therefore to cause problems not only for Kyiv and Chisinau and but for the Black Sea region as a whole. In this regard it can be said that the situation presents a threat not only for Ukraine which is already de-facto at war with Russia but also other neighbouring states as well. The Republic of Moldova is quite vulnerable regarding Russian efforts to spread its interests to a wider area whereas Moldova is limited in its international manoeuvre due to the burden of the illegal presence of Russian military forces on this territory. Doubtless under these circumstances, when Moldova’s biggest neighbour is being directly attacked by Russia, concerns rise in Chisinau. Even in the EU and NATO countries the challenges caused by Russian behaviour on the national arena are taken seriously although the level of concern varies from a purely economic perception to an understanding of Russian foreign policy as a direct threat to national sovereignty as in Baltic States. Perhaps at first glance Romania feels safer since there is no direct border with Russia, it has relative independence in terms of national security and close ties with the NATO allies. However, the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines flight 17, the




























































2 Sonne Paul, With 'Novorossiya,' Putin Plays the Name Game With Ukraine, available at http://online.wsj.com/articles/with-novorossiya-putin-plays-the-name-game-with-ukraine-1409588947

50 plane (with 283 passengers and 15 crew who died) shot down by a surface-to-air BUK missile which was in accordance with the evidence of the Ukrainian, American3 and German4 special services provided to the separatists by the Russian Federation only proved that no one can feel secure anymore. The problem of the Ukrainian crisis has its impact not only on the political situation within the region but also in the world of academia, since it inspired the new round of discussions between the apologists of “realism/rationalism” and “idealism” in international politics and the voice of realists is getting stronger. More and more one can hear statements blaming the West for the emergence of the crisis. Often even reputable scholars are trapped by Russian propaganda.5 Under such circumstances elections in Ukraine and Moldova are important for the international community since they shape the agenda of bilateral relations of both countries with Russia and define the level of involvement of the international community in regional developments. It comes as no surprise that pragmatics alongside with the hypocrites in both countries also try to strengthen their voice and try their luck to get into national parliaments and settle ideological controversies with Moscow by applying the cynical “business as usual” pattern. Both in Ukraine and Moldova pro-Russian forces often supported by Russian politicians and business speculate that pragmatism in relations with Russia should prevail notwithstanding the number of victims of the war. While ignoring the evidence of polarized perception of the world by Moscow and Western democracies the representatives of such parties try to persuade the electorate and the decision-makers that they can assure inclusive dialogues within the

3 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/20/the-evidence-that-may-prove-pro-russian-separatists- shot-down-mh17/ 4 http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-intelligence-blames-pro-russian-separatists-for-mh17-downing-a- 997972.html 5 For example see the recent article by John J. Mearsheimer “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault” available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault which contains non-verified data on the recent developments in Ukraine and in terms of realism suggests the objectification of Ukraine as the international actor in order to abstain from provoking Putin further.

51 respective countries and will be able to set a constructive agenda in relations with the Kremlin. At the same time the issue of political inclusion is often misinterpreted and used as a symbolical shield by those who either directly or implicitly try to involve Ukraine and Moldova into the geopolitical situation which could lead to the loss of sovereignty of both states.

Ukraine: the plot of the revanchists Obviously, after post-revolutionary developments in Ukraine when information about the corruption and crimes of the regime and its close ties with the Russian Federation the level of support to the Party of Regions and its satellite Communist Party significantly declined. The communists are far from getting even close to an electoral threshold whereas the Party of Regions aware of its negative image decided to abstain from participation in the elections. However both pro-Russian politicians and representatives of the corrupt regime of Yanukovich tried to get into parliament and used numerous options to reach this goal. First the representatives of these forces passed through the process of political rebreeding. Instead of well-know political brands they launched new projects e.g. “Strong Ukraine (Sylna Ukraina)” headed by Sergiy Tigipko who was vice prime-minister in the previous government, “Opposition Block” headed by Yuriy Boyko – minister for fuel and energy and later vice-prime- minister in the previous government and who is blamed for being involved in corrupt schemes6 and numerous other minor political initiatives. Another ruse to get into parliament was competition in majoritarian electoral districts (which cover 50% of seats in the Ukrainian parliament). Years of the experience prove that such districts are most vulnerable regarding possibilities to bribe the voters. Besides, typical tactics involve manipulation with the “Russian issue” e.g. promising the electorate immediate improvement of relations with the

6 See more at http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/how-to-return-80-million-to-ukraine-for-the-boyko-towers-2- 318198.html and http://www.globalwitness.org/library/global-witness-concerned-choice-new-ukraine-energy-minister

52 neighbouring Russian Federation which can be sort of catchy for moderate voters tired of armed conflict. Also it appears that many representatives of the previous regime try their best to persuade the current president Poroshenko that their presence in the Parliament would make the dialogue with Russia more fruitful and pro-presidential forces neither oppose their presence in their own party lists (with the exception of most odious figures) nor attempt real competition with pro-Russian politicians in majoritarian districts. It would be justified to assume that president Poroshenko is also trapped by realist discourse and believes that having a pro-Russian political in his team or preserving neutral relations with them would prevent him from strong opposition. Such an assumption is tactically right in the middle and long-term perspective but it implicitly contains numerous risks. Definitely pro- Russian members of parliament would have a chance to prevent any new government from timely democratic reforms. However the most evident risk is underestimation of the people’s choice to build a new country with new transparent and fair rules of the political game where the strongest voice belongs to the citizens and cannot be manipulated by elites.

Moldova: compromised Alliance and the outcomes for European integration The situation is even worse for pro-European citizens in the case of Moldova. The leaders of the governing political forces regrettably did not withdraw from the corrupt practices they got used to while doing business in Moldova, as the outcome of numerous corruption scandals in the Republic of Moldova in the recent years show. According to Transparency International-Moldova the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, public sector, the police, the Central Election Commission, the ombudsperson, the Audit Office, anticorruption authorities, political parties, the mass media, civil society and private sector - are vulnerable to corruption, especially political parties, Parliament, and the

53 judiciary branch.7 More than once the ruling alliance was balancing on the edge of political crisis and to some extent the politicians from the ruling Liberal- Democratic Party of Moldova, Democratic Party of Moldova and Liberal Party of Moldova discredited not only their political brands but the idea of European integration per se. In other words, those who support the idea of European integration in Moldova do not trust the politicians who use pro-European rhetoric and do not believe they are the leaders who can be a success on the European path. The opposition forces who are applying pro-Russian slogans can gain the support of protest in the electorate in the country whereas the disappointed supporters of Western-like democracy and European path of Moldova will abstain from participation. Political forces appealing to a re- launch of relations with Russia and Customs Union (in particular the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova headed by Igor Dodon and Renato Usatii who stayed at the head of “Patria” party list) can be significant game-changers in post-electoral Moldova notwithstanding the new composition of the governing coalition, although the position of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova is of significant importance.

Shortcomings of Representative Democracy In both cases Ukrainian and Moldovan pro-Russian politicians are guided by the assumption that whilst getting into national parliaments they will use the drawbacks of contemporary representative democracy for their own benefit. First they take for granted the belief that established participation rights within the framework of liberal democracy offer no real opportunity to exercise political influence and thus no real benefits. It is furthermore assumed to be based on the fact that the individuals are short of resources such as time and energy.8 Besides, it is a common belief of the pro-Russian (and not only)

7 http://www.anticorruption-moldova.org/home/news-from-moldova/112-corruption-risks-compromise-progress-made-by- moldova-report 8 Thomas Zittel, Participatory democracy and political participation : can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? / edited by Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs, London ; New York : Routledge, [2007]., p. 9.

54 politicians and elites that since elections do not take place very often and are concerned not so much with policy content than with the selection of representatives, political participation of the citizens will be occasional and limited.9 With a certain level of simplification the politicians in both Ukraine and Moldova expect that by using populist and attractive slogans or by fooling the electorate they can get into parliament and after that when the electorate loses its leverage of influence they will be able to set new rules of the game that will consider the interests of the elites. Once again it should be emphasized that such approach cynically speaking is justified from the perspective of political realism within the national political systems. However in the middle and long- term perspective it contains risks rooted in dynamically developing international systems. As a matter of fact political parties in both Ukraine and Moldova manipulate the geopolitical factors but simultaneously underestimate them. At the same time, the Russian Federation is guided by the principle of revolutionary expansionism10 and is likely to use internal political games to expose the vulnerability of Ukraine and Moldova and it does its best to convert non- transparency and weaknesses of political systems to prove that its neighbours are closer to failed states than to transitional democracies. No doubt that being labelled as “failed states” both Ukraine and Moldova will become easy targets for the Russian expansionists.

Participation as the Solution Such a brief overview of the political context leads us to rather pessimistic conclusions regarding the future of Ukraine and Moldova. It seems that the “no return point” on the European path of both countries is not yet reached. The election results question the foreign policy priorities and agenda of these states. The new rulers guided by their egoistic interests and short term goals can

9 Dieter Fuchs. Participatory, liberal and electronic democracy , Participatory democracy and political participation : can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? / edited by Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs, London ; New York : Routledge, [2007]., p. 35. 10 See more at http://www.soros.md/en/publication/2013-11-26

55 bargain on foreign policy issues in order to get external political support from Russia. However, paradoxically not only corrupt elites and pro-Russian political forces improved chances for political reincarnation in Ukraine and Moldova but also civil society in both countries is getting stronger. Of course after the elections the citizens of Ukraine and Moldova face certain challenges both within the internal political process and in the context of the rising role of geopolitical players. However, in theory there is a response to the challenges produced by the shortcomings of representative democracy and this response is political participation. The main focus of participatory theory lies in the critique of the liberal concept of democracy as a competition for power among the responsible elites. Participatory theory envisions citizens who engage in political decision-making in great numbers and who share a sense of collective responsibility.11 In this regard the fact that collective responsibility is on the rise is evident. Actually the very fact of the Revolution in Ukraine was a spontaneous demonstration of the determination of citizens not to be manipulated and misguided. Although with some degree of probability we have to admit that the outcomes of the events in Independence square (which is now known as Euromaidan) in the centre of Kyiv were manipulated and used by different actors (both internal and external), there is no evidence to support the view that the Revolution was inspired externally. On the contrary without any guidance and with limited interference of political forces at the time of the Revolution of Dignity and afterwards Ukrainians managed to perform a high level of self-organization. Spontaneous protests were self-organized (actually since the beginning of the protests, Facebook in particular played a central role in organizing protesters and informing wider audiences about developments. The first gathering of

11 Thomas Zittel, Participatory democracy and political participation, Participatory democracy and political participation : can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? / edited by Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs, London ; New York : Routledge, [2007]., p. 9.

56 protesters, organized in Kyiv on the eve of November 21 and which was immediately called Euromaidan (European Square), was sparked off by the appeals of several journalists and civil activists12) and protestors managed to create systems of “early warning” – via social networks there was a possibility to launch the protest, notify a wider community regarding the threats to Maidan, risks of operations by riot police or any other special forces and at the most challenging moments protestors were able to mobilise the support of people from all over Ukraine. Volunteer groups also contributed to counter-fighting in the information war. One of the brightest examples of this type of activity was Euromaydan SOS. It was a self-organized group of human rights and civil society activists, lawyers, journalists and other concerned citizens of different professions. The Initiative group Euromaydan SOS was created as a response to the illegal actions of the authorities to disperse the peaceful demonstration in the night from 29 to 30 of November 2013 at the Independence Square. The main purpose of the Initiative group Euromaydan SOS was to provide operative and legal assistance to Euromaydan victims not only in Kyiv but also in Ukrainian regions. The initiative group collected and analyzed information to protect peaceful protesters and to provide temporary assessments of the situation. Initiative group Euromaydan SOS acted as an intermediary between Euromaydans participants, and provided legal assistance and lawyers who work as volunteers.13 The very existence of this initiative was illustrative: it proved that the communicative power is generated in an autonomous public sphere through deliberation. The autonomous public had its basis in a civil society equally distant from state and market. Its structure was composed of a network of voluntarily associations14.

12 http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/12/09/how-internet-tools-turned-euromaidan-protests-into-a-movement/ 13 See more on these initiative at http://euromaidansos.org/en/who-we-are 14 Thomas Zittel, Participatory democracy and political participation, Participatory democracy and political participation : can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? / edited by Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs, London ; New York : Routledge, [2007]., p. 42.

57 The mechanisms of communication and self-organization that emerged at Euromaidan converted into broad volunteer networks which coordinate the support to armed forces participating in fighting Russian and pro-Russian terrorists in the East of Ukraine, in providing assistance to internally displaced people15, sick and wounded participants of anti-terrorist operations. The majority of activities can be assessed in terms of the participatory democracy concept as “integrative democratization”. They prove that the current understanding of democracy in post-revolutionary Ukraine can be described by the existing social practice that can be seen as a crucial prerequisite for the process of self- transformation into a citizen. Social groups appear as the core building block of democracy here, since they appear as central agents of socialization. From this perspective the integration of individuals into the group is a central prerequisite for building citizen virtues that are in turn directly related to political participation.16 Other indicators that point to a strengthening of participatory democracy in Ukraine are applications of such typical for this type of democracy practices as political (or in case of Ukraine – geopolitical) “buycotting”. Political consumerism typically refers to activities such as boycotting products or deliberately buying certain products – known as buycotting – out of political or ethical concerns17. And indeed it was the initiative of civil society activists to launch the campaign “Boycott the Occupiers”. One of the outcomes of the initiative is a smartphone App that helps to identify and boycott goods made in Russia. It is becoming popular among Android users in Ukraine and has already been installed between 10,000-50,000 times18.

15 See more on CrimeaSOS – follow-up initiative of Euromaydan SOS initiative http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/28/crimea-sos-the-crimea-is-ours/ 16 Thomas Zittel, Participatory democracy and political participation, Participatory democracy and political participation : can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? / edited by Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs, London ; New York : Routledge, [2007]., p. 13. 17 Christensen, Henrik Serup, Political partipicipation beyond the vote : how the institutional context shapes patterns of political participation in 18 Western European democracies /: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2011, p. 39. 18 http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26853689

58 In Habermasian terms, democracy by means of participation is gradually being converted into legal institutionalization of discursive opinion and will formation by the citizens19. In post-revolutionary Ukraine political integration can no longer be affected only by systemic mechanisms and the bargaining of particular interests, but needs also to be placed on a communicative basis. Citizens not only construct effective and efficient communication platforms but also demand communication and transparency from the ruling elites. One of the most visible examples was "Poroshenko, talk to me" flashmob the purpose of which was to inspire the president Poroshenko to maintain a dialogue with citizens. The initiative known for its #PoroshenkoPohovoryZNarodom (Poroshenko talk to the people) hashtag was quite fruitful and visible enough to get the response from the president.20 There is little doubt that both during the electoral campaign and after the already existing mechanisms of participatory democracy will not vanish but rather will be strengthened and therefore there is a chance that the revanchists will not be successful in Ukraine. One might argue that most of the aforementioned examples refer to Ukraine, whereas in Moldova the situation is quite different. But here we refer to them since in a mobilized and post-traumatic society they are in clear evidence. At the same time in Moldova the situation is slightly different but the potential for participatory democracy is also relatively high. First, Moldovans have already experienced the so-called twitter revolution in 2009. Although some authors argue that this revolution “had little to do with the popular online social network”21 it is a questionable statement and it will be equally justified to say that that was one of the first attempts of Moldovans to perform their participatory rights. Here we would rather agree with the statement that

19 Thomas Zittel, Participatory democracy and political participation, Participatory democracy and political participation : can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? / edited by Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs, London ; New York : Routledge, [2007]., p. 32. 20 http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/09/25/the-president-to-the-people-what-to-fight-with/ 21 Hale, Henry E. Explaining Moldova’s “Twitter Revolution that Wasn’t” available at http://www.ponarseurasia.org/sites/default/files/Hale_WorkingPaper_March2013.pdf

59 technology played an important role in facilitating participatory activities of the responsible citizens. In addition to the impressive mobilization efforts both on Twitter and Facebook, Moldova's angry youth – especially those who were abroad (roughly a quarter of Moldova's population are working abroad due to dire economic conditions back at home) – could follow the events on this livestream provided by a Romanian TV station - directly from the square.22 The revolution in 2009 proved that democratic citizenship has changed in nature, and there has been a diversification of the range, forms and targets of political expression.23 Of course the extent of participation has decreased in recent years but presumably only due to the decrease of challenges – despite shortcomings the European direction of the development of Moldova was unquestioned. However, we believe that the emergence of risks after the elections will lead to further mobilization of responsible citizens and participatory democracy will serve as a pre-emptive mechanism that can limit the possibility of Moldovan politicians to reverse the direction of the state’s development.

Why Elections in Romania (do not really) Matter? While discussing the elections in Ukraine and Moldova and possible outcomes of these events for democracy promotion, regional developments and global international system, we left aside the elections in Romania. As a matter of fact the results of the elections in Romania do not really matter so much in comparison. Due to Romania’s membership in the EU and NATO it is not likely that any outcome will affect Bucharest’s foreign policy agenda and that certainly produces some benefits for pro-European forces in Ukraine and Moldova. Civil society in Romania is supporting civil movements in both Ukraine and Moldova. In winter 2013 Romanian intellectuals released a letter of support to

22 Morozov, Evgeny, “Moldova's Twitter Revolution” available at http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/07/moldovas_twitter_revolution 23 Christensen, Henrik Serup, Political partipicipation beyond the vote : how the institutional context shapes patterns of political participation in 18 Western European democracies /: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2011, p. 39.

60 pro-European rebels at Euromaidan24 and that moving expression of solidarity rooted in Romania’s own experience of democratic developments at the end of ‘80s was appreciated in Ukraine. Moreover, the warming up of relations between Ukraine and Romania on the level of civil society caused a spill over affect and relations on the governmental level are also gradually improving. On October 2, 2014 there was the first meeting of the three Prime-Ministers of Ukraine, Moldova and Romania in the history of all these states and after the presidential elections nothing can change significantly. The key task for the civil societies in these three countries is to preserve the solidarity of responsible citizens and to combine efforts to be included into a global civil society discourse.

Final Remarks Recent developments within the international system have a serious impact on the international order. This seems to be the most turbulent period since the end of the Cold war. They started with the “Ukrainian crisis” and nowadays cause momentous shifts in different spheres including economics, political thought, geopolitics and theory of democracy. Russia which represents the old school in international relations attempts to reserve post-Soviet space as the place where the realism of geopolitics should prevail. However, these intentions go in contradiction to the will of responsible citizens in post-Soviet countries, who are willing and able to counterweight Russian efforts by regionally driven participatory initiatives. Post-traumatic and highly mobilized civil society in Ukraine seems to be leading in this regard although the potential of Moldova is be no less high (in particular if civil activists in both countries will be able to combine their efforts and share best practices). Political elites in both Ukraine and Moldova still have rudimentary features inherited from previous decades: they are vulnerable to corruption, can be

24 See more in Ukrainian http://www.gsbs.org.ua/?p=1253

61 manipulated by the Kremlin and tend to believe that they can in turn manipulate the electorate. However, responsible citizens who are using the tools of political participation are getting stronger and therefore politicians have to adapt to the new realities. No doubt after elections in Ukraine and Moldova they will still attempt to seek revenge. However it is not likely that in a middle-term perspective they will be able to preserve the pre-crisis status-quo. Coordination between the representatives of civil society of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova matters a lot in this regard since enriched with the instruments of participatory democracy this will be decisive not only for the success of the democratic development in the respective countries but also for the democratization of the Black sea region at large (moreover Romania can enjoy the status of the link between the Black sea countries and the EU). Without doubt if such regionally driven participation is successful the elections in our countries will matter less. Citizens of Moldova and Ukraine will finally get to the situation when each new election will not be crucial for developments but just be another round of selection of managers for the countries, who will have to apply their skills not for the reshaping of internal and external policies’ agendas but for professional implementation of the public will of a responsible civil society.

62

ASSOCIATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN UKRAINE AND THE EU WITH RUSSIA AS INSTITUTIONAL PHENOMENON OF “BAD” AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

Sergii GLEBOV Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, Odesa Mechnikov National University, Ukraine.

It started with capitulation. It was not a capitulation of Ukraine to Russia; it was the capitulation of Yanukovych to Putin. As Hennadii Moskal, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and now the Governor of the Luhansk oblast, stated, Putin even in November 2013 personally warned Yanukovych during his visit to Moscow of his plan to wean away Crimea and South-East of Ukraine in case Ukraine signed the Association Agreement with the EU.1 As one would expect, a less than democratic regime surrendered to another. A sacred victim which was sacrificed to the Kremlin was the home nation with European aspirations. The vague official explanation of Ukraine’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement (AA) between Ukraine and the EU in Vilnius in late November 2013 from the Ukrainian side at that time better known as “Sem’ya” – “Family” – triggered the Revolution of Dignity. That was an eloquent and dramatic example of “bad” governance in the post-Soviet space both in domestic and foreign policies, though it stretches far beyond regime of the President Yanukovych. It has roots in Ukraine as a state machine, which appeared to be unable to implement good governance with democratic reforms and change country in over 23 years.

1 '&-! +  %&"#- !' "" $"' #"#$ !'"*, +"  $- #-#%!!, %")-)-. “$.! — ” -$ $ - -!! (- $.!, 02.09.2014. Official Web-site by Hennadii Moskal , (accessed 6 October 2014).

63 “Bad” International Governance At the same time, not only the political history of Ukraine after 1991 is the example of “how not to do good governance”. Russia-Ukraine relations after 1991 are typical examples of “bad” international governance in the post-Soviet space. At the time, when Putin’s goal towards Ukraine was irrational, his task to suppress Yanukovych and Ukraine was rational; his action was cold-blooded, planned strategically in advance, cynical, and to some extent even successful. He knew all major weaknesses of the post-Soviet political elites and vulnerabilities of those political regimes and economic systems which were introduced in Ukraine after the break-up of the USSR. He was able to apply pressure on these points of pain to reach the desired goal; and they are not limited to energy dependence of Ukraine from Russia. In this situation when the more powerful one uses weaknesses of the weak in a typical Realpolitik (not only the methods and not as a justification of Putin’s policy towards Ukraine), the motivation of Yanukovych to give up the people of Ukraine was rather despicable. By playing with the West, including the EU, the USA, and IMF, when promising, but not really meaning democratic reforms on the way to European integration, Yanukovych relied on extra political and economic preferences for his oligarchic power in the West alongside with the naive underestimation of Putin’s aggressive plans towards Ukraine. Yanukovych expected that the West would forever tolerate his anti-democratic regime in return for his Ukrainian strategy to stay outside Putin’s imperial mechanisms of the post-Soviet integration. It was even a compliment to Yanukovych from some experts and media that by promoting his non-alignment policy in a status of a “bridge” between West and East, the former President of Ukraine nearly “milked” both West and Russia at the same time for the sake of his own egoistic benefit. As it turned out, that was the way to nowhere with the one-way ticket of no return.

64 Ukraine as a Fetish By playing along with Putin’s plans, the only one whom Yanukovych fooled was himself and the Ukrainian people in the end. The President of the Russian Federation set a goal to use Ukraine as an object to reconstruct post-Soviet space into Russia’s imperial corrupt dictatorship a-la USSR used Yanukovych’s regime as a tool. At the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity, Putin was in a hurry not to lose the momentum of having Ukraine as Russia’s existential fetish. As it turned out, at the core of this sacral fetish was not just Zbigniew Brzezinsky’s famous thesis, but what Lev Trotsky warned much earlier: “There is no Russia without Ukraine”.2 At that time when Vladimir Putin was not only dreaming about geopolitical takeover, but was really preparing his “Russian spring” and planning to annex Crimea, his counterpart – Viktor Yanukovych – the citizen of Ukraine was presumptuously conniving to preserve his oligarchic power at the expense of Ukrainians who were dreaming to become Europeans and refused to remain post-Soviets. Not surprisingly, Putin did his best to use the political shortsightedness of Yanukovych. Putin outplayed Yanukovych, but unexpectedly, both Putin and Yanukovych underestimated those Ukrainians who managed and did become Europeans in their souls and minds, especially in the period of November 2013-February 2014. Ukrainians on EuroMaidan and heroes of the Hundred of Heaven have definitely ruined the dreams of Yanukovych and corrected Putin’s immediate tactics towards Ukraine. Since then, these two not so democratic regimes have experienced varying speeds of reflecting the reality: one has already gone down; the failure of another is a matter of time and the price which Ukrainians have to pay.

Association Agreement as a Stumbling-block for Good Governance

2   . (2012) !    ,      .   , , (accessed 22 August 2014).

65 At the same time, having different political destinies at this stage, these two regimes both faced and shared similar risks and challenges not only from the European people of Ukraine, but also from the process of European integration. Worries about the impending inevitable and irreversible reforms in Ukraine under the auspices of the AA between EU and Ukraine also threatened the regime of Yanukovych from the very beginning and they continue to accumulate the potential to destroy Putin’s new geopolitical map of Eurasia. Residing in and later escaping out of the symbol of Ukrainian uneducated, tasteless and corrupt despotism – his Mezhihorie residence– Viktor Yanukovych took the wrong decision to wage war in his own nation for the title of the Ukrainian tsar Midas. By doing this, he facilitated Putin’s geopolitical ambitions and provoked him to invade Ukraine right after the victory of the Revolution of Dignity. That is why the political destiny of the AA between EU and Ukraine which has quite a long and uneasy history of elaborating, initialing, signing, and ratifying predetermines the future of European and Euro-Atlantic security architecture; this document is on the table of global politics now. It is no coincidence, that the war of Russia on Ukraine has been linked to the ambition of Putin not to allow the AA to enter into force. The Kremlin for many years attempted to drag Ukraine into Russia’s Customs Union by discouraging Kyiv under Yanukovych not to sign this Agreement. When the “so-called” political part of AA was signed on March 21, 2014 and the full text including the part with the free trade area was signed on June 27, 2014 alongside with a similar AA for Moldova and Georgia, the Kremlin did not calm down. Because of Russia, Ukraine – unlike Georgia and especially Moldova, who ratified their Agreements with the EU almost immediately, – had to postpone ratification of “its” AA for two and a half months. Although sooner or later the war in the future will be lost, Russia won this particular battle.

Association Agreement as a Geopolitical Tool

66 Firstly Moscow tried its best to make changes to the text of the AA by directly interfering with the domestic and foreign policy of Ukraine and the EU. When such tactics did not work, the Kremlin pushed both Brussels and Kyiv during their trilateral negotiations in Brussels on September 12, 2014 to make a deal on postponing implementation of a free trade zone between Ukraine and EU as a part of the AA in order to somehow defend the geopolitical interests of Moscow before the AA entered the process of bilateral simultaneous ratification by the European Parliament and the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada just few days after, on September 16, 2014. It turned out, that Moscow became the third side within bilateral negotiations to insist and ensure that the most essential part of AA between EU and Ukraine is postponed until December 31, 2015. All these attempts indicate the high risk for Putin to lose Ukraine as the key element of his imperial strategy to “be Russia by means of Ukraine”. Putin’s regime simply cannot afford Ukraine to become democratic and finally sovereign and independent, because all this ruins his strategy to construct his “Russian world” in the territorial space of post-Sovietism which Putin’s regime identifies as a territory of “sovereign democracy”. That is why Putin was ready to implement hard economic sanctions against Ukraine in case the AA was ratified to increase economic pressure. There was also a suspicion, that the price to stop at least formal military operations and war in the Eastern part of Ukraine was not only a special status for Luhansk and the Donetsk region under the Minsk Agreements of September 5, 2014, but deep revision of certain positions in the AA under pressure of the Kremlin in favour of Putin. In contrast, Knut Fleckenstein, a Socialist and Democrat MEP, said the decision to postpone the implementation of the AA between Ukraine and the EU was “a concession for the sake of peace in Ukraine; a decision taken in the framework of a comprehensive peace process”.3

3 Suzanne Lynch. MEPs ratify ‘historic’ EU deal with Ukraine, The Irish Times, 17 September 2014, , (accessed 7 October 2014).

67 It turned out, that for Putin the importance of AA between Ukraine and EU is more important than victims of war in the Eastern Ukraine, including Russian soldiers. When Putin wages war on Ukraine because of its European choice he wages a “bad” war on good governance, which should be taken seriously inside the circle of the European friends of Ukraine with their ideas of good governance.

Association as Identification Also, the AA has a symbolic importance for Putin, because from the moment, when AA is ratified and starts to be implemented, Ukraine finally has a chance to be ultimately associated not with Russia, but with Europe. For Ukrainian patriots it is also symbolically important, because then when a Ukrainian citizen is asked by an EU citizen “where are you from?” they will not respond with “Ukraine - Oh, this is somewhere in Russia”, but “Ukraine - Oh, this is somewhere in Europe”. Not to be part of Russia in minds and in practice – this is the great challenge for Putin on the way to a fully ephemeral geopolitical scenario on founding again the “Russian world” in something like the Eurasian Economic Union. It sounds paradoxical, but by brutal power of a foreign policy like military invasion in Crimea and war in the Donetsk and Lyhansk regions, Putin with his primitive and shortsighted policy outplayed himself in favour of his geopolitical opponent – the West. When shouting “Krymnash” – “Crimea is ours”, after ratification of the AA, the EU concluded Ukraine is “ours.” For the pro-Ukrainian Europeans (and Americans) now a new victorious slogan with the tremendous geopolitical effect glows: “Ukraine is ours!” Having Crimea just temporarily, Putin has lost the rest of Ukraine forever. That is why he was trying to escalate conflict in Eastern Ukraine to press Ukraine and the EU to refuse to facilitate the process of European integration.

68 To some extent all this looks quite irrational. The penalty for Putin for his irrationality is quite impressive - sanctions (though they did not bring an immediate halt to the conflict), political isolation, discontent inside Russia, financial turbulence and many other negative outcomes. Some possible explanation for such irrationality is in the words of a well-known expert on Ukraine, an American historian Timothy D. Snyder: “Putin has a certain emotional, irrational, subjective affection towards Ukraine. He thinks that Ukraine is connected with Russian greatness. He perceives it as something very private. In contrast, perhaps, with other Russian officials. And he does not perceive Ukraine as a real independent state”.4 At the same time, explaining political steps by “irrationality” is more applicable for democratic systems, while for the neo-imperial perception it is different. If you are irrational, you will never be elected/re-elected in democratic countries, while in non- democracies this is not a danger at all: if you are irrational from the democratic point of view, so much the better as you are equipped to consolidate not even the electorate (because society does not elect in reality in such systems), but quasi- patriots around false goals. That is why Putin acted quite rationally from his point of view, because rejection of a reality, in our case rejection of Ukraine as “a real independent state”, turns irrationality into something dangerous and inadequate, but is quite a rational motivation for concrete political and military steps.

(Dis)association vs. Institutionalization What is the possible explanation of such rationality “a-la Putin” towards Ukraine? Can we dare to assume, that it is directly connected to the AA between

4  -   ! !   -    ,      , , (accessed 6 November 2014).

69 Ukraine and the EU and Putin’s top interest to postpone implementation of a free trade zone mechanism until the very end of 2015. At first sight, there was no big deal for Ukraine: the political part of the AA had entered into force and Kyiv continued to use its privilege to be present in the EU’s market with its goods within the framework of semi-annual unilateral trade liberalization which was introduced on April 23, 2014. Starting from this the EU zeroed import duties for Ukraine as a rehearsal of trade with the EU in terms of the free trade zone. As it is postponed now, such regime is likely to continue until December 31, 2015 (the decision on this is subject to a special vote in the European Parliament). So, Ukraine in trade relations already enjoys all the benefits of a duty-free export regime into EU’s market unilaterally. On the one hand, it looks like that it is the EU which primarily suffers from such a postponement by losing profits from the free trade zone with Ukraine which did not enter into force earlier as originally planned in 2014. On the other hand, this is not the case and the EU is hardly a “loser”. Brussels, which met Russian interests “for the sake of peace in Ukraine” on the way to implementation of the AA with a free trade regime, showed readiness to pay for such a decision hoping for some minor chance for stability and security. Thus, the price for such a decision was quite reasonable: free trade zone for the EU was in the minor minus, but peace in Ukraine appeared in the major plus. Finally, what was the interest of Russia if neither Ukraine nor the EU suffered any major damage from the postponement of the AA? Was it a case of a non- zero game in which Russia also met its interests? If yes, are we talking about pure Russian economic interests in order to get ready for the implementation of the free trade zone between two crucial economic partners of Moscow? Doubtful. Moscow had enough time to get ready and adjust its economic mechanisms to the new format of economic cooperation between Brussels and Kyiv from 2007 on when the negotiations on AA just began (as well as Ukraine, by the way). The problem is that Moscow does not talk in economic terms, but

70 in geopolitical. That is why for Putin it was essential to turn any economic agenda in the EU-Ukraine-Russia triangle into discourse on where Ukraine should integrate – whether it is the European Union with its AA, or Customs Union with Russia. Institutionalization with the EU through concrete mechanisms of preliminary integration and association of Ukraine with European democratic values appeared to pose a challenge to Putin in his plan to have Ukraine as an important satellite of integration in the “Russian world” of the “new USSR”. It was well known in advance and widely articulated by Brussels and Moscow that to have two free trade zones simultaneously within the AA and Customs Union was impossible for a member as both systems of interdependent relations have certain features of institutional thus political integration. Anyhow, by achieving the intermediate goal by threatening Ukraine and blackmailing Europe, Russia at least temporarily blocked further the process of institutionalization Ukraine’s relations with the EU within the AA. The only vital question emerges in this context: will it be just a temporary break in institutionalization?

What next? (instead of a conclusion) By postponing full implementation of the AA for the EU and Ukraine, Putin had postponed taking the final decision towards Ukraine until the very end of 2015, won additional time to have some space for maneuver, both militarily and politically. To put it simply, Putin has set the stage in order to rob Ukraine of the chance to make another crucial step towards institutionalization in its relations with the EU. If the assumptions set out above develop there is the real scenario of a further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and with it the free trade zone between the EU and Ukraine might not be established at all in the foreseeable future even after December 31, 2015. That means a further escalation of the conflict on Crimea and Eastern parts of Ukraine is on the way. In this destructive strategy the aim is to force Ukraine and the EU to give up their

71 bilateral idea to establish a free-trade zone. Russian “hard” power indeed may push political elites of Ukraine to reject European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations and thus the internal reforms thus preserving the traditional culture of “bad” governance in the post-Soviet space. In contrast, the new culture of “good” governance at least in international relations will be blocked in this space which automatically loses a historical chance to be transformed from the old-fashioned “post-Soviet space” into the brand new “pre-European space” of good governance. However, there is still a hope, that following early parliamentary elections in Ukraine on October 26, 2014 such a transformation which was initiated just one year ago on EuroMaidan may win through.

72

FEDERAL CENTRE, GOVERNORS AND MUNICIPALITY: TRENDS IN RELATIONS OF ELITES IN THE SOUTH OF RUSSIA Maria PONOMAREVA Southern Federal University, Rostov, Russia

The peculiarities of recent state policies of Russia regarding the regions as well as processes of decentralization and instability in certain territories and tendencies to overcome them by the central government have defined the position of Southern regions and political centre in Russia as independent and influential participants of political development process. The South of Russia includes the territories that comprise two south federal districts: North Caucasian Federal District and South Federal District. This region is considered as a cultural, historical, political, social and economic space with common historical roots united by economic connections and traditions with Russian public authorities. The peculiarity of this territory is the existence of specific relations between local elites at different levels and representatives of central public authorities. Some researchers note that elites of a particular region may oppose both the federal and the regional levels depending on their own interests1. Other scholars point out reforms related to enforcement of a “vertical power system of governance” at the beginning of the 2000s and believe that today the regional and municipal elites are totally dependent on the decisions of upper levels of the authorities2.

1 Hagopian F. Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil. - New York: Cambridge university Press, 1996.; Samuel D., Snyder R. The Value of a Vote: Malapportionment in Comparative Perspective // British Journal of Political Science. 2001. 31. p.651-671.; Treisman D. After the deluge: regional crises and political consolidation in Russia /D. Treisman. - Ann Arbor: The Univ. of Michigan Press, 1999. 262 p.; Treisman D. Political Decentralization and Economic Reform: A Game- Theoretic Analysis // American Journal of Political Science. 1999. 43. p.488-517.; Self-Government on the Don. Twenty three centuries of elections. / Edited by Yusova S.V. – Rostov-on-Don: published by Election Committee of Rostov region, 2002. 204 p.; Lapina N., Chirikova A. Regional elites of RF: behavior models and political orientations. - ., 1999. 2Kudryashova E.V. Change of political role of Astrakhan region in the system of Russian political relations // Caspian region: politics, economics, culture. 2012. No2. P.99-106.; Leshkevich

73 The phenomenon of the Russian Southern political elite is a complicated one. According to the “decisional” approach (Robert Dahl) elites include those who make important decisions having effect on many people or who have sufficient influence on such decisions taking. Besides, there is a substantial correspondence between those who make decisions and those who hold top positions in the hierarchy1. However there are certain difficulties in applying this approach to defining the position of political elites in the regional political process. For instance, political decision-makers may inadequately assess their roles and those of political partners. Under Russian conditions of rapid social transformation it may be difficult to define persons or groups taking important political decisions in the region. The “Reputational” approach (Floyd Hunter) stipulates identification of elites’ members relying on opinion of experts that assess the extent of influence of certain subjects of the regional political process. This approach is based on personal perception of the experts of powers distribution in society and, certainly, may not show an objective situation in the region2. The “Positional” approach (Charles Wright Mills) says that there is a sufficient connection between position that an individual or a group holds and their ability to take decisions having importance for society and to control common property resources3. In the Russian reality there is often a divergence between the position of an individual and the actual role he plays in a region. Besides, political decisions can be made in another region or at the level of central public authorities.

T.G., Ponomaryova M.A. Transformation of elites and modernization process in the South of Russia. – Rostov-on-Don: published by SFU, 2011. 262 p.; Grayvoronskiy V.V., Omakayeva E.U., Pyurbeyev G. Ts. Kalmykia: 400 years in Russia // East. African-Asian societies: history and modern times. 2010. No2. P.159-163.; Libman A. Regionalization and Regionalism in the Post-Soviet Space: Current Status and Implications for Institutional Development // Europe-Asia Studies. 2007. Vol.59. 3 (May). pp.401-430. 1 Dahl Robert Alan. Democracy and Its Critics – N.Y.,1989; Dahl R. Democracy and its Critics – , 2003. 2 Hunter F. Community Power Structure. - Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953. 3 Mills Charles Wright. Power Elite, 1956; Mills Ch. Power Elite. – ., 1959.

74 In the light of the above “South political elite” shall here mean a group of persons that professionally operates at the level of the authorities and of state administration that accumulate in their hands the supreme power and control prerogative rights and thus, directly, are able to influence the process of taking authoritative (political) decisions1. At the beginning of the 21st century the particular composition of elites of the executive authorities level was formed “based on position” which, on the one hand, stimulated struggle between various layers of regional elites in the regions where solid elite groups were not yet formed and the process of defining regional political model was not yet completed and, on the other hand, potentially allowed the federal centre to regulate the composition, requests and lines of activities of regional elites through amendment of the legal framework. At the same time the federal centre more actively used administrative leverage to control the regions. For example, at the beginning of the 1990s the head of Administration (governor) of the Rostov region pursuant to Russian laws had as wide credentials as the President of the Republic comprising part of the Russian Federation. For instance, he had a right to sign and officially publish regional laws adopted by the Legislative Assembly of Rostov region or to reject them. He represented the authorities in the relations with state federal bodies, public authorities of the subjects of the Russian Federation, local authorities and served as representative for international and foreign economic relations. He signed contracts and agreements on behalf of Rostov region, approved appointment of heads and deputy heads of territorial bodies of federal executive public authorities and otherwise participated in their appointment in cases stipulated by

1 Medvedev N.P. Political regional studies. – .: Alfa-, 2005. P.224 - 230.; Gnidenko I.V. Power space – perspective model for research of relations between elites and masses. // Bulletin of NCACS. 2007. No 4.; Ponedelkov A.V., Starostin A.M. Introduction to political elitology. Study guide. – Rostov-on-Don, 1998. – 119 p.; Chubar A.P. Forming of regional and municipal elite of Russia: post-soviet experience. – Thesis work ... candidate of political sciences: 23.00.02 : Rostov-on- Don, 2004 142 p.; Turovskiy R.F. Political regional studies. – .: Publishing house SE HSE, 2006. P.664 - 667.

75 federal laws1. Besides the Governor of the Rostov region was entitled to annul legal acts of Administration of the Rostov region and regional executive bodies. He would head a number of important regional structures, i.e. Council on Economic and Public Protection of Rostov region; Committee on realization of priority national projects and demographic policy in Rostov region, etc.2. The wide scope of credentials made the governor the most influential person of the regional elite. In 2009 the Regulation on the order of proposing and considering candidates for position of senior officials (head of the higher executive power in Russian Federation subjects)3 was adopted. According to the text of the Regulation at least three candidates to the position of a senior official (head of state supreme government body) of a Russian Federation subject shall be proposed to the President of the Russian Federation by a collegial permanent managing body of a political party list of candidates that has received the maximum number of electors’ votes according to official results of elections to a legislative (representative) body of a Russian Federation subject that were published closest to the day when the proposal is made and which is admitted to the allocation of deputy seats. If this is not the case, the proposal is made to the Chief of Staff of the Russian Federation President by Presidential Envoy in the relevant Federal District taking into account the authority and reputation of the proposed candidates, their public (state and community) activities as well as the results of preliminary consultations. In legislative (representative) state government body of a Russian Federation subject a candidate is proposed by the Presidential

1Authorities of the Governor of Rostov region. From supplement No1 to decree of the Head of Administration (Governor) of Rostov region dated 12.01.2009 No1 // (On-line resource): //http://www.donland.ru/content/info.asp?partId=31&infoId=665&topicInfoId=665. Access time: 21.06.2010. 2 See for ex.: Interview with the governor of Rostov region V.F. Chub regarding development of regional industry, priority directions of technological and innovational development of Rostov region // Rossiyskaya gazeta. 2008. 4.06. 3 Regulation on the order of proposing and considering candidates for position of a senior official (head of supreme executive body of state authority) of a Russian Federation subject// Rossiyskaya gazeta. 2009. 28.04.

76 Envoy of the relevant Federal District1. This reform has secured possibilities of the federal centre to influence the rotation of elites in the region that appeared in the 2000s: on the one hand, the centre has ensured unconditional support of resolutions and their execution at the local level and, on the other hand, in case of solid oppositional elites’ blocs in the region, it has made it possible to fundamentally rotate at its own discretion the regional elites “top-down”. Besides, the struggle of regional elites over preserving the heads of resource-rich regions has slightly changed: giving up partial influence in the region in favour of federal groups has become a condition for preserving the office. Each of the regional elite’s representatives under the given conditions has used different methods to preserve his or her position. For instance, A. Tkachev (Krasnodar region) has provided for investment of Russian business and state budget into the region due to preparation of the Sochi Olympic Games of 20142. Another way was used by N. Maksyuta (Volgograd region). According to the media, in 2008 he proclaimed that one of the key measures of struggle with economic crisis shall be a reduction of the time the officials use office Internet for private use. Some of his political opponents have found his measures to be oppositional to Russian policies aimed at informing Russian society and the improvement of Russian officials’ computer literacy. The federal centre thought such a measure to be highly illogical by restricting the access to information that could help the region to find a way out of the crisis. This step has led to the replacement of the governor and ex vice-governor A.G. Brovko took the office of N. Maksyuta. Unlike N. Maksyuta the new governor . Brovko had closer relations, first of all, with the economic regional groups as in 2000s he headed major industrial enterprises of the region, i.e. OJSC “Volga Pipe Plant” (“Volzhskiy trubny zavod”), OJSC “TMK” (“Trubnaya metallurgicheskaya

1 Regulation on the order of proposing and considering candidates for position of a senior official (head of supreme executive body of state authority) of a Russian Federation subject // Rossiyskaya gazeta. 2009. 28.04. 2 Kozak: there are no plans to replace Tkachev. // Klub regionov. 2008. 16.12.

77 kompaniya”), OJSC “Kolchugino Non-Ferrous Metals Plant” (“Kolchugtsvetmet”), non-profit partnership “Agency of Investment and Development of Volgograd Region”, etc.1 A special part in relations between elites of different levels in Russia and in the South of Russia is played by municipal elites. A new stage of municipal elite development started on October 6, 2003 when the Federal Law “Concerning the General Principles of the Organization of Local Government in the Russian Federation”2 was adopted. According to this Law one of the key tasks of the regional authorities was regulatory support of local government work. The regulatory help of the central government bodies included: state protection and guarantees for local government, state control and supervision over laws observation in local government bodies and officials activities and defining of statutory responsibility of bodies and elected officials of local government including termination of their authorities (in case of breach of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Federal Laws, charter or laws of a Russian Federation subject, charter of municipal entity). The federal centre has not only declared its support of the municipal elites independence as it was at the previous stage, but transferred to them more and more actual political and economic powers. Simultaneously the regions underwent legal formalization of local government within the framework compliant with Federal laws. For instance, the Adyghe Republic adopted a law “Concerning guarantees for exercising powers of a deputy of municipal entity representative body”3 that defined the position of municipalities in the Republic’s political process. Starting from 2007 regional representative and executive government bodies have been working on a reduction of the number of agreements for mutual delegation of powers among local government bodies and have made efforts to




























































1 Brovko . It is not only honorable, but also very responsible // Klub regionov. 2009. 30.12. 2 Concerning the General Principles of Organization of Local Government in the Russian Federation (law on local government). 06.10.2003 No 131-FZ // Rossiyskaya gazeta. 2003. 08.10. No202. 3 See for ex.: Law of Adyghe Republic “Concerning guarantees of exercising powers of a deputy of municipal entity representative body” // Bulletin of State Council – Khase of Adighe Republic. 2008. 23.04. No 26.

78 implement the principle of powers of decentralization. According to the report of Rostov region Administration in 2007 a complex of measures was implemented that was aimed at uniting the local authorities and local population1. Similar processes took place in other regions. Actually, the regional authorities have formed a bloc of municipal elites within the context of municipal reform realization with such elites potentially depending both on the existing traditions in general and on individual personal interest of certain representatives. For example, the mayor of Rostov-on-Don M.A. Chernyshov is a member of the regional bloc of administrative elite. The stability of his position (he has been in the administration of the city of Rostov-on-Don for about 20 years) is secured by cooperation with regional economic groups as well as by taking a compromising position in interaction with federal elites2. Simultaneously there has been a process of municipal elite self-identification. First of all, it is expressed through wide interpretation of powers. For example, in Morozovsk district of Rostov region heads of several municipalities have unilaterally changed tax laws and, as a result, started defining land tax rates and rate of tax for physical persons for use of agricultural lands at their own discretion3. Secondly, the self-identification of municipal elites was related to negative aspects of political activities. For instance, in Volgograd the deputy of the City Duma named Sergey Nizhegorodov decided to run for elections. He chose the position of a bold oppositionist, disrupted the ceremony of awards to a head of city Housing and Utility Directorate and held numerous debates at the Duma meetings that often ended in squabbles4.

1 Municipal reform: key lines of realization in 2006-2007. // Online resource: http://www.donland.ru/Default.aspx?pageid=78672. Access time: 20.06.2011. 2 Election of heads of municipal entities and deputies of representative bodies of local government 2003/2009. Elections results // Election committee of Rostov region. // [Online resource]: http://www.ikro.ru/election/frmo/?id=50&t=0&m=84. Access time: 21.12.2011. 3 Local amateurs. Heads of settlements will have to learn how to manage municipalities// Rossiyskaya gazeta – Yug Rossii. 2008. 01.08. No4720. 4 I am ready to persuade any dishonest bureaucrat! // Klub regionov. 2007. 12.11.

79 Thirdly, political life now includes a struggle between mayors and elected deputies of local dumas. This way was characteristic of the regions where municipal elites have felt they are a “third force” of regional political process against the backdrop of weak elites of other political levels and relative activity of public sphere. For example, in 2006 the Volgograd region witnessed a political scandal caused by conflict between the authoritative elites of Volgograd and administration of the region. The conflict model of relations was elaborated by the governor of the region Ivan Shabunin and mayor of Volgograd Yuriy Chekhov. They failed to divide the scope of their powers of managing the region and the city. After I. Shabunin had retired the competition continued between Yu. Chekhov and the new governor - Nikolay Maksyuta, and later between the new mayor Evgeniy Ischenko and the head of the region N. Maksyuta1. In 2008 Russian Federation Presidential Decree No 607 “Concerning estimation of efficiency of local government bodies in city and municipal districts”2 was adopted. According to the document the performance of the local authorities work was to be assessed on the basis of reports prepared by heads of city districts and municipal regions that they provided to the regional administration. Detailed parameters to be taken into account in such reports were elaborated. It was suggested that such detailed reports of municipalities based on statistical indices were close to the realities of the smallest regional territories and this was supposed to facilitate adoption of region’s development strategy by regional government bodies that would rely on peculiarities of different spheres of social, economic and political development. At the same time the system of reporting integrated and placed the municipalities subordinate to higher-ranking regional authorities. In 2013-2014 the State Duma of Russia received a proposal to limit the elections

1 Volzhsky tuman. // Events. 2006. 23.11. /// (Online resource): GZT. RU . Access time: 21.06. 2010. 2 Concerning estimation of efficiency of local government bodies in city and municipal districts Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated April 28, 2008 No607 // Official gazette of RF. 2008. No18. P. 2003.

80 of municipal entities heads1. The norms of the bill suggest extension of the two- level model of local government organization over major city districts. The transformation of city districts into city districts with intra-city division shall be made by virtue of laws of the relevant subjects of the Russian Federation. The head of the municipal region shall be elected by a representative body of such a municipal entity from the members thereof, and the head of the local administration shall be appointed on the basis of a contract. For rural settlements the suggestion is to preserve the opportunity to appoint heads of municipal entities through elections2. Therefore, municipal authorities and, consequently, the municipal elite goes through a development from steady reinforcement of positions as a limiting factor for activities of regional elites and as a mediator for interests of the federal centre in regions to incorporation into the structure of state regional authorities. Nevertheless during the 2000s a model of cooperation with state authorities was realized within which municipalities acted as a “third force” not only capable of preserving the balance between regional elites but also able to ensure stable cooperation between regional groups of interests and the federal centre aimed at elaborating common interests and arrangements. In the regions of the South of Russia the governors become an indispensable part of a “vertical power system of governance” and lost their independence from the political centre in decision-making. However the differentiation of institutional design in the 1990s – 2000s remained high despite all the efforts to unify them. This can be explained by micro-regional differences in the South of Russia which are based on the difference in maturity levels of various political institutions in the regions, positions and ambitions of their heads.

1 Concerning amendments to the Federal Law “Concerning the General Principles of the Organization of Local Government in the Russian Federation”. Bill of RF // (Online resource:) State Duma of RF. Official web-site. http://www.duma.gov.ru/news/273/651038/?sphrase_id=1377912. Access time: 19.08.2014. 2 Same as above.

81 Thomas Resch and Melanie Sully, Moldova Conference © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

Hande Bozatli President AER Bucharest Black Sea Summit © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

Oskar Wawra, Good Governance Conference Istanbul © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

Conference in Moldova, Ralchev, Apryshchenko, Coita, Mantl, Dancasiu © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna Press Conference Chisinau with Martin Eichtinger, Melanie Sully, Jean Van Acker, EUBAM, Oskar Wawra © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

Opening of Conference Chisinau with Martin Eichtinger and Mayor Chirtoaca © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

Good Governance Conference Republic of Moldova © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

Thomas Resch, Foreign Minister of Moldova Natalia Gherman, Melanie Sully, Deputy Foreign Minister Moldova Iulian Groza © Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna

MODEL OF SECURITIZATION TRIANGLE: Memorial Participation in the Ukrainian Crisis Victor APRYSHCHENKO Director of the Institute of History and International Relations Southern Federal University, Rostov, Russia

In August 2014 a brilliant analysis of security issues for contemporary Russia by Thomas Graham was published in Carnegie ‘Perspectives on Peace and security’. Dealing with President Putin and his politics, as well as with the Ukrainian crisis that was at the centre of the author’s attention, he pointed out three main essential requirements of Russian security, including defence of post- Soviet space, need to limit the presence of other powers in the former Soviet space, and the creation of a suitable balance of power on the European continent1. This very delicate analysis overlooked just one consideration - the security challenges for post-Soviet space, including Russia, as well as for neighbouring European countries has not been possible without securitization of memory which is full of traumatic experience that influences contemporary relations.

The political season of 2014 was full of independence discourse. In the May 2014 issue of the biggest English-language Catalan magazine ‘Catalonia Today’, just a few weeks after the Crimea annexation, this quotation from the Russian President Vladimir Putin was mentioned: ‘They say we violate international law. Good they remember international law exists. Better late than never’. These words were followed by the comment of one of the magazine journalists Germa Capdevila who ironically noticed: ‘We must admit that sadly, Putin is right. Neither he nor any other world superpower leader respects

1 Graham T. A Russia Problem, Not a Putin Problem in http://perspectives.carnegie.org/us-russia/a- russia-problem-not-a-putin-problem/

85 international law when it is in conflict with their own interests’2. This magazine issue was full of reflection about the fact that on April 8, 2014 the Spanish parliament rejected a motion to transfer power to organise a specific, non- binding self-determination referendum to the Catalan Government. It was exactly the same date, 8 April 1783, when Russian Empress Catherine the Great signed the Manifesto about the annexation of Crimea, proclaiming that «Decided, We take under Our Power the Peninsula of Crimea, Taman’ Island and all Kuban’ side’3.

The discourse of independence has been a central part in the discussions about three referenda -2014: Crimean, Scottish and Catalan. Although, they might be considered as a totally different in their legal foundation, preparation, and in their international context, all of them are parts of Imperial projects and a post- imperial trauma, and thus, can be considered having a similar background of memory studies. In spite of the fact that Scotland and Catalonia concern referenda with a question about independence, and Crimea – a question about the affiliation with Russia, they have much in common based on the idea of the nation and its contemporary forms. The Crimea referendum has been part of a wider Ukrainian crisis which originated both in internal development (economic crisis, struggle between elites, social protest) and in relations between Ukraine and Russia. Some argue that it has all the characteristics of Civil War considering social and political clashes and other experts suppose international roots of the crisis emphasising the Russian role in its development. Going beyond this deeply politicised discussion, it is crucial to argue that the nation’s memory determines the positions of both sides of this conflict.

2 Catalonia Today. May 2014. , 0375. P. 38. 3 !(%&  "  #$&$)* &$!* II " #$%"!! $* %"" #" '"%&$", "%&$"  ! % %+ '!%" %&"$"!*  "%%, 1783 ", 8 #$ +, in " !" %"$! "!" "%%%"  #$. . XXI, ,15.708.

86 Security studies as a political studies discipline has grown commensurately to analyze this expansion of discourse and practice. The Copenhagen School’s ‘securitization’ approach, which explores how issues become discursively identified as new security ‘threats’, has recently become particularly influential4. The methodology of Critical security-studies allows for the more behavioural definition of security since issues given priority by people other than the government are included in the framework. After all, anthropological perspective of the security-studies allows us to understand ‘how security is defined in different social and cultural contexts, through symbolic and social processes, and how security and insecurity are dealt with through social institutions’5.

Contemporary memory-studies in this context has to be considered as substantial methodology since security is subjective in that individual fears (originated in individual and collective memory) do not necessary tally with the reality of threats but this is a better guide to the issues that matter than the priorities of governments. Historical memory as it was considered in the contemporary memory studies is a source and result at the same time of collective identity. Since any identity is a product of ‘self’ / ‘other’ opposition in synchronic or diachronic terms, to keep and re-produce memory is one of the ways how to securitize the identity. Maurice Halbwachs has done a lot in the first half of the twentieth century in the direction of comparison and correlation between individual and collective memories. His main work, forgotten in the middle of the last century, came again to the centre of memory-studies just a few decades ago, and since the 1980s, a period that corresponded with the development of Critical security-studies, inspired much research on special cases such as Holocaust, Gulag etc. Maurice Halbwachs offered the concept of

4 Busan B.,Wæver O. And de Wilde. J. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner, 1998. 5 Winslow D. and Eriksen T.H. A broad concept that encourages interdisciplinary thinking in Security Dialogue 35 (3) (2004). P. 361.

87 ‘collective memory’ as a social phenomenon which is required by any society. When recognising this, he considered collective memory as a basis for social identity. Thus, social context was supposed as a substantial part of the constructing mechanism of memory6.

Thinking of identity, which is caused by transformation of collective memory, as an integrating feeling which produces a sense of security/insecurity among many other meanings, we could consider it as a main mediator between memory and security. Therefore, any changes in identity (in the form of trauma or soft transformation between imperial and post-imperial regimes etc) influence the dynamics between security and memory. Moreover, the process of a new identity shaping securitization becomes the main tool of memory transformation. Thus, memory, identity and feeling of security have always been connected by means of collective imagination and consciousness and form the space of securitization where the popular imagination has been changed.

The consciousness, both individual and collective, has always been a subject of securitization since people try to securitize their identity in terms of official and everyday practices, visual and discourse measures. The European national identities which forced with many challenges in the last few decades, including European integration, regionalism, migrations etc, started to mobilise a different recourses to protect their values. Memory in this context has long been recognised as one of the measures that can bring struggle for identities from the hard security sphere to the soft process. At the same time in some Eastern European countries, where national identities are not formed yet or are weak because of historical circumstances in the second half of the twentieth century, the radicalisation of memory has provoked some hard conflicts. Everyday securitisation is caused by such radicalised and conflicted memory.

6 ! . "   " "!, in   . 2005, #2-3. . 8.

88 The traumatic experience of transition from one type of society to another can cause a situation which means that people can understand the history situation and very rational goals for development, but they lose the categories verbal and visual by which the history process can be explained. The memory of such society is broken, but not destroyed at all, and it is required for restoration of lost elements. In such context memory plays the active role and aims to reconstruct the past in particular social conditions. As usual, this activity aims to securitize the present by means of a selective past. According to M. Halbwachs, any gaps which appear in the process of this activity are filling up by perceived contemporary experience7.

The re-writing of traumatic experience has been possible only in the context of social dialogue and it has been called the ‘work of memory’ by Paul Ricoeur. In the collective memory paradigm this work includes any process of overcoming a traumatic past by means of therapeutic influence such as social dialogue with regard to the most painful spots of memory, a critical rethinking of the past, sorrow and reconciliation. But the most important thing is that ‘work of memory’ will be effective only if the social tradition that caused the trauma has not been repeated in the present, i.e. the tradition is transformed into the memory. In this context, the question raised by Maurice Halbwachs - where does tradition end and memory start - could take on a new sense.

The main function of the ‘work of memory’ is to serve only an idea: it has to protect and remove threats associated with the past. As an object of this protection is identity, this makes memory an important element of identity- building. This function of memory has been exaggerated in the crisis or transition periods such as destruction of traditional institutes, the collapse of political systems, wars and military conflicts and especially in the emerging of new nation-states. Since memory is an integral part of identity, from one hand,

7    .      . ., 2007. . 53.

89 and since identity is a central issue of feeling of security (personal and collective), we can consider it in the form of a Securitization Triangle which is formed by security, identity and memory points (SIM).

In this model the level of security (that can be measured by official indicators and personal feelings) has been caused by different forms of identity (gender, cultural, religious, political, national etc) and mechanism of memory shaping that includes as many memories (individual and collective), memorial objects and narratives as it has been approved by society, and also by memorial practices. The central field of this triangle is space where different processes have been going in political, cultural, inter-national etc spheres aiming to move feeling of collective threats to security and the reverse, and thus influence identity by means of history memory. This inner triangle space we can consider as Securitization Field (SZN). Thus, SZN means interplay space of security, identity and memory where new senses of security have been emerging and re- producing.

The area of the SIM Triangle can be changed by two methods. Firstly, authorities can pull up the S-point to raise the level of security to achieve indicators that will show rather positive attitudes towards government initiatives in the security sphere. If this initiative has not been supported by increased forms of identity and memorial narratives (constant length of SM and SI segments) it will result in moving M-point and I-point towards the Personal point of memory and identity that means the diminution of the area of the SIM Triangle. Vice versa, if new forms of identity cultivated by the authorities as a reaction to popular demands and new modes of memory and historical narratives stimulated by civil society the second method of changing the SIM Triangle area can be realized. In this case increased modes of memory as well as forms of identity extend the area of the SIM Triangle by means of prolongation of SM

90 and SI segments. In fact, it means increasing the memorial and identical instruments for the sense of security. Usually, the difference between these two ways correlates with authoritarian and liberal political regimes. As authoritarian systems tend to limit the character of memories and identities directing them to the authorities’ way, liberal regimes accept all forms of memory mad memorial narratives even radicalized in some cases. The wide securitization field gives authorities space for cultivating one or other forms and shapes of identity and memory and produce a sense of security that that will satisfy as many people as consume the memory.

It is hard to ignore the fact that both memory and identity imply participation that has not been limited only by governmental discourse or by intellectual ideas. Mass participation has been a significant element of memory transformation, especially in the post-broadcast epoch when influence of ‘high ideology’ is limited by digital media and Internet. Ordinary people have not only transformed memory and reproduce identity, but they can produce both of them. Therefore, memory-participation has been a specific form of participation. Unlike political participation which presupposes mobilization connected with a particular event or process, memory-participation requires every-day engagement. In the same way as Ernest Renan in his famous lecture declared, the existence of a nation was based on a ‘daily plebiscite’8, it may be applied for the memory. This kind of participation, is probably, more significant for a feeling of security than political engagement since memory in particular determines people’s political ideals and goals.

As Crimea started its history as part of the Empire after the eighteenth century, as all other parts of the Empire it was subjected to russification in terms of legal, economic and cultural traditions, and the fact that in 1954 it was included in the

8 Renan E. Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation? in Texte intégral de Ernest Renan. Paris: Pierre Bordas et fils, Éditeur, 1991. P. 12-48.

91 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic changed nothing in terms of national politics. After the collapse of the USSR, according to the Belovezhsk agreements, it was left as part of the new Ukrainian state. Once an integrated part of the Russian and Soviet Empires, after 1991 Crimea found itself as a region in a deeply divided Ukrainian state in economic, cultural and political terms. Ukraine not liberated from the Russian imperial influence nation-state, experienced the split between its European-oriented western regions and Russian-directed eastern parts. The language question has been the catalyst of the process. While the Ukrainian population of the west uses mainly the Ukrainian as a language of teaching, officials and everyday life, those who live in the east and south-east of Ukraine, including Crimea, prefer to use the Russian language. The Ukrainian nation-state was faced with difficulties similar to those that many new European nation-states experience in the Modern Era.

Divided between imperial history and formally independent reality, the Ukrainian past has been deeply securitized because of the connection between memory and independence. The annexation of Crimea as a result of the referendum happened on 16 April, 2014 just few days after the Spanish Parliament rejected the Catalan petition for the referendum. Unlike the Scottish case, the discourse of independence in Ukraine has not been just a question of politics or even of political struggle, but rather a dilemma of national survival. Unlike Catalonia where most of the population speak Catalan, Crimeans speak mostly Russian and are influenced by Russian culture. The split in Crimea between politics (Crimea as a part of Ukraine) and culture (prevailing Russian culture in everyday life) determines the main line of memory conflict in the contemporary Ukrainian crisis.

Russian context which is significant element of the contemporary Ukrainian memory searching has been complicated by transition period. Here the identity

92 dilemma was removed from history imaginations to sphere of security because of ‘disorder of identity’ as Pierre Nora cathegorizied. Thinking Ukraine as part of Russian strategic interests, Russian public consciousness considers the Ukrainian crisis as a threat to Russian security. The annexation of Crimea has been part of security discourse, and the slogan ‘Crimea, well come back home!’ which was visualised in some South-Russian cities have approved it by means of history. The past was moved from the sphere of politics to security agenda, and memory has been way of securitization.

The process of withdrawing memory from the cultural sphere or even from politics and placing it in the sphere of security, i.e. securitization by means of depolitization or deculturalization, can reverse some points. The evolution of the Soviet Union image that happened in the last few decades can illustrate this process. The collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s was accompanied by transformation of memory and national symbols that fed on changing identity. This ghost of the ‘dead body’ turned into kitsch and symbol in the second half of 1990 and first half of 2000. Soviet culture started to be considered as a romantic ideology and idyllic past, Soviet films and music with their hero of ‘warrior- communist’ became part of post-Soviet kitsch culture. Although communist ideology was kept in some political conceptions, it was marginalised and forced out in the memory sphere which consisted of individual (autobiographical) memories and collective ones.

But this process of romantization of the past when it became desecuritized, was brief. Russia’s inability to put the Soviet Union, and what it represented, into the past has been connected with a political and cultural context which determines the recent political climate. This issue is not about the roots of the contemporary Russian elite, rather it is about the goal of Russian politics. The constant willingness to revive the image of the Soviet Union has the aim of keeping Soviet imperial practices. In fact, it means that the memory of the Soviet Union

93 has been deeply politicised and that reflects relations with all former Soviet Union republics. Thus, the past returned to the security sphere. The Crimea crisis was a turning point where discourse on the Soviet Union was placed in the sphere of security that means resecuritization of the past. The process which began in the mid 2000s when the word ‘stability’ returned to political vocabulary, was exaggerated in the last few years especially by contemporary debates about the Soviet past. In this context, the idea of some Russian patriotic deputies to sit on the fence, Michail Gorbachev as the main offender of the collapse of the Soviet Union is a brilliant example of the so-called ‘dead body’ when ghosts of the USSR were removed from the nostalgic space to the sphere of security9. It is hard to believe that the call for Gorbachev’s trial coincided with the Crimea campaign and the Soviet Renaissance.

Since any collective memory has been formed by contacts with other groups and their memorial narratives, it may serve as a factor in intergroup conflict as well as an integrating instrument. The correction of memory must be considered as a result of changing political structures, disappearance of conflicts and even the death of participants and new generations. Although the most acceptable way of pacification of conflict versions of memory is connection with ‘dialogue of memories’, it is a hard situation, especially with the traumatic post-imperial memory. To make peace with past has only been possible by means of open even painful dialogue, extending memory borders and multiplying subjects and narratives of the past. In some cases it will result in confessions of guilt and moral responsibility. Moreover, memory of the Empire can be transformed into the ‘Empire of memory’ since multiplying memory narratives must be subordinated to a single narrative and not be factionalised on separate histories about the past. Otherwise, social (often - ethnic) groups as a subject of memory are fragmentised and lose their group identity.

9               in Izvestia, 3 June 2014

94 Historical memory as well as identity are full of myths which aim to explain the most significant elements of the past and thus to securitize the past. The myth in this context, as George Sorel argued, is the interconnection of a multitude of images which produce ‘moral energy’ and evoke cruelty, stress and passion10. Especially that is important for the ‘myth of nation’ which is expressed in various ways, - institutional, physical, cultural, religious, social and political, and could be the basis for different human activities such as wars, acts of aggression, political events, ideology and everyday behaviour based on the ideas of national culture. All of the myth embodiments are evidences of mass participation that connect memory and national identity. At the same time myth of nation has been an integral element of the Securitization Field.

Memorial participation in the national-building context means, first of all, elaboration of national symbols. Causing the securitization processes, the myth of the nation is the mobile system that determines the evolution of ideas about the nation at the level of a group and depending on social-cultural circumstances and the geopolitical situation. National myth, contributing to the evolution of culture, has been able to ‘grind’ and adapt those concepts which do not correspond to the idea of ethnic solidarity. Those who are engaged in constructing national mythology represent the national identity by using ethnic symbols and ideas, including ideas about kinship, common roots of the groups in the past. The core of the ethnic identity is a mytho-symbolic complex – mixture of myth, memory, signs and symbols, which determines the persons included in a group and the features of a member of the group. The existence, status and security of a group in this case are in direct dependence on the status of the symbols of the group. Therefore, the people are fighting and dying for

10 Sorel G. Reflections on Violence. NY., 1961. P. 127.

95 these characters and ready to follow the leaders, who manipulate the symbols to achieve their interests11.

The use and cultivation of the myth of the nation was stipulated by the necessity to maintain public unity secured by intellectuals, who substantiated and established a national mythology and political representatives. In some cases, as it was in Modern European history intellectuals included the myths of the nation into political programmes and objectives and ensured the introduction of the myths in nations. By means of the myth of nations, national symbols are connected with memory and identity. In this sense, the functions of the national myth fully correspond to the purpose of any myth - it should explain the essence of the ongoing social processes and prevent entropy of the society in the conditions of any social change i.e. the myth must securitize the present appealing to the past.

The myth of the nation-state that was based on the historical memory that widely spread in the 19th and first half of 20th century became the political embodiment of the idea of the nation. In this context, to securitize oneself meant to guarantee the security of their nation. The persistence of the myth of the nation was supported by a number of mythologized historical facts which supported by national elites and contemporary media has received the status of reality. Memory in these conditions plays a connecting role between society and its feeling of security.

Professional historians who discuss the historical foundation of the Ukrainian nation have different arguments depending on the intellectual tradition and political orientation they belong to. One tends to root ‘Ukrainians even in the Neolithic period, but seems to me marginal. The significant figure in this context is Michail Grushevskiy who in 1917-1918 was the Chair of the

11 Kaufman S.J. Modern Hatreds. The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. Ithaca-L. 2001. P. 25.

96 Ukrainian Rada and published in 1912 ‘The History of the Ukraine’ in 10 volumes12. He considered Ukrainian history even from pre-Kievan period, and was criticised not only by Russian historians but Ukrainian as well. His scheme looks recently as a historiographical artefact of the beginning of the twentieth century, because since that time social knowledge passed a number of important steps. The most important stage of national-studies was the emergence of various ‘theories of nationalism’ including conceptions of Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith, who argued how ‘national projects’ were formed and developed in the Modern Era. Therefore, it is clear that the ‘Ukrainian national project’ was the product of a pan-European political and intellectual fashion of the 19th century. And it does not matter how they were called at different times and in different places. The Ukrainian national project started at Kharkov University in 1820, then it was moved to the intellectual centre of Kiev University of St. Vladimir (1840), and then, in the 1860s, to the L’vov.

The Russian Empire has rather negative connotations for the Ukrainian people with the politics of ‘russification’ i.e. spreading of Russian culture and traditions, including language and educational system, in regions where non- Russian population prevailed. As a result, the Ukrainian identity long struggled in different Ukrainian territories with Russian identity that was based on the idea that all east-Slavonic nations are only sub-ethnos of Russian ethnos. In different areas the results of this struggle have been very different. Ukrainian identity won in the western regions and tended to Austria. Later, in the post-Soviet period, Ukrainianship won in the central parts of Ukraine. Eastern parts which include Donbas probably saved ‘Little Russian’ identity till recently and derivatives such as ‘Little Russian’ (Russian - y) were commonly applied to the people, language, and culture of the area. Prior to the revolutionary events of 1917 a large part the region's population were followers

12  . Ii i- . , 1912.

97 of Little Russian identity which competed with the local Ukrainian identity. The type of the identity was caused by the degree of Russian influence in cultural, administrative and political spheres.

History and memory of the Ukrainian nation-state has been overburdened by stereotypes of ‘little brother’ of bigger Russia, and its elites have been deeply integrated in Russian political and economic structures since Early Modern times. Russian political tradition as well as Russian imperial consciousness has also been a factor of weakness of the Ukrainian nation-state. When elaborating its own national memory and symbols the Ukrainian state always faces a crossing of memories with Russian tradition and tends to overcome it. This tendency has been reinforced by the fact that Russian national identity did not form yet either. The transition period from Soviet imperial consciousness to democratic regime has been prolonged for decades and stimulates imperial politics towards the former Soviet republics.

As a result, memory in the Ukrainian and Russian contexts has been and is considered as strategic recourse - the fact that means moving memory to the sphere of security. The authoritarian regime aiming to securitize the past requires a restriction of forms of memory and public participation. To manage this objective it gives the task to professional bodies such as professional history-writing and the educational system to shape a common memory. Single history text-book or State conception of Russian Culture Development has been considered instruments for constructing the common memory. But in this way, the state narrows the Securitization Field. Moreover, seeking to restrict historical memory, authoritarian states overlook institutions of post-industrial society that include such instruments as Internet and digital media. When considering the history text-book as a tool of securitization, i.e. tending to restrict the Securitization Field and limiting mass participation, the state

98 operates by categories of industrial rather than post-industrial society that see memory as a subject of elites. In this context, debates about the single history text-book as an instrument of common memory and securitization seems a simplified subject. Historical memory as a tool of securitization has not been a question of state conceptions, but rather mass participation and the inclusion of the nation in the process of elaborating the memory.

99

PATTERNS OF PARTICIPATION IN GEORGIA Levan KAKHISHVILI

MSc Russian and East European Studies St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford

Over the past few years Georgia has seemingly been on the right track in terms of the country’s political transformation. The European Integration Index 2013 for Eastern Partnership (EaP) Countries evaluated Georgia’s advancement in deep and sustainable democracy as the highest among the EaP countries 1 Although this is indeed a positive development, it is always necessary to bear in mind the complexities of the process of transformation. One important aspect of this process is participation, without which it is hard to imagine a working democracy. This paper analyses the patterns of political participation in Georgia and concludes that the degree of participation remains at a low level and represents a challenge for Georgia’s democratisation.

The paper first examines the conceptual controversies surrounding the concept of participation and engagement and later, having adopted a framework of analysis, analyses two important aspects of political participation: election turnout and policy advocacy by citizens. Given the low level of political participation in Georgia three hypotheses are put forward to interpret the current situation in regards to participation. The hypotheses emphasise the importance of the Soviet legacy, the lack of trust in democratic institutions and the strength and importance of informal networks.

1 Olga Kvashuk, “European Integration Index 2013 for Eastern Partnership Countries,” p. 16. Available at: http://www.eap-index.eu/sites/default/files/EaP_Index_2013_0.pdf

101 Conceptual Controversies There is no universally accepted definition of political participation.2 Some definitions try to incorporate a wide range of actions from reading a newspaper, discussing politics with friends and helping a neighbour to voting in elections or running for office.3 If some scholars focus on “engagement” rather than “civic” or “political”,4 others stress the distinction between “civic” and “political”.5 Moreover, many authors tend to limit political participation to the activities that are intended to influence the political authority. According to Verba, Schlozman and Brady, political participation refers to “activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action – either directly by affecting the making or implementation of public policy or indirectly by influencing the selection of people who make those policies.”6 Given that most citizens are not directly involved in policy-making or implementation, elections acquire crucial importance. Indeed, many scholars support the idea of elections being “one of the most important venues for citizen input” because it is the primary channel for people to “make their voices heard.”7 Further, political participation, apart from voting, encompasses other political activities through interacting with the institutions of representative democracy. Then there are those who criticise the abundance of definitions and

2 See Carole Jean Uhlaner, “Political Participation.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social Behavioral Sciences eds. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001. 3 See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. 4 See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. 5 See Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, Michael X. Delli, A New Engagement?: Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 6 Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995. 7 Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, Michael X. Delli, A New Engagement?: Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

102 approaches to civic and political engagement and demonstrate the need for a more standardised approach.8

A traditional way of viewing political participation is to make a distinction between conventional and unconventional activities. Conventional activities are quite straightforward and include party membership, voting, signing a petition or working for an electoral candidate.9 Unconventional activities may further be broken down into lawful and unlawful activities. For example, strikes and demonstrations would be an unconventional but legal activity.10 On the other hand, however, even terrorism can be viewed as a political participation given that terror is utilised as a means for influencing political authorities and their decisions. However, this is not the only way of conceptualising political participation.

Sometimes, political participation is paired with civic activism to form a broader concept of civic engagement. Along with the civic-political distinction, civic engagement often differentiates between formal and informal as well as individual and collective practices. According to Adler and Goggin, it is possible to accurately represent the whole concept of civic engagement in one continuum (see Figure 1 below). 11 Drawing on this representation of the concept, this paper examines the patterns and degree of the political aspect of

8 See Richard P. Adler and Judy Goggin, “What Do We Mean By “Civic Engagement”?” Journal of Transformative Education 3 (2005): 236-253. Joakim Ekman and Erik Amna, “Political Participation and Civic Engagement: Towards a New Typology,” Human Affairs, 22 (2012): 283-300. Ben Berger, “Political Theory, Political Science, and the End of Civic Engagement.” Perspectives on Politics, 7 (2009): 335-350. Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics”. American Political Science Review, 64 (1970): 1033-1053. 9 See: Russell J. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Washington: CQ Press, 2006. 10 See Russell J. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Washington: CQ Press, 2006. Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. 11 Richard P. Adler and Judy Goggin, “What Do We Mean By “Civic Engagement”?” Journal of Transformative Education 3 (2005): 236-253.

103 participation in Georgia through analysing both the conventional as well as unconventional but lawful citizen activity.

Measuring Political Participation in Georgia The continuum shown in Figure 1 is a helpful tool to measure political participation. It provides five aspects of the phenomenon. Of course, it is a hard task to accurately operationalize all the expressions of political participation, especially when studying cases like Georgia where there is not much quality data in this regard. However, this paper will primarily examine two major aspects of the phenomenon: voting and policy advocating.

Figure 1. The Continuum of Civic Engagement

Informal/PrivateInformal/Private Formal/PublicFormal/PublicFormal/Public IndividualIndividual Action Action CollectiveCollectiveCollective Action ActionAction

CommunityCommunity HelpingHelping a aa ContributingContributingContributing MembershipMembership OccasionalOccasional or oror SustainedSustainedSustained ActivitiesActivities neighbourneighbour tototo a aa charity charitycharity inin a a religious religious sporadicsporadicsporadic intensiveintensiveintensive oror communitycommunity volunteeringvolunteeringvolunteering serviceserviceservice groupgroup PoliticalPolitical EngagingEngaging in inin VotingVotingVoting Advocating Advocating ActiveActiveActive RunningRunningRunning ActivitiesActivities aaa politicalpolitical political forfor a a policy policy participationparticipationparticipation forforfor publicpublic public discussiondiscussion ininin a aa party partyparty or oror officeofficeoffice withwith friendsfriends friends interestinterestinterest group groupgroup

Source: Richard P. Adler and Judy Goggin, “What Do We Mean By “Civic Engagement”?” Journal of Transformative Education 3 (2005): 236-253.

104 The paper strongly relies on the survey data published by the Caucasus Research Resources Centers (CRRC) through the Caucasus Barometer. Primarily, the data of five questions are discussed below most of which provide insights on the degree of Georgian citizens’ advocating for a certain policy. The questions cover voting behaviour as well as other activities such as attending a public meeting, contacting media, joining online discussions, and signing a petition.

Voting in Georgia Over the past few decades, scholars have been observing a trend of decreasing voter turnout, which has led to debates whether representative democracy has lost public confidence.12 Obviously, Georgia is not an established democracy but voter turnout is not very high here either. In fact, Georgia has shown a voter turnout of not more than 60 per cent in the last few elections from 2008 to 2014. Over the six-year period Georgians have voted six times at two parliamentary, two presidential and two local self-governance elections. The data shows that at crucial points turnout is higher than average, yet still quite low even compared to other South Caucasian states.13

Chart 1 shows the voter turnout at the six elections from 2008 to 2014 in Georgia. It is clear why the 2012 parliamentary elections witnessed the highest voter turnout – Georgia was at the crossroads as the competition between Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (the former ruling party) and Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition (the current ruling coalition) reached a peak. It was the first time after the 2003 Rose Revolution that citizens realised it was possible to change the government. Similarly, when citizens do not expect any dramatic changes after a particular election such as the last local

12 See: Russel J. Dalton, Citizen Politics in Western Democracies. New Jersey: Chatham, 1998. Pippa Norris (Ed.), Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 13 See: “Voter Turnout,” The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, accessed September 27, 2014, http://www.idea.int/uid/fieldview.cfm?field=224®ion=145

105 as well as presidential elections in Georgia, they are not keen on voting. Voter as well as presidential elections in Georgia, they are not keen on voting. Voter turnout at the 2013 presidential elections was lower than at the local elections of turnout at the 2013 presidential elections was lower than at the local elections of 2010. The reason may be the fact that after the 2013 elections a new constitution 2010. The reason may be the fact that after the 2013 elections a new constitution was to come into force, which would significantly reduce the powers of the was to come into force, which would significantly reduce the powers of the president. Additionally, after Georgian Dream secured a victory over the United president. Additionally, after Georgian Dream secured a victory over the United National Movement in the much harsher environment of 2012, there was a high National Movement in the much harsher environment of 2012, there was a high expectation that the candidate presented by Bidzina Ivanishvili would win expectation that the candidate presented by Bidzina Ivanishvili would win without much effort. without much effort.

Chart 1: Voter turnouts in Georgia since 2008 Chart 1: Voter turnouts in Georgia since 2008

Source: Adapted from the data of the Central Election Commission of Georgia, Source: Adapted from the data ofwww.cec.gov.ge the Central Election Commission of Georgia, www.cec.gov.ge

Although the data on which age category is more likely to vote at the elections is Although the data on which age category is more likely to vote at the elections is not readily available from the CEC, the survey data may provide a glimpse into not readily available from the CEC, the survey data may provide a glimpse into the generational differences. It has to be emphasised, however, that the survey the generational differences. It has to be emphasised, however, that the survey relies on self-reporting the voting behaviour. Therefore, it is not an accurate relies on self-reporting the voting behaviour. Therefore, it is not an accurate representation of the general patterns in society at large due to certain errors. representation of the general patterns in society at large due to certain errors.

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The survey data makes it possible to compare the May 2008 parliamentary The survey data makes it possible to compare the May 2008 parliamentary elections with the October 2012 parliamentary elections. elections with the October 2012 parliamentary elections.

Chart 2: Self-reported voter turnouts by age category Chart 2: Self-reported voter turnouts by age category Self-reportedSelf-reported voter voter turnouts turnouts by byage age Self-reported voter turnouts by age categorycategory 100% category 100% 100%90% 90% 90%80% 80% 80%70% 70%70%60% 60%60%50% 50%50%40% 40%40%30% 18-35 18-35 30%30%20% 36-55 18-35 20%20%10% 36-55 56+ 36-55 10%10%0% 2008 2012 56+ 56+ 0%0% 2008 2012 2008 2012 Source: Adapted from The Caucasus Research Resource Centers, 2008-2013, “CaucasusSource: Adapted Barometer”. from The Retrieved Caucasus through Research ODA Resource– www.cauc Centers,asusbarometer.org 2008-2013, “Caucasus Barometer”. Retrieved through ODA – www.caucasusbarometer.org According to the Caucasus Barometer, citizens aged 56 and more are the most According to the Caucasus Barometer, citizens aged 56 and more are the most likely to have voted at the last national elections. Not surprisingly, those aged likely to have voted at the last national elections. Not surprisingly, those aged between 18 and 35 are the least likely to have voted. The difference between the between 18 and 35 are the least likely to have voted. The difference between the two age categories is about 22 per cent in the case of the 2008 parliamentary two age categories is about 22 per cent in the case of the 2008 parliamentary elections and 13 per cent in the case of the 2012 parliamentary elections. There elections and 13 per cent in the case of the 2012 parliamentary elections. There is a tendency for increasing turnout among the younger generation but the data is a tendency for increasing turnout among the younger generation but the data is not enough to make definitive conclusions. Somewhere between youth and is not enough to make definitive conclusions. Somewhere between youth and the elderly, lie the respondents aged between 36 and 55 who tend to be very the elderly, lie the respondents aged between 36 and 55 who tend to be very close to the upper category of over 56. close to the upper category of over 56. Although there is a clear difference between the age groups in terms of election Although there is a clear difference between the age groups in terms of election turnout, one should be wary in interpreting the figures. For example, the turnout turnout, one should be wary in interpreting the figures. For example, the turnout level is much higher when self-reported than according to the official data of the level is much higher when self-reported than according to the official data of the

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Central Elections Commission of Georgia. On the other hand, the survey data is useful when analysing an issue about which there is no other data available. Breaking down voter turnout into age categories is one such issue; others include various aspects of policy advocacy.

Advocating for a Policy Policy advocacy be can measured in various ways but this paper analyses: attendance on a public meeting, signing a petition, contacting media and joining online discussions. The data of the Caucasus Barometer shows that the level of political participation among Georgian citizens is very low (see chart 3 below). Although it seems very easy to join an online discussion by making a comment in the Internet to a publication, according to the Caucasus Barometer data, only 9 per cent of the respondents had done so during the previous six months by the time the survey was conducted. It is worth mentioning that only less than half of Georgia’s population has access to the Internet but many still use it on a daily basis. 30 per cent of the respondents reported that they used the Internet every day, while another 9 per cent used it at least once a week. It is not surprising that the younger generation is more likely to be Internet users and also more likely to have joined an online discussion. According to the data, 14 per cent of those aged 18-35 reported to have done so, while the same figure for those aged 36-55 and over 56 is 8 and 3 per cent respectively. Such low level of engagement, perhaps, should not be unexpected if one considers the other variables of the phenomenon. Similarly to the online discussions, the survey data suggests that the share of the respondents who had signed a petition including an online one over the six- month period prior to the interview is extremely low at only 4 per cent. The figure is so low that there cannot be any significant difference between age categories or other societal groups. Yet the figure for younger generations stands at 5 per cent while for those over 56, at 3 per cent. Moreover, the same goes for

108 contacting media. According to the data, only 4 per cent of the respondents contacting media. According to the data, only 4 per cent of the respondents reported to have written a letter or called a newspaper, TV or radio during the reported to have written a letter or called a newspaper, TV or radio during the previous six months before the interview. Again, the younger generation report a previous six months before the interview. Again, the younger generation report a slightly higher figure in comparison to the older generation but the difference is slightly higher figure in comparison to the older generation but the difference is insignificant. insignificant.

Chart 3: Citizens’ policy advocacy in Georgia in 2013 Chart 3: Citizens’ policy advocacy in Georgia in 2013

Source: Adapted from The Caucasus Research Resource Centers, 2013, Source: Adapted from The Caucasus Research Resource Centers, 2013, “CaucasusSource: Adapted Barometer”. from Retrieved The Caucasus through ResearchODA – www.cauc Resourceasusbarometer.org Centers, 2013, “Caucasus Barometer”. Retrieved through ODA – www.caucasusbarometer.org “Caucasus Barometer”. Retrieved through ODA – www.caucasusbarometer.org

Although, signing a petition and contacting media is not what many Georgian Although, signing a petition and contacting media is not what many Georgian citizens do, it seems that a more popular activity is attending a public meeting. citizens do, it seems that a more popular activity is attending a public meeting. In fact, it is almost twice as common for an average Georgian citizen to have In fact, it is almost twice as common for an average Georgian citizen to have attended a public meeting than to have joined an online discussion and over four attended a public meeting than to have joined an online discussion and over four times more likely than signing a petition or contacting media. 17 per cent of times more likely than signing a petition or contacting media. 17 per cent of respondents reported that they had attended a public meeting. Again the figure respondents reported that they had attended a public meeting. Again the figure for the younger generation – aged 18-35 and 36-55 – is four percentage points for the younger generation – aged 18-35 and 36-55 – is four percentage points higher at 18 per cent in each case than that of those aged over 56. It has to be higher at 18 per cent in each case than that of those aged over 56. It has to be noted that the year 2013 when the survey was conducted was unusually calm for noted that the year 2013 when the survey was conducted was unusually calm for

109 the citizens of Georgia in the sense that there was no significant political turmoil or protest actions, which may explain why more respondents in the survey a year before reported attending a public meeting. The four variables considered, to measure to what extent citizens are engaged in policy advocacy provide an important insight into the practice Georgian citizens adopt. It is clear that the level of engagement among the citizens in Georgia is very low. The reasons why this may be so are very complex and need to be researched, however, the following section will suggest some hypotheses for further research and testing.

Interpreting the Low Level of Political Participation Perhaps, it should not come as a surprise that the degree of participation is very low in Georgia for three possible reasons that may play a crucial role in defining the patterns of political participation described above. These reasons are related to low level of political culture and include the Soviet legacy, the lack of trust in institutions, and strength and importance of informal networks. Of course, the reasons are not necessarily limited to these three but they certainly are some of the crucial ones. The Soviet Union as a political project tried to abolish the nation-state. Although the idea of spreading the revolution all over the world was soon dropped the Bolsheviks still intended to destroy national projects in the constituting republics and thus keep the Union united. Although there were fluctuations in the nationalities’ policy throughout the 70-year history, the central Soviet authorities in an attempt to breed the Homo Sovieticus, in fact, tried to shut out politics as business for the ordinary citizen. In doing so, the Soviet authorities brutally suppressed any sign of political protest. Eventually, people became used to the idea that the leaders know better and ordinary citizens are to be governed by those who may not necessarily feel accountable to the population. Besides, holding elections as a democratic façade of an authoritarian regime discredited

110 the institution in the consciousness of the post-Soviet citizen. Consequently, this experience cannot have had any positive effect on the political culture of the post-Soviet countries, including Georgia. One effect of the Soviet legacy is the lack of trust in democratic institutions among citizens. This is especially obvious in Georgia where no elected institution has the level of trust enjoyed by the Georgian Orthodox Church. According to the data, the trust in the Church is 82 per cent while trust in the president, parliament and local government is 23 per cent, 29 per cent, and 28 per cent respectively.14 It is no surprise that if citizens do not trust the president they will not vote in the elections. On the other hand, when citizens do not vote, they will not tend to trust the institution of either elections or the elected public office, which creates a closed circle of the absence of trust. Finally, the third factor to consider is the strength of informal networks. The importance of one’s own kin is expressed in various ways in the Caucasus. For example, according to the Caucasus Barometer data, at 30 per cent share, personal connections topped the list of the most important factors for getting a good job in Georgia.15 Other surveys have also demonstrated similar results. Therefore, one’s family and friends tend to be more important than some state institutions. 16 This is also connected to the Soviet past and the political transformation after the demise of the Union. In the Soviet Union personal connections were often the only way to get things done or to get protection. During the 1990s when Georgia was a failing state and the institutions were not capable of providing the services they were designed for, people resorted to personal connections. This is, of course, decreasing over time now but informal networks still play an important role in social life in Georgia.

14 The Caucasus Research Resource Centers, 2013, “Caucasus Barometer”. Retrieved through ODA – www.caucasusbarometer.org 15 The Caucasus Research Resource Centers, 2013, “Caucasus Barometer”. Retrieved through ODA – www.caucasusbarometer.org 16 Huseyn Aliyev (Dunedin), “Informal Networks in the South Caucasus’s Societies,” Caucasus Analytical Digest, 50 (2013): 2-4.

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Overall, the three factors: Soviet legacy, the lack of trust in state institutions, and the importance of informal networks, are three hypotheses that need to be analysed in detail. They hinder political participation as a process and contribute to the gap between the public and the political elite.

Conclusion Demonstrating conceptual controversies of terms such as civic engagement and political participation, this paper has focused on the political dimension of the concept. Employing a one-dimensional continuum offered by Adler and Goggin17, the paper has examined two aspects of political participation: voter turnout and policy advocacy. Relying on the survey data of the Caucasus Barometer, patterns of political participation in Georgia have been identified. The patterns of political participation in Georgia suggest two things. First, the level of participation is strikingly low. And second, young people seem more active in some cases such as online discussions and public meetings than their older fellow citizens. However, before hoping that the replacement of generations will inevitably solve the problem, one has to analyse the effects of the Soviet legacy, the lack of trust in political institutions, and the importance of informal networks over the process of political participation. These factors are perilous for democratic development of Georgia and make sure that citizen participation remains a challenge on Georgia’s path of democratisation. Therefore, political parties in Georgia will need to encourage citizens to engage more actively in politics and also to eliminate the gap between the political elite and the public by providing various pathways for citizens to channel their concerns.

17 Richard P. Adler and Judy Goggin, “What Do We Mean By “Civic Engagement”?” Journal of Transformative Education 3 (2005): 236-253.

112

DEVELOPMENT OF E-GOVERNMENT IN AZERBAIJAN: achievements and challenges Kamal MAKILI-ALIYEV1

Since 2003 Azerbaijan has set up a clear goal to modernize its information and communication technologies (ICT) sector and implement high-tech innovations into its governance practices. It was only logical that the creation of e- government systems was one of the most important tasks coming out of the “National Strategy for information and communications technologies for the development of the Republic of Azerbaijan” of 2003.2

It should be pointed out that the driving force behind that strategic goal was quite pragmatic – the opportunity to attract investment for the country's ICT industry. Thus Azerbaijan has started to create a favourable investment environment and has made notable improvements in business and labour freedom, allowing its economy to continue to improve and undergo transformation and restructuring. Improvements were made also to the legal and regulatory framework with the aim of attracting investment. The Azerbaijani government is planning to spend about $3.6 billion in the implementation of different ICT projects until 2020, where foreign and domestic private investment is expected to be on the same level. Fixed capital investment in the field of ICT in Azerbaijan was $530 million in 2011 and is steadily growing with the current goal to reach an annual $1 billion.3

1 Dr. Kamal Makili-Aliyev is a leading research fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies (Azerbaijan). The views expressed in this article are his own. www.makili-aliyev.com 2 National Strategy for information and communications technologies for the development of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 2003, http://www.mincom.gov.az/assets/Uploads/KTMilliStrategiya3.doc 3 "Azerbaijan has a favorable investment environment - Minister", News.az, 25.11.2013, http://news.az/articles/84618/

113 Furthermore, realizing that the development of the ICT sector relies in many ways on support for the smallest business units – start-ups and other small enterprises, the government has established a State Fund for the Development of Information Technologies that provides financial support to the start-ups and other business units in the ICT sector. It regularly financially supports business initiatives by providing grants, long-term concessional loans and direct investments. In addition, a High Tech Park was established where the ICT companies can take advantage of special tax and customs incentives that are meant to support the successful development of start-up companies through an array of business support resources and services.4 The main idea behind this state body is to stimulate development and innovation in the field of information and communication technologies. The State Fund for Development of Information Technologies also provides opportunities for the involvement of foreign investment to the ICT sector of the country by ensuring the protection of foreign investment involved in joint projects. This Fund aims to create fruitful conditions for attracting foreign investment to ICT sector giving them state guarantees for joint projects.5 Such a body is crucial for sustainable development as economic competitiveness of the country can be notably increased with successful technology commercialization over the long- term using a systematic approach and smart targeted support programmes and intervention. While steadily improving its ICT industry, Azerbaijani society has started to see the "digitalization" of the country and rapid evolution of the ICT market. Public demand for the high-tech innovations in the government have started to rise. That brought therefore the “State Programme on development of communication and information technologies in the Azerbaijan Republic in 2005-2008” also called "Electronic Azerbaijan". Its second phase spanned 2010-2012 and was

4 Interview with Prof. Dr. Ali M. Abbasov, Minister of Communications & Information Technologies of Azerbaijan, TBY, 27.01.2014, http://bit.ly/Yh0EvP 5 Ibid.

114 implemented successfully with the formation of "e-government" systems that are developing and enlarging continuously.

The Open Government Partnership Initiative The creation of "e-government" systems was in line with the Open Government Partnership (OPG) initiative that Azerbaijan joined 2012. The OPG itself was established by Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 2011 as a global multi-stakeholder initiative to improve governments with equal participation of governments and civil society in its Steering Committee. Today it includes 64 participating states. All of the country commitments are drafted and implemented by governments with active collaboration of civil society. For Azerbaijan participation in OGP was first of all an anti-corruption measure and policies implemented by the government. Numerous measures aimed at promotion and development of OGP core principles have been specifically embedded into the National Strategy on Increasing Transparency and Combating Corruption of 2007. As a logical follow-up the government of Azerbaijan considered OGP initiative as timely and in sync with its challenges and objectives. OGP became an excellent opportunity to enrich Azerbaijan's governance expertise, get access to new innovations and projects and expand the scope of reforms thus benefiting from best practices on the international level. Moreover, Azerbaijan was one of the countries that supported and joined this initiative almost from the start.6 Azerbaijan has adopted OGP Action Plan that encompasses the period between 2012 and 2015. The country commitments were adopted by Presidential decree on September 5, 2012. Azerbaijan's OGP commitments were drafted by a special task force that was formed under the auspices of the Commission for Combating Corruption which has twenty-five members that represent both state

6 OGP. Azerbaijan, http://www.opengovpartnership.org/country/azerbaijan

115 bodies and international organizations as well as civil society institutions and various independent experts. The participation of civil society in the process was ensured from the start through the specific staff components of the task force. The NGOs contributed to the drafting of the Action Plan either directly or through the forum of around thirty NGO’s called Anti-Corruption Coalition.7 The expansion of e-government services and specifically the wide use of ICT frameworks for rendering public services, increasing transparency in hydrocarbon industries as well as bolstering public participation in the activities of state bodies are among the primary commitments defined in the OGP Action Plan. The recent creation of ASAN-Service centres (EASY-Service) in Azerbaijan is a very good example of successful implementation of some of the aforementioned commitments. After the creation and implementation of such services, corruption on lower levels in Azerbaijan started to plummet. In addition this initiative is rapidly enlarging, and improving on basis of the best international practices and is creating new domestic ones in Azerbaijan itself.8 Moreover, ASAN sparked off the goal for cooperation among the governmental bodies resulting in Azerbaijan's Ministry of Taxes partnering with ASAN to develop the ASAN Imza (special e-signature). Such technology can give entrepreneurs a vital access to mobile phone technology to digitally sign documents in a secure environment. There is no need for the special card reader in this system, as it has been optimized for use basically around the world and operates across various mobile platforms and devices. ASAN Imza utilizes the X-Road system. This system is globally regarded as currently the best e- governance system. The only other country utilizing this technology for public sector purposes is Estonia. With that Azerbaijan now takes a leading position among the Commonwealth of Independent States and even among some of the European countries in the field of the use and implementation of information

7 Ibid. 8 Kamal Makili-Aliyev, Landmarks and Challenges of Good Governance Practices in Azerbaijan. In: Governance and Sustainability: the Black Sea (Melanie Sully ed.) – Vienna: Institute for Go-Governance, 2014, pp.50-51.

116 and communications technologies in public sector and among the state agencies.9

E Government Portal The e-government systems that have been developed through the aforementioned initiatives have found their public outlet in the form of a web- portal called "e-gov.az". The Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies of Azerbaijan specifically points out that the portal " was placed in operation to create conditions for the citizens to benefit from e-services provided by government agencies on a ‘single window’10 principle, which combines the services here". As of today,11 through the e-government portal citizens of Azerbaijan gain access to 373 e-services of 41 state bodies and agencies. In addition to the portal, a gateway e-government was also put into use by the state in order to ensure mutual exchange of data between government bodies and agencies, and most of the state bodies and agencies are already connected to this special infrastructure. The gateway e-government "provides efficient use of the existing government information systems, ensuring safe contact between them, when issuing queries and rendering e-services.12 In line with these developments according to the "United Nations E-Government Survey 2014: E-Government for the Future We Want" report, Azerbaijan occupies 68th place in the UN's world ranking on e-government development. In 2014 around 193 states have been evaluated and ranked by the UN regarding their e-government development and policies. The main criteria were the willingness and ability of governments to use information and communication technologies to provide services to their citizens and the general public. That

9 Azerbaijan’s E-Government-Based One-Stop-Shop, DIPLOMAT, September-October, 2014, http://bit.ly/1BukPng 10 a.k.a. 'one-stop-shop'. 11 29.09.2014 12 E-government, Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies of Azerbaijan, http://www.mincom.gov.az/activity/information-technologies/e-government/

117 also served as a composite indicator for the so-called e-government development index (EGDI) that determined the countries' position in the ranking.13 Last time such a survey was conducted was in 2012 and Azerbaijan was able to gain 28 points more in this last ranking, coming ahead of such states as Serbia, Turkey and China. Azerbaijan's EGDI totalled 0.5472 with component online services in the country indexing at 0.4331, telecommunications infrastructure – at 0.4605 and human capital – at 0.748. The top five index countries included South Korea (0.9462), Australia (0.9103), Singapore (0.9076), France (0.8938) and the Netherlands (0.8897). 14 It should be noted that Azerbaijan has already implemented and launched five of the seven main components of e-government infrastructure such as 1) integrated network infrastructure for state bodies, 2) e-government portal, 3) e-government sluice, 4) state register of information resources and systems and 5) national infrastructure for e-signature. Only national infrastructure for e-document circulation and e-government data centre are still under construction and planed to be launched shortly.15 Furthermore, the e-government infrastructure of Azerbaijan is planned to be resettled into cloud-based platform. Cloud technologies are planned to be introduced with the launch of the special data centre that will not only be accessible in Azerbaijan but will target even the regional states. This futuristic goal was set by the new National Strategy for Information Society Development for 2014-2020 that reiterates government plans for the next phase of technological development of the country. Technological development is crucial for the economic goals of Azerbaijan to double its GDP by 2020 with ICT sector growing by 300%.16

13 United Nations E-Government Survey 2014: E-Government for the Future We Want, UN, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2014, ST/ESA/PAD/SER.E/188, http://bit.ly/1o3xTf8 14 Ibid. 15 E-government, Data Processing Center, Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies, http://www.rabita.az/en/c-projects/E-Government/ 16 Hollie Luxford, Azerbaijan Moves to the Cloud, DatacenterDynamics, 17.06.2014, http://bit.ly/1u5RXBj

118 Future Challenges Much of the recent success of e-government systems in Azerbaijan comes from effective international cooperation, mostly with states such as South Korea. As mentioned earlier South Korea ranked first in the UN survey on e-government. In 2013 Azerbaijan and Korea signed $3,7 million Grant Agreement on the creation of training centres for e-government projects in Azerbaijan. This project set the goals for such centres in cities and rural centres of Azerbaijan including Ganja, Nakhchivan, Sumgayit, Mingachevir, Barda, Lankaran, Gazakh, Zagatala, Imishli, Gabala, Goychay, Shirvan, Shamakhi, Guba and Sheki.17 With all these developments, it has to be taken into account that the process of implementation of e-government is also a considerable challenge for any state and not least for Azerbaijan. For developing states, institutions and their development matters considerably. However, even more than that, effective connectivity and cooperation of such institutions – namely state bodies and agencies are paramount. Interoperability of state bodies and institutions is one of the main prerequisites for an effective system of e-government and the Azerbaijani government should do its outmost to ensure the ability of state institutions to communicate and cooperate effectively. This is a constant process of development. Moreover, the e-services need to be popularized among wider groups of the population, to try to reach as many users as possible. Thus, they need not only to be easily accessible through electronic means, but also well-known and widespread in order to gain the desired results. Insufficient information on e- services, lack of professional staff in state agencies charged with the task of popularizing the e-government systems may lead to the stagnation of the development process in these areas and set back progress. Hence, it is crucial for the Azerbaijani government to engage in active PR of e-government (through

17 Nigar Orujova, South Korea, Azerbaijan sign $3.7 mln Grant Agreement under e-Government Project, AZERNEWS, 19.04.2013, http://www.azernews.az/azerbaijan/52571.html

119 media, social networks, educational initiatives, etc.) and monitor the quality of the staff engaged. There is also a "comprehensiveness" criteria that is an important challenge for the e-government systems. All of the services provided by the state bodies and agencies should be reflected on the e-government systems through portals and outlets. Users are proven to be dissuaded from using e-services if they cannot find a particular service at any given moment. One of the main challenges for the state is to "upload" all possible services to its e-government infrastructure online. In Azerbaijan that comprehensiveness criteria has yet to be fulfilled. Nonetheless, Azerbaijan has made tremendous progress in the development of e- government systems. Though 68th place among other countries is not a very high target rating, it is still 28 points more in less than two years. Moreover, it is a position that is one of the best in the region and among post-Soviet states. The implementation and rapid development of e-government have considerably lowered the levels of corruption and dramatically increased public participation, moving the country towards developments in social and democratic processes. Achieving the future goals of becoming a regional e-government data centre will open more space for technological development and will bring the ICT sphere in Azerbaijan to a new level. To the citizens of Azerbaijan e-government systems have undoubtedly brought reduced bureaucracy and much more transparency in public affairs.

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WHY PARTICIPATION MATTERS: good governance in Armenia Gevorg MELIKYAN Independent Political Analyst, Yerevan, Armenia

Armenian President Serz Sargsyan’s, sudden declaration to refuse pre-signing the Association Agreement with the European Union on September 3, 2013 in Moscow and to join the Customs Union (CU), put Armenia in an unpredictable situation both domestically and internationally. With this shift, the implementation of fully-fledged reforms as stipulated by European integration requirements potentially leading to better practices of governance, has also been thrown into doubt.

While any government, regardless of the type of the regime in place, is somehow committed to reforming the existing system and making it better for the sake of the country and/or the political elite, Armenia’s aim to improve practices of governance was nourished mostly by a number of obligations vis-à- vis the Euro-Atlantic structures. Being a country with a Soviet past and having implemented a hybrid system of liberal economy and semi-authoritarian regime as most post-soviet countries did, Armenia’s inherent potential for reforms and good governance was still weak and pointless, lacked courage, and intellectual power, and was shaped by poor or distorted visions about the free economy, the political system, a coherent social structure, an open civil society and non-egocentric ways of governance. Both the external incentives and rewards and Armenia’s explicit need to diversify its economy (partly destroyed and inefficient for many reasons such as blockades by neighbouring Turkey and Azerbaijan) or at least, its political elite’s sources of revenue, were softly pushing the government towards making some reforms that could be both beneficial and could please external donors. In

121 this context, the Eastern Partnership was an efficient tool and framework for a mutually beneficial cooperation between Armenia and the West. Keeping power was another incentive for Armenia’s political elite to imitate implementation of reforms or to carry some of them but only to an extent, which could not reduce the ruling party’s control. In non-democratic countries control means everything and is often more important than security, stability and economic growth. Coupled with new policies and more practical and efficient approaches from the West, Armenia’s inherited scarce internal resources for implementing more democracy and better ways of governance could produce better results. However, Armenia’s sudden shift towards CU and official adherence to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) on October 10, 2014 greatly undermined the likelihood of pursuing the implementation of reforms and pushing the country to more democracy, a stronger economy and inclusive society.

Every state is sovereign and is not limited in its actions unless structural constraints take the lead and reduce the maneuverability of the country. Armenia’s maneuverability, as many experts assert, has been significantly impacted by the fact of joining the EAEU and created a situation where few options were left in terms of its foreign policy and internal reforms. Some European programmes are still running in Armenia but with the paradigmatic change in Armenia’s foreign policy, the Euro-Atlantic structures became more reluctant to pay Armenia for its pursuit of reforms partly because of new realities and legal constraints in place, and partly due to fading interest in Armenia by those structures. Politically and economically, adherence to the CU and the EAEU resulted in Armenia drifting from its more or less balanced foreign policy (also known as a policy of complementarity, albeit highly criticized) and economic system pursued for more than two decades to a more polarized policy with

122 unpredictable consequences. The same is true for societal and other spheres. It is obvious that under the EAEU, western influence will be significantly reduced (which, in fact, is the main goal of the project) and fewer levers will be left to the European Union to have an impact on Armenia’s politics and economy. This dramatic shift (although some observers of Russian policy are against this assumption and argue that Armenia will only benefit from moving out of Western influence) may also create a situation where Armenian civil society bears more responsibility and makes its government more accountable. Some may see an oxymoron in these words or even a cognitive dissonance because a more repressive regime cannot allow citizens to act freely by default. However, monopolized ways of governance and limiting freedoms may create a strong reaction by proactive members of the society and lead to a situation where more people will be willing to get involved in processes than expected. The problem is how to increase the number of those active members.

For those in democracy studies, it is common sense that individual rights and political and civil freedoms are better respected in democracies than in non- democracies. Countries with meaningful freedom of speech and association, respect for personal and property rights, prohibition of torture and guarantees of equality before the law are overwhelmingly those that have democratic political systems. Armenia is considered as a pseudo- or semi-democracy and acts accordingly. Systemic problems are endemically present in all fields and spheres. Democratic reforms and improving ways of governance are not something actively sought by the political elite. Neither do the majority of members of civil society for their part seek ways and paths to get involved in decision-making mechanisms and processes. Those who indigenously value freedoms and democracy-based principles more than ephemeral benefits of non-inclusive ways of governance, but are in a

123 country which does little to encourage a quality democracy, or even covertly caricatures it, face a dilemma that haunts each and every one of them: to participate or not in socio-political processes and if yes, how?

People in countries with weak economies are not always strong enough to make a livelihood for their families and at the same time, be active and strongly engaged citizens. Routine problems make many of them look for existing social opportunities rather than creating new ones or participating in activities that can help others to do so. Instead, they opt to leave the country and seek (legal or illegal) shelter in many other countries, mostly Russia. The choice of Russia by many shows the extent to which social short-term material benefits prevail over the idea of long-lasting socio-political reforms or hope for systemic changes and the quest for freedoms and democracy. Covert local propaganda coupled with poor work by some Euro-Atlantic democratic institutions to promote a meaningful democracy on the ground makes many in Armenia depreciate or caricaturize concepts of democracy, human rights, rule of law, tolerance, freedom of speech, equality, justice, etc. This is mostly a psychological phenomenon and has a destructive impact on nation and state-building activities. Societies do not change overnight; ideologies do not fade, they are not switched instantly; and deeply rooted ideals and principles have the power to last in the minds and hearts of their owners, especially when owners of those minds are reluctant to change their mindset.

The Soviet Legacy Hate and rejection of western ideals and values have been the primary focus of Soviet spin-doctors’ propaganda, while the fear to raise concerns was also a direct target for control-driven policies. “Democracy is a lie and one should stay out of it”, claim many in the post-Soviet space (and not only) and neither do they believe in the force of participation. Some will argue that the Soviet time is

124 over, and Armenia saw a renaissance of national pride and civil awareness in the late ‘80s and afterwards. However, does this mean the past is no longer a part of the present and that there is a brand-new generation of politicians and decision- makers with ideas absolutely different from those cherished by previous generations? Not really! First, Armenians, fortunately or unfortunately, are very attached to their past in spite of everything. Second, many among contemporary and previous decision-makers had positions during Soviet times or have been somehow involved in the Komsomol (KGB’s covert affiliation) and other Communist/Marxist activities. Some still follow the same Soviet traditions (just check the work of Ministries and other public institutions), and many others (oligarchs) while politically not active during the Soviet period, became wealthy due to the support of the same regime to which they stay fully loyal. Those from the new generation, from universities and/or young wings of political parties who seem to be intelligent and ambitious and have the potential to replace those in decision-making posts are rapidly offered political or business opportunities where they think they will get more from the system and stay independent, while the reality is that once they are part of it, the system gets more from them and keeps them trapped. Only a very small group of people are indigenously active and proactive, and want to challenge the overall system and those in it. The rest are quite inert or reluctant to take active part in civic and genuine civil initiatives or be involved in political processes.

Armenia needs a generational change in politics and in all other areas, and participation in decision-making processes by putting pressure on policy makers may open a way out of the country’s socio-political stagnation. It is a must for states like Armenia. Change is needed especially in the minds and behaviour of people. Monopolization of the socio-political sphere and weighing down society under heavy propaganda is equally dangerous for everybody because, as was

125 described by an influential oligarch none other than Armenia’s Prime-Minister Hovik Abrahamyan “We are all in the same boat.” Participatory democracy unlike representative democracy, which is easily abused and corrupted in countries with bad practices of governance, is a more effective counterbalance to the regime. To be implemented, democracy in Armenia needs strong and devoted supporters and those who believe, know and bear real democratic values. Promotion of democracy and reforms is only possible when there is strong domestic support. Democracy is about new approaches and visions especially by those who are accountable for decisions and policies. Armenia lacks this support and such people who can realize it.

One should bear in mind that generational change and enhancing participatory and inclusive aspects of democracy and good governance are only valid when it is about quality change and meaningful participation. It is never about formal change of some by others who share similar corrupted “values” and “visions.” Critical thinking is not something encouraged in education in either families or educational institutions. Instead, visions and values are built around blind obedience, pseudo-patriotic sentiments, and nationalist symbolism and stereotypes where critics and non-consent are qualified as betrayal, hostile and inacceptable. The system seeks to keep active and knowledgeable members of society away from direct or indirect participation in decision-making processes. Virtually, all spheres are under invisible control by political monopolies and other structures (NGOs, associations, funds, media, etc.) which are formally independent, are still covertly orchestrated by the political elite. The strange thing is that Euro- Atlantic structures never expressed their deep concern over burning issues such as human rights, the lack of democracy and the rule of law. The only phenomenon of migration with a very negative net migration rate speaks

126 volumes regarding systemic problems and the lack of total participation or participation with little or no impact on political processes and social changes. People need to be heard, appreciated and have recognition. Participation in socio-political processes guarantees a better outcome and is less costly to the government to make reforms. However, any society and government, that willingly or unwillingly ignores this formula of success, creates political chaos, sets a centralized mode of governance, resorts to repressive methods, and loses confidence thus lessening its chances of being reelected.

The lack of transparency and opportunities for citizens’ participation in public and political decision-making greatly contributes to public dissatisfaction. In this context, without confidence and trust, the only way for the ruling party to be reelected is to abuse power, to widely use administrative and criminal resources and to push society and especially, its proactive part away from real socio- political processes to fake ones, such as online or offline initiatives, forums, conferences, seminars, camps, focussing on the army’s successes, imitation of reforms etc. Another method to reduce the possible impact of civil society is to divide it into antagonistic groups. Not surprisingly, conspiracy theories, and myth-based narratives are ubiquitous and very popular in post-Soviet countries and Armenia is no exception. Amateur type “analytical” discussions on past and current foreign policy issues and complex geopolitical developments are an inseparable part of people’s everyday life. Instead of being focused more on domestic affairs such as bad governance, abuse of power, corruption, high taxation, unemployment, the growing gap between rich and poor, migration, poor quality in education, social care, health care, the lack of necessary institutions, a dependent and corrupt judiciary, issues in the army, etc., average citizens waste their precious time and energy on endless and empty discussions on “strategic” and “tactical” analyses, the core causes and implications of historical and current interactions of the super-

127 powers, their hidden agendas, the role of Judeo-Masonic or Anglo-Saxon “dark forces” in Armenia’s failures etc. People justify this “geopolitical hobby and engagement” by the fact that no one should stay away from political processes. It may be true, but surprisingly, the same people have little courage and level of involvement when it comes to advocating systemic reforms, generational change, participation, implementation of mechanisms of checks and balances and creating an environment where public opinion has a direct or indirect impact on the decision-making process. As stated by an Egyptian intellectual "The biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not only from the truth, but also from confronting our faults and problems."

A Role for Direct Democracy The spiral of silence is another problem and contributes to keeping many out of discussions and weakening participation. Through conventional, online and social media, some mainstream opinions tend to become intellectually dominant and push those who perceive their opinion to be in the minority, not to speak up because societal stereotypes threaten individuals with fear of isolation. For a more participative society, it is important for the dominant group not to block others from deliberation and not to impose its intellectual power over others. This refers as well to the dominant opinions inside both the ruling political elite and the opposition. One of the main questions that arise is how to involve citizens in decision- making processes at least on the legislative level? Laws in Armenia are adopted by the National Assembly where the ruling party has a majority and can practically propose and adopt any bill. If inside the political parties, especially the ruling ones, there was such a notion as internal democracy, one could believe that even in the context of a parliamentarian majority, there could be some debates, discussion and disagreement among its members over at least major issues (i.e. security, foreign policy, economic dependence etc.). However,

128 there is a zero-debate environment in the ruling party, while those in the opposition are a tiny minority and have no influence over decisions in the Parliament. The scandalous ratification of the controversial gas agreement with Russia (2013), the deal allowing Russia to extend its military presence in Armenia for 24 more years (2010), the law on the Accumulative Pension System with a mandatory component (2014), the decision to adhere to the Customs Union to the detriment of the Association Agreement with the EU (2013) are only few examples of cases where public opinion differed from that of decision- makers, but there were no tools to make a difference. The same is true as well with all levels of elections (presidential, parliamentary, and municipal) which have not been free and fair since the first days of Armenia’s third Republic in 1991. If we abstract ourselves from the political reality in Armenia, and consider that there is a political will to change things, one of the ideas that come to mind is to institutionalize the concept of referendums. Switzerland has successfully implemented the idea of launching referendums by citizens in case its citizens disagree with laws and legislative acts passed or adopted by the legislative. After all a nation has to deserve democracy! The problem of participation in decision-making exists in strong democracies as well because the power, especially a strong political power, has the potential to abuse it if no proper preventive mechanisms are in place. Referendums (initiated by citizens and not by the president upon the approval by the Parliament as stipulated by Armenia’s Constitution) are not an ideal but quite a good tool for citizens to participate and contribute to state-building activities. Instead of boycotting, closing streets, doing sit-ins etc. (which are indeed important) referendums can save time and efforts for the people. One of drawbacks of a referendum is that it is covered by the state budget. In addition, referendums can also be initiated by the same ruling party (through its own people) and with the use of the same administrative and huge financial resources referendums can

129 help them to pass those bills that can create insurmountable tensions during parliamentary debates.

Let us not forget that the Ukrainian crisis was partly due to the fact the citizens had a very limited access to decision-making and have been kept away from any means to make a difference. They were ignored and not heard, and the only platform left to Ukrainian society was the street. Ironically, some propaganda- makers both in Russia and in Armenia use the Ukrainian case to convince their respective populations that the crisis was due to Western/American involvement and influence, thus the farther the society is from Euro-Atlantic institutions and theirthere democracies is a zero-debate and human environment rights, the in better the rulingfor it and party, all generations. while those in the opposition are a tiny minority and have no influence over decisions in the NoParliament. doubt, especially The scandalous for Armenia, ratification which of isthe a smallcontroversial country, gas socio-political agreement with and otherRussia crises (2013), should the be deal resolved allowing in aRussia peaceful to extendmanner its only military (unfortunately, presence the in politicalArmenia crisisfor 24 inmore the years aftermath (2010), of the the law presidential on the Accumulative elections in Pension 2008 sawSystem ten peoplewith a killed mandatory during component demonstrations). (2014), Peace the decision is necessary to adhere but not to sufficient the Customs for efficientUnion to core the changes,detriment reforms of the Associationand implementing Agreement good practiceswith the of EU governance. (2013) are Moreonly few is examples needed of and cases participation where public and op inion generational differed from change that canof decision- greatly complementmakers, but therethis endeavour. were no tools Participation to make apresupposes difference. responsibility,The same is true creates as well an environmentwith all levels of oftrust elections and transparency, (presidential, reduces parliamentary, risks and enhances and municipal) social impact. which Participationhave not been and free transparency and fair since are thenumber first daysone enemiesof Armenia’s for those third with Republic a closed in mind1991. and backward societies. Armenia positions itself as a modern and civilized nationIf we abstract with thousands ourselves offrom years the ofpolitical existence reality and in culture. Armenia, It and is our consider hope that participationthere is a political by more will peopleto change with things, better onevisions of the will ideas become that comean added to mind value is into theinstitutionalize Armenian context the concept as it mattersof referendums. greatly for Switzerland fighting backwardness has successfully and pursuingimplemented democratic the idea state of launchingand nation-building referendums activities. by citizens in case its citizens disagree with laws and legislative acts passed or adopted by the legislative. After all a nation has to deserve democracy! The problem of participation in decision-making exists in strong democracies as well because the power, especially a strong political power, has the potential to
abuse it if no proper preventive mechanisms130 are in place. Referendums (initiated by citizens and not by the president upon the approval by the Parliament as stipulated by Armenia’s Constitution) are not an ideal but quite a good tool for citizens to participate and contribute to state-building activities. Instead of boycotting, closing streets, doing sit-ins etc. (which are indeed important) referendums can save time and efforts for the people. One of drawbacks of a referendum is that it is covered by the state budget. In addition, referendums can also be initiated by the same ruling party (through its own people) and with the use of the same administrative and huge financial resources referendums can

TURKEY’S CHALLENGES: A Yes to Majoritarianism, not to Consensual Democracy

Hikmet KIRIK Assoc. Prof. Istanbul University, Political Science Faculty

In political terms, Turkey is still in the process of transition from a traditional government concept to one of governance. Moving from a highly centralized, representative government to de-centralized participatory politics, requires changes in various levels comprising the mechanisms, processes and institutions, through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. Today the great majority of Turkish citizens keenly support the basic principles of inclusive participation in politics, as well as responsiveness, transparency and accountability of their governments. Hence, citizens’ empowerment is already on firm ground in political language. Nevertheless in a multi-layered society like Turkey, transition as such is questioned in an ongoing power struggle including political, institutional and procedural levels. This article will argue that such complexity seems to be the biggest challenge for Turkey in transition towards good governance.

The process of transition in Turkey can be traced back to the 1980s during which the country underwent structural transformation. The governments of Turgut Özal and his Motherland Party (MP) justified the stabilization-cum- structural adjustment programme under the banners of “effective state” or “service state” supported by key international institutions such as the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank.1 Hence Application for Accession to the then European Community (EC) in 1987 should also be taken into account despite

1 World Bank, Governance and Development, Washington, DC: World Bank 1992.

131 the negative response from the European Commission.2 Later, these concepts became buzz words for good governance -hence new criteria were set by international organizations and the European Union as a response to financial globalization. When the idea of good governance emerged in the West, this neo- liberal vocabulary had already been reflected in Turkish political language. However, what they understood by it was radically different in Turkey than countries in Western Europe. As major beneficiaries of financial globalization, for western democracies, effective state or service state meant a shift in emphasis from a traditional dichotomy between government and the governed towards “the widest possible participation of the population, including civic networks in local affairs, and presupposes an institutionalized dialogue between state and civil society.” Instead of traditional “majoritarian” forms this shift “leads to a new form of democracy, which “involves the establishment of consensual democracy.”3 For Turkey, financial globalization through its institutional as well as discursive capacity played a positive role in shaping the democratization process during which the country was undergoing a transition from authoritarian rule and created new political openings. However, Özal’s understanding of democracy reflected the new rights approach “to limit the powers of representative institutions such that the natural workings of the free market could be protected and insulated from the detrimental effects of powerful interest group pressures that can be exercised through representative institutions.” Hence, “the notion of limiting the domain of representative democracy for the benefit of the market was an idea that Özal clearly favoured”, not a shift from majoritarian to a consensual democracy.4

2 Çelik, Y. Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, Westport, CT:,Praeger, 1999, pp. 103-106 3 A’Gh, A. “Public Sector Reforms, Institutional Design and Strategy for Good Governance in East Central Europe” in Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 233-255 at. p. 233 4 Öni, Z. ‘Turgut Özal and His Economic Legacy: Turkish Neo-Liberalism in Critical Perspective’ in
http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/scanneddocuments/Course_Material/ATA_682_final/1A2%20Onis-Ozal.pdf.

132 During the 1990’s the liberal discourse lost much of its relevance as Turkey confronted economic crisis, weak governments and most importantly an armed conflict in its Kurdish dominated southeast region. Altogether, these factors undermined Turkey’s political and institutional capacity to reform in substantive measures which was required if democratic deficits were to be narrowed. In 1994, the economy was hit by a currency problem followed by the fall of slamist government. The terror problem reached its peak as the state developed various means to create a “terror from above” in response to the PKK’s “terror from below.5 When the country hit by a powerful earthquake claiming tens of thousands of lives in 1999 followed by yet another severe economic-cum- political crisis starting in November 2000, people realized that their government had only made few or ineffective efforts in such disastrous situations. Questions were asked such as how should our government govern us? However, no proper answer came from existing political parties, in the eyes of the people at least. In the 2002 general election, voters punished all of the political parties, which had participated in governments during the previous decade. The major beneficiary was the newly established Justice and Development Party (JDP) with a landslide victory. Akarca and Tansel have concluded that voters react with such drastic measures only when “the corruption is massive, the information on it highly- credible and well-publicized, involves large number of political parties, not accompanied by competent governance, and a non-corrupt alternative is available”.6 Properly understanding people’s demands for changes on the way in which the country is governed, the JDP, a self-proclaimed “conservative democratic” party, adopted an ambitious development agenda. To a certain extent economic

5This was included “legitimazing torture, kidnapping, disapearence , unaccounted murders and forced migration as counter-terror meassures.” See for example Ensarolu, Y. ‘Turkey’s Kurdish Question and the Peace Process’ in Insight Turkey, vol.15, No. 2, (Spring 2013) pp. 7-17, p. 8 6 Akarca, A.T. and A. Tansel., ‘Turkish Voter Response to Government Incompetence and Corruption related to the 1999 Earthquakes’ in MPRA Paper, 2012 Online at http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35894/ MPRA Paper No. 35894, posted 12. January 2012 19:02 UTC, pp. 14-15

133 liberalization went hand in hand with political liberalization. During the past decade or so Turkey focused on implementing reforms related to decentralization, public administration reform, and reforms improving civic engagement. Until recently it seemed a success story combining a realistic (or pragmatic) visionary politics, backed by decisive and persuasive leadership, supported by the majority of voters. Last but not least the EU, notably since it granted candidate status to Turkey in 1999, exercised leverage in the hands of JDP governments for assimilation of rules and norms of liberal (majoritarian) democracy.7 These reforms included constitutional changes, reforms in public administration, comprehensive reform of rules and procedures of the parliament to improve parliament’s democratic functioning, a new law on the Intelligence Service, and the creation of an ombudsman institution. The authoritarian nature of the regime in Turkey is best reflected by the 1982 Constitution. As commonly argued, the underlying philosophy of the 1982 Constitution is illiberal in the sense that primacy is given to the state rather than guaranteeing the fundamental rights and liberties of the citizens. Therefore, quite understandably, the 1982 Constitution became “the subject of heated debate and controversy almost from its inception” and later amended, “sometimes fairly radically … parallel to the social and political developments.” According to Özbudun, “the general directions of these amendments were to improve the protection of fundamental rights, to bolster the rule of law, and to limit the military’s prerogatives in government.” He further argues that the so-called “harmonization laws” are noteworthy that were passed between February 2002 and July 2004 in nine reform “packages.”8 Despite all these amendments the core issue of the 2001 general election was to draft a new constitution. Aktar summed up the general feeling when he said that

7 Meltem Muftuler-Bac. ‘Turkey’s Political Reforms: The Impact of the European Union’, Southeast European Politics and Societies, 2005, vol.10, no.1, pp.16-30 8 The 1982 Constitution was amended eight times in 1987, 1993, 1995, twice in 1999, 2001, 2002, and 2004, Özbudun, E. ‘Democratization Reforms in Turkey, 1993–2004’ in Turkish Studies (June 2007) Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 179-196, at p.180

134 "this country needs a new social contract which would describe the way it intends to go ahead and to make sure that all its constituencies will coexist and perform together without any of them feeling excluded, which is the case now."9 In 2012 just after the general election, parliament started to draft a new constitution. A Parliamentary Conciliation Committee was set up based on the equal representation of all four political parties. Civil society organizers arranged public consultation thorough public events around Turkey which stimulated debate. The parties agreed on a number of contentious issues but many failed. The Cross-party Parliamentary Conciliation Committee was made ineffective by the governing JDP on the grounds that there was no longer progress after consensus had been reached on only 60 articles. It is widely believed that the JDP failed to form a consensus for regime change from parliamentary democracy to some form of semi-presidential system in which the publicly elected president’s executive powers will be extended. The JDP and its leadership seems to believe that the best way to improve the majoritarian/representative democracy is by eliminating the anomaly of Turkish democracy by preventing non-majoritarian institutions like the constitutional court and the military to intervene in politics. A number of important reforms, including the 4th Judicial Reform Package improved parliament’s democratic functioning.10 Accordingly special courts and prosecutors have been abolished. Hence the maximum ten-year detention period for crimes under the scope of special courts has been limited to five. Last but not least, The Law on Metropolitan Municipalities, extended the scope of local governments’ competences, thus partially addressing the Council of Europe’s criticism concerning some small municipalities’ weak capacity to deliver public services. It did not, however, implement Council of Europe recommendations on

9 Voice of America, 10 May 2012 10“Turkish president approves approves 4th 4th judicial judicial package”, package”, H Hu�urriyetrriyet Daily Daily News, News, 29th 29th April 2013 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-president-approves-4th-judicial- package.aspx?pageID=238&nid=45908.

135 strengthening municipalities through devolution of powers or enabling them to raise their own revenue. Therefore failures in areas such as social division reflected by the political process still remains as one of the major problems particularly taken together with the lack of dialogue and spirit of compromise among political parties. Preparation and consultation with the stakeholders remained insufficient, not only in terms of drafting the constitution but prior to the adoption of key sensitive legislation. There was no progress in the long- standing discussion on the need for systematic consultation with civil society and other stakeholders in law-making. It also failed to improve Parliament’s capacity to monitor performance and audit public expenditure. According to a recent report the procedural aspects of policy making need to be accounted for as the way in which reforms were passed did not conform much to the principles of good governance. For example there was an omnibus bill, a set of changes to a number of laws, and a “reform package” which “made it difficult for practitioners to actually enforce the myriad of new changes. Such a method also made it difficult for both the judges and prosecutors implementing the law as well as the citizen making use of the law to fully understand its contents.” It was also noted that, “during the preparation of the reform packages, suggestions of individuals directly affected by the changes as well as NGOs were not adequately taken into consideration”.11 In the area of public administration, external audit and public financial management and control still needs to be strengthened. As the 2013 Progress Reported stated, recent proposals for amending the Turkish Court of Audit Law raise serious concerns as to the independence and effectiveness of the TCA’s audit and control in order to achieve transparency and accountability in all public institutions.12 Opposition parties were critical on government handling of

11Karakaya, N. and H.Ozhabes¸ ‘Judicial Reform Packages: Evaluating Their Effect on Rights and Freedoms’ Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) Democratization Program,Policy Report Series, Judical Reform 5. pp.35-37 12 Turkey 2013 Progress Report Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council ‘Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2013-2014’, COM(2013)700 final)

136 Parliamentary deliberations on the 2013 general budget, held in December, accusing the government of inadequate feedback on previous public expenditure management. This was due to a government initiated amendment to the Turkish Court of Accounts (TCA) Law adopted in July 2012, which arguably weakened the TCA's legal mandate and working procedures, including parliamentary oversight. The Constitutional Court, repealed this amendment in December 2012, and a subsequent draft law, which might result in a distortion of the TCA’s mandate and its ability to carry out independent and effective audit, was submitted to parliament in April 2013. Although the new law mandates the TCA to carry out all types of government auditing, performance audits, which would be an important element to boost public administration reform, do not seem to be carried out. Implementation of the Law on Public Financial Management and Control continued with the introduction of strategic planning and performance budgeting. All line ministries and major public agencies prepared performance programmes and accountability reports. However, such planning activities need to be better coordinated with the respective budgets. The internal audit system is not effective and continues to suffer from confusion between the objectives, roles and responsibilities of internal audit and inspectorate functions. Overall, external audit and public financial management and control need to be strengthened, but recent proposals for amending the TCA Law raise serious concerns as to the independence and effectiveness of TCA audit and control. Efforts need to be made to increase transparency and accountability in all public institutions.13 Otherwise, the JDP government is likely to be accused of moving away from better transparency and improved accountability in state expenditures and trimming down oversight powers of watchdog agencies. One step forward in the right direction is said to be the Parliament’s election of Turkey’s first Head Ombudsman in November 2012 and subsequently

13 Soyaltn, D. ‘Turkish Court of Accounts in Crisis: An Urgent Problem, Yet not a Main Concern?’ in http://researchturkey.org/turkish-court-of-accounts-in-crisis-an-urgent-problem-yet-not-a-main-concern/

137 appointment of five Ombudsmen. The Ombudsman Institution became operational and began receiving complaints in April 2013. The regulation establishing the modus operandi of the Institution follows the recommendations of the European Ombudsman and provides for the final decision-making power to remain with the Head Ombudsman. It also provides for a simple application procedure and the admissibility of applications in languages other than Turkish. Discussions are ongoing on draft amendments encompassing the right of own initiative, on-the- spot checks and the follow-up of the Ombudsman’s recommendations by the parliament. As of December 2013, the Institution had received more than 7 638 applications concerning alleged violations relating to human rights, the rights of the disabled, civil service-related matters, social security, property rights, financial, economic and tax issues and the conduct of local administrations. As regards administrative acts of the Turkish Armed Forces, the Ombudsman considered eligible a number of complaints on dismissal and maltreatment during military service. The new Ombudsman has received 23 complaints relating to the protests and has started inquiries in line with the institution’s mandate.14 Procedures to adopt a draft law establishing a Law Enforcement Monitoring Commission as an independent supervisory body for police offences remain pending. With an independent body, it would be possible to conduct independent, impartial and effective investigations, with the involvement of victims, into all allegations of misconduct by security forces, in accordance with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In June and July the Ministry of the Interior issued two circulars, which improve procedures for intervention during demonstrations. Turkish legislation and its implementation concerning the right to assembly and intervention by law enforcement officers are still to be brought further in line with European standards, which focus on

14 For report see for example, http://www.kamudenetciligi.gov.tr/content_detail-322-683-faaliyet-raporu.html

138 the peacefulness of demonstrations. Improvements in the legal framework need to be complemented with appropriate training for law enforcement officers. The distinction between traditional politics and the politics of governance is the involvement of civil society in political decision-making processes. This may be one of the major challenges which civil society in Turkey needs to overcome as was well illustrated during the Gezi Park events. Actors of traditional politics seemed to be reluctant to accept civil society as a legitimate stakeholder in democracy. It began in protest against an urban development project in Gezi Park in the centre of Istanbul; demonstrations were peaceful despite a number of isolated violent incidents during which the police were accused of using excessive force against demonstrators. Later the protests grew, encompassing broader demands and spreading to other cities and becoming more violent. Six people died, including one policeman, thousands were injured, some of them severely, over 3 500 were taken into police custody, of whom over 112 remained in detention on judge’s decision, including members of NGOs participating in the Taksim Solidarity Platform (a grouping of associations active on the Gezi Park issue). Out of these 108 were detained on suspicion of being a member of a terror organization. Following alleged violations of human rights during the GEZ demonstrations and complaints lodged in this context, based on information provided by the Turkish authorities, the Ministry of the Interior has so far launched administrative investigations into 164 law enforcement officers including 32 police chiefs and 30 police officers have been suspended from duty. Some cases were transferred to the courts. Recently, several leaders of the Beikta FC Çar fan club are among 35 people who are accused in the indictment of plotting to overthrow the government, were now accepted by a court.15 As an EU report indicated recently, government-civil society and parliament- civil society relations need to be improved through systematic, permanent and




























































15 September 15, 2014, Monday/ 18:58:32/ TODAY'S ZAMAN / ISTANBUL

139 structured consultation mechanisms at policy level.16 Another recent report prepared by TASCO cited a number of obstacles and challenges including:
the legal framework for associations and foundations continue to be restrictive and bureaucratic, discouraging rather than encouraging people in exercising their freedom of association;
the legal framework highly limits the activities of foreign CSOs in Turkey;
fundraising activities are severely limited via the Law on Collection of Aid with heavy authorization requirements, bureaucratic obligations, and generous discretionary powers by the administration;
the legal framework regarding freedom of assembly has severe obstacles and problems in exercising the right;
obstacles to freedom of association and assembly also occur due to interpretations of some laws such as the Anti-Terror Law, the Law on Misdemeanours, the Law on Meetings based on a limiting and negative approach.17 The legal framework hampers the functioning of civil society organisations (CSOs) and the extensive bureaucracy often still discourages civil society participation. There are no inherent participatory mechanisms whereby CSOs can voice demands and be involved in policymaking other than what is called ura (council meeting) ad hoc and often limited to specific phases of policy design as opposed to the entire policy cycle (including the monitoring of implementation). The legislation on associations and foundations should be implemented so as to empower them former more. Currently, problems arise in the areas of penalties and auditing. Other legislation continues to be interpreted restrictively vis-à-vis CSOs. This is relevant for example as far as the freedom of association is concerned.18 Some civil society activities are regulated by restrictive primary and secondary legislation, e.g. limiting the right to publish press statements and requiring advance notification of demonstrations, which are often confined to a limited number of designated sites and dates. CSOs’ financial environment is




























































16 Turkey 2013 Progress Report Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council ‘Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2013-2014’, COM(2013)700 final) 17 Civil Society Needs Assessment Report. Turkey, Technical Assistance to the Civil Society Organisations 2 TASCO 2 from the IPA Beneficiaries; EuropeAid/133642/C/SER/Multi, February 2014, pp. 61-65 18 TASCO 2, p.4

140 characterized by insufficient tax and other incentives for private donations and sponsorship, making many of them dependent on public (often international) project grants. Public funding for CSOs is not sufficiently transparent and rule- based. Public funds are allocated to CSOs via ministries and through project partnership mechanisms, rarely through grant allocations or service contracts. Tax exemption and public benefit status are granted to a very limited number of CSOs by a Council of Ministers decision. Social enterprises are not defined in legislation as a separate form of legal entity. Overall as far as the involvement of CSOs are concerned, the lack of political will may partly be blamed for the regime’s rather slow transformation towards good governance. Although Turkey is a participant country in the Open Goverment Partnership (OGP), it failed to produce a report on Turkey. One reason was, both the Support Unit and the IRM team failed to make contact with a government representative although a considerable number of attempts were made during the report research period. Second, no self- assessment report was submitted on the National Action Plan. Third, other independent attempts to verify activities related to the National Action Plan found little evidence that OGP commitments were being implemented. The IRM therefore concluded there was not sufficient activity related to OGP to produce a report.19 The fight against corruption is one of the key areas for any judgment of good governance. It is even more relevant in a country where the lack of transparency in state institutions is a long-standing problem and financing politics is not as transparent as it should be. Although the JDP government’s political success largely relies on its promise for clean and honest politics and its effort to implement the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, the country still ranks just slightly above the global average in terms of government corruption. 20

19http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/attachments/OGP%20Letter%20-%20Turkey.pdf 20 Further efforts are needed to fully implement the Strategy, to follow up policy proposals from working groups on corruption–related issues and to engage effectively with civil society. The institutional set-up needs to be strengthened. Greater political will is needed to achieve concrete results. Alignment with the recommendations of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) also remains a priority. In this context, the financing of

141 According to the results of a recent survey TI-Turkey, the country ranks 53rd out of 177 around the world. Turkey's 2012 ranking was one notch below this year's mark, sharing the spot with Malaysia. The index measures the perception of corruption in the public sector. The survey of 177 countries is based on local and international experts’ opinions of public sector corruption.21 In December 15th, 2013 opposition parties accused the government of lack of transparency and public accountability based on the Court of Accounts’ report. Just two days later Turkish media broke the news according to which an investigation started involving senior bureaucrats in the government, relatives of four line ministers in the JDP government and some businessmen. The suspects in the probe are accused of accepting and facilitating corruption in tenders, money laundering and bribery to secure construction permits for protected areas. More than $4.5m had been seized at raids on the suspects’ houses.22 The then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan rejected the allegations and reframed the corruption scandal as a global plot to overthrow his government, orchestrated by “external” and “internal” enemies. The government tried to stop the corruption investigation and related leaks by resorting to controversial measures that subdued the judiciary, controlled the media, expanded the powers of the intelligence agency, limited internet access, banned social media, and suppressed opposition. Altogether the scandal itself and the government’s handling of it raised deep questions about the independence of the judiciary, the

political parties needs to be addressed, including provisions on prohibited funding sources, donation ceilings, and obligations on candidates to disclose assets and submit financial information during a campaign. It is recommended that measures are required to reduce the broad scope of parliamentary immunity in corruption cases and to define objective criteria for the lifting of immunity. Arrangements to verify assets declared by political figures and public officials need to be strengthened. Turkey collects certain statistics on court decisions in corruption cases, but efforts are required to develop a thorough track record of investigation, indictment and conviction. Concerns remain about impartiality in the processing of anti-corruption cases. Turkey needs to ensure dissuasive penalties in all corruption cases.Doig, A. ‘Corruption Report : Findings, Analysis, and Recommendations’ Ethics for the Prevention of Corruption in Turkey, Council of Europe Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs Technical Co�operation Directorate Economic Crime Division Corruption and Fraud Unit November 2009. 21 Today Zaman English Daily Newspaper, ‘Turkey Budget Debate Exposes Weak Transparency and Accountability’, December 15, 2013. 22 Hurriyet, Daily Newspaper, ‘3 Sons of Ministers 3 Bombshell’ 23 December 2013.

142 accountability of politicians and the transparency of their relations with business.23 Shaken by first GEZİ and later the corruption scandal, the JDP government drafted a new law expanding the powers of the intelligence agency (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı–MİT), including eavesdropping. What is popularly known as the “MİT law” which is criticized for undermining media freedom, freedom of expression, and the right of access to information pertaining to the public interest, finally went into effect on April 26, 2014. Shortly after, in September 2014, parliament adopted a democratization package, which was announced a year earlier. It was part of the government’s constructive policy towards the Kurdish issue but probably it also hoped to repair its troubled image as a result of GEZİ demonstrations and alleged corruption cases. The current 10% threshold for representation in parliament was kept as the incumbent political parties see it working in their favour. Nevertheless there are some important changes, which were included when it was first announced. Here are some of the most important aspects of the adopted bill: political parties and candidates will be able to use any language or dialect in all forms of campaigning, thus legalizing material in Kurdish. Bans on Kurdish names for settlement places are also being lifted. political parties will be able to implement a co-leadership system, on the condition that it is in their party statute and there are no more than two co- leaders. the threshold for budget support to political parties decreased. According to the new bill, political parties that receive more than three percent of the total number of valid votes cast in a general parliamentary election will receive treasury funds. The fund will be no less than one million Turkish Liras. This arrangement will enable the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) to receive a treasury fund. preventing the announcement of religious beliefs, opinions and convictions either by force or by other illegal acts will be sentenced with a jail term of one to three years. The same goes for those who intervene in an individual’s choices about lifestyle based on belief, opinion or convictions. Punishments for hate and discrimination concerning different languages,




























































23 Gürbüz. M. ‘The Long Winter: Turkish Politics After the Corruption Scandal’, Rethink Institute, Washington DC, Rethink Paper 15. May 2014

143 religions, races, nationalities, political understandings and sects will be increased to between one and three years in prison. Religious lifestyles will be protected through constitutional amendments that increase punishment for those who abuse the rights of people for praying and participating in religious ceremonies.24 as regards freedom of assembly, the democratization package stipulates that the authorities will consult stakeholders before making decisions on rallies and demonstrations, extend the time periods within which rallies and demonstrations can be held, and gives authority for monitoring and terminating the rallies to an ad hoc body including representatives of demonstrators.

Conclusion With twelve years in power, the JDP government has achieved a remarkable level of economic and political stability especially in a highly problematic region. As a result a new capital and middle class emerged out of conservative, religiously-oriented sectors of society, which in turn formed the social base for the JDP and Erdoan. As the JDP secures its support, and consolidates its grip on power, it gradually began to develop a form of neo-traditionalism, which contains both the element of religiosity (through its cultural policies) and modernity (crystalized by its pro-democracy, pro-reformist, pro-European image). Because of all this, one should consider the JDP’s single party government as a promising case of majoritarianism which is likely to sustain this position in the foreseeable future. The JDP’s recent local election victory and Erdoan’s becoming Turkey’s first elected president is clear evidence of this. In both elections, Erdoan and the JDP managed to secure majority support despite GEZ and the corruption scandal. One can speculate that taking all this in to account the process of transition from a traditional government concept to the concept of governance should be considered within the context of majoritarianism. To put it another way, the power struggle which encompasses political, institutional and procedural levels seems to put the horse before the cart. During the recent presidential election




























































24http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-parliament-adopts-democracy-package-goes-to- recess.aspx?pageID=238&nID=63091&NewsCatID=338

144 campaign Erdoan and his political allies often argued that some form of presidential system is better for Turkey for achieving “normalization” which can be interpreted as a further consolidation of majoritarian democracy. Whether so- called normalization could improve inclusive participation in politics and bring more responsive, transparent and accountable governments is somehow a different question. It will largely depend on how future governments handle the economy and the so-called “peace process” with the PKK as well as the future direction of EU-Turkey relations.

145

Homo Civicus (Re)BORN:

THE 2012-14 PROTEST MOVEMENTS IN BULGARIA

Stefan RALCHEV
Programme Director and Policy Analyst at the Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS) in Sofia, Bulgaria

Over the last couple of years, Bulgaria has witnessed a surge in popular action either on specific issues or in the form of persistent movements with deeper, structural demands. From environmental protests to wide upheavals instigated by unbearable utility prices to steady, persevering protest movements demanding clean politics and a new integrity – this reinvented civic engagement of the new Homo Civicus, the Civic Man. It has had its effect on decision- making, producing real changes in appointments, legislation and policies and even provoking mayoral and cabinet resignations. But most importantly, it has facilitated a new spirit of transparency and accountability in public life which, if it becomes the norm, will inevitably be conducive to better governance.

From Shale Gas to Ostavka (Resignation) A short chronology of protests in Bulgaria over the past several years is due. While popular action, especially linked with environmental issues, took place even before 2012,1 the starting point for the ‘awakening’ of citizens for more

Stefan Ralchev’s work focuses on regional relations, security, democracy and domestic political developments in the Balkans and the Black Sea region in the context of European integration. He also contributes to the activities of Transparency International – Bulgaria in projects promoting transparency and accountability in the Bulgarian political process. Stefan Ralchev holds a joint Master’s degree in Democracy and Human Rights in Sutheast Europe from the Universities of Bologna and Sarajevo and a BA in Political Science and International Relations from the American University in Bulgaria. 1 See for example Elitsa Grancharova. “Fifth Natura 2000 Protest in Bulgaria”. The Sofia Echo, 23 April 2007. Available at http://sofiaecho.com/2007/04/23/653711_fifth-natura-2000-protest-in- bulgaria. Or Elitsa Grancharova. “Environmentalists for Rila Campaign in Front of Barroso”. The Sofia Echo, 26 March 2008. Available at http://sofiaecho.com/2008/03/26/659263_environmentalists- for-rila-campaign-in-front-of-barroso.

147 active real engagement with politics was arguably the mass protests against shale gas exploration in early 2012.2 They took place in six major cities and involved thousands of people who feared shale gas extraction would poison underground waters, cause disease and even earthquakes. They called on a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – the method used for shale gas extraction. Despite some (not unfounded) claims that Russia had supported these protests financially in an effort to keep its monopoly over gas supplies in Bulgaria (it currently provides between 90% and 100% of the gas), the protests were to a great extent reflecting the general unpopularity of shale gas exploration in Bulgaria.3 The next major outbreak of public discontent was again linked with the environment. In June 2012 thousands of people blocked one of the busiest intersections in the capital Sofia, Orlov Most (Eagles’ Bridge), after the announcement of planned changes in the Forestry Act that would benefit ski resort owners to the detriment of Bulgarian forests and mountains. The changes would allow owners to build without a special permit for change-of-purpose, exposing mountains to the risk of over-development. The spontaneous protest action however had much deeper implications than just protecting the environment: it was in its essence a move against the lack of rule of law in Bulgaria and the absurd practice of adopting legal acts that benefit certain individuals, against the common good of society. The Orlov Most protest was the embryo of true civil society in Bulgaria which grew to become a powerful movement only a year later. Before this happened, an abrupt and extensive wave of mass protests had taken place in February 2013. They were prompted by an unexpected and widespread hike in central heating and electricity prices for households, most of them in the

2 “Bulgarians protest, seek moratorium on shale gas”. Reuters, 14 January 2012. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/14/us-bulgaria-shalegas-protests- idUSTRE80D0GU20120114. 3 See “             ? [Are the Russians organising the protests against shale gas?]”. E-vestnik, 16 January 2012. Available at http://e-vestnik.bg/13649.

148 poorer segments of society.4 Thousands poured onto the streets, and violence occurred in the form of clashes with the police. The protests’ message then evolved to become anti-oligarchy and anti-monopoly because the major utility companies were seen as representatives of those monopolies unfairly controlling the market and imposing ‘unbearable’ prices, and there were frequent calls for nationalisation and other populist measures. Although the February protests brought the then centre-right government down5 (Prime Minister Boyko Borisov acted shrewdly and decided to resign so as to avoid a sharp drop in the popularity of his GERB party in this tense situation and to boost his chances at a quick early poll), they were not anti-government in their initial messages: resignation calls were rare if non-existent, and the government’s resignation on 20 February came more or less as a surprise. The February upheaval also complied with a general trend regarding Bulgarian popular action in the transition years: it had been almost exclusively instigated by economic hardship and the fight for individual survival rather than by a perceived urgent need for more democracy and transparency.6 Nevertheless, these protests achieved some civic goals (see next section). One sad characteristic was several self- immolations that took place during the protests, notably the fatal case of Plamen Goranov in Varna.7

4 See more at Angel Krasimirov, “Tens of thousands join electricity protests across Bulgaria”, Reuters, 17 February 2013. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/17/us-bulgaria-protests- electricity-idUSBRE91G0C520130217. 5 Sam Cage and Tsvetelia Tsolova. “Bulgarian government resigns amid growing protests”, Reuters, 20 February 2013. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/us-bulgaria-government- idUSBRE91J09J20130220. 6 Notably, the 1989/90 rallies in the wake of the collapse of Communism were calling for real reform and democracy, but then it was more of an anti-Communist than a pro-democracy and participation effort. In 1997, when hyper-inflation hit Bulgaria and salaries and pensions plummeted to as low as $8 a month, people came out on the streets for economic reasons: it was the genuine revolution in Bulgaria (not the Communist party coup of 1989), yet it was inspired by poverty. February 2013 was again inspired by high prices of heating electricity and is falling more or less within the same classification type. 7 See Yavor Siderov. “What a terrible time for Europe to show Bulgaria the cold shoulder”. The Guardian, 6 March 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/06/bulgaria-europe-plamen-goranov.

149 The true awakening of Homo Civicus in Bulgaria, however, took place with the spontaneous, persistent and entirely political in nature protests that began in June 2013.8 They were not instigated by economic trouble: they were protests about values – against the questionable appointments of the then Socialist-led government and its reliance on the parliamentary support of a far-right, xenophobic and anti-European party, Ataka. The protests began on 14 June, 2013, after Parliament unexpectedly and without any debate appointed a controversial media mogul and well-connected figure among political and judiciary circles as chief of national counter-intelligence, the State Agency ‘State Security’ (DANS). The vote for Delyan Peevski was preceded by covert bargaining between and within the formally ruling parties, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, and the Movements for Rights and Freedoms, DPS. Some 10,000 people, predominantly young professionals in their thirties but also students and middle-aged people, gathered spontaneously in front of the government building in Sofia after organising in social networks to protest against the choice of Peevski for a post with such high clearance, as well as the lack of transparency in the appointment. As disputable appointments by PM Plamen Oresharski’s government on all levels of power continued and it became clear the xenophobic and populist Ataka party was giving a parliamentary shoulder to the two ruling parties (they only held 120 out of 240 seats), this initial spontaneous protest transformed into a mass movement involving daily marches of 5,000 to 15,000 people along the streets of Sofia. The demands grew from merely the removal of Peevski to the resignation of the weak government which had lost the little trust it had in the first place. Protests took place, though on a lower scale, in other major cities and received public backing from opposition politicians, intellectuals, academia and even some ambassadors of

8 See Tsvetelia Tsolova. “Bulgarians protest over media magnate as security chief”. Reuters, 14 June 2013. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/14/us-bulgaria-government- idUSBRE95D0ML20130614

150 EU member states.9 The numbers on the streets gradually diminished with the arrival of winter, but the general mood in Sofia was revolutionary, with outbursts of activity at every wrong step the government took. The protests had three major planks:
the blockade of Parliament on 23 July 2013 resulting in injured demonstrators;
the refusal of the Constitutional Court to remove Peevski as MP on 8 October; and
the student blockade of Sofia University on 28 October. In the meantime, activity in the virtual space did not lose intensity, with constant blogger, Facebook and Twitter posts with the hashtags #withMe (‘DANS with me’, referring to the security agency’s acronym in Cyrillic) and #NOresharski flooding both domestic and international feeds. Western European and American media also took an interest in the protests and regularly filed stories during the summer and autumn of 2013.10 The #withMe movement continued with lower intensity until the resignation of the Oresharski government on 23 July 2014.

The Homo Civicus Effect: instances of good governance as a result of popular action The rise in civic activities in Bulgaria in 2012-14 brought about a change in the attitude of those in power towards the people as sovereign, as well as concrete decisions in the direction of better governance. Higher popular involvement created a general atmosphere of increased transparency and accountability: the public reinvented its long abandoned role as a watchdog of decision-makers, and

9 “Bulgarian government denies traditional honour for outgoing French ambassador after his statement on protests”. The Sofia Globe, 3 September 2013. Available at http://sofiaglobe.com/2013/09/03/bulgarian-government-denies-traditional-honour-for-outgoing- french-ambassador-after-his-statement-on-protests/. 10 See for example Anthony Faiola and Paola Moura, “Middle-class rage sparks protest movements in Turkey, Brazil, Bulgaria and beyond”, The Washington Post, 25 June 2013, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/middle-class-rage-sparks-protest-movements-in- turkey-brazil-bulgaria-and-beyond/2013/06/28/9fb91df0-df61-11e2-8cf3-35c1113cfcc5_story.html; Thomas Roser, “Bulgariens Mächtige werden nicht gewinnen”, Die Zeit, 24 July 2013, available at http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2013-07/bulgarien-volksaufstand-mafia; “Birth of a civil society”, The Economist, 21 September 2013, available at http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21586571- will-bulgarians-daily-protests-have-lasting-impact-birth-civil-society.

151 the government started acting in full awareness of potential popular anger at every step which citizens perceived as harmful to the public interest. What Robert Putnam proved empirically in his seminal study on the regions of Italy in the late 20th century, that engaged and more active citizenry leads to better governance, had its expression in Bulgaria during and after the surge of popular action in 2012-14.11 The culmination of these processes was, as mentioned above, the June movement of 2013-14.

Homo Civicus (Re)Born, in June The #withMe movement deserves special attention as an embodiment of heightened civic engagement in Bulgaria, resulting in better governance. The anti-Peevski protests quickly became anti-government and demanded the immediate resignation of the cabinet and parliament and another early election; at the same time, they denounced the previous government led by GERB, too, as also responsible for the status quo, demonstrating their non-partisan nature. They were against the vile interconnectedness between shady business and politics, against the oligarchies and monopolies commanding huge sections of the economy and for more transparency and accountability. The June movement was carried out largely by middle-class, relatively well-educated people who relied on their own capabilities to succeed in life but who were grossly frustrated by the actions of the government and its unwillingness to hear what they have to say. It was a separate, detached phenomenon from the economically-driven events of February of the same year and, indeed, all civic actions before that. In that sense, the June movement can be regarded as the true birth of civil society in post-transition Bulgaria. The people refused to elect leaders, a potential weakness of every civic movement if it wanted an effective political change; the

11 Robert D. Putnam, Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1993).

152 protests were amorphous and individualistic in nature. It may be said that the emergence of Homo Civicus had stopped short of becoming Homo Politicus. Yet the sole existence of the June movement, the daily pressure it exerted on decision-makers and institutions and the positive effects of that pressure gave a new meaning to participation and civic engagement in Bulgaria. What made the June protest special is:

It was about values not prices; that is, the participants were not seeking economic privileges but addressing a huge democratic deficit;
It was overwhelmingly peaceful in nature with few exceptions;
It had worldwide support: Bulgarians in more than 30 cities around the globe were protesting every Sunday in support of their friends in Bulgaria;
It had international support within Bulgaria and the EU: the European Commission, German, French, Dutch and Belgian ambassadors in Sofia expressed their support, something unprecedented and going beyond the diplomatic tone;
It had made massive use of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, with the hashtags #withMe and #NOresharski used intensely and universally;
It was socially responsible: water and flowers were distributed among the guarding police as a sign of solidarity with them; charity funds were collected for injured miners; and garbage duly collected in designated areas after each protest, leaving the ground even cleaner than before the event.
Its specific weaknesses were that it was not able to produce leaders and that it was mostly urban in nature, with Sofia and a couple of other big cities protesting and small towns and villages mostly unaware of what was happening.

Yet the most important asset of the June movement was the emergence of the new Bulgarian Homo Civicus who has been having a real impact on decision- making. Until then, the average, potentially active and middle-class urban citizen aged between 20 and 40 had been living in complacency: with the 1997

153 sharp improvement of the economic situation, integration into the EU, the ability sharp improvement of the economic situation, integration into the EU, the ability to travel to Western Europe without a visa and the relative easiness in achieving to travel to Western Europe without a visa and the relative easiness in achieving a decent standard of living with fair, hard work, the average citizen was a decent standard of living with fair, hard work, the average citizen was gradually detached from public life and disaffected with politics, leaving the gradually detached from public life and disaffected with politics, leaving the ruling elite unaccountable and prone to corruption. This left a huge gap between ruling elite unaccountable and prone to corruption. This left a huge gap between politicians and their sovereign – the people. After 2012 and especially after June politicians and their sovereign – the people. After 2012 and especially after June 2013, the sovereign has been awakened. Every successive government, even if 2013, the sovereign has been awakened. Every successive government, even if formed by the very same parties who were in power in June 2013, would most formed by the very same parties who were in power in June 2013, would most likely have to comply in its actions and policies with the pressure from the re- likely have to comply in its actions and policies with the pressure from the re- born Homo Civicus. born Homo Civicus. The concrete examples of positive change stemming from heightened civic The concrete examples of positive change stemming from heightened civic engagement in Bulgaria can be grouped into the following categories: engagement in Bulgaria can be grouped into the following categories:
legal action;

legallarge action;projects;

largeappointments; projects;

appointments;resignations of key decision-makers; and

resignationspolitical consolidation of key decision-makers; and maturity of and parties.
Legalpolitical Action consolidation and maturity of parties. LegalLegal Actionactions have resulted from popular pressure in the form of new legislation Legal actions have resulted from popular pressure in the form of new legislation (or relinquishing legislation deemed wrong by the citizens); no-confidence votes (or relinquishing legislation deemed wrong by the citizens); no-confidence votes for incumbents; and withdrawal of immunities of MPs. In January 2012, the then for incumbents; and withdrawal of immunities of MPs. In January 2012, the then centre-right GERB party majority in parliament imposed a moratorium on shale centre-right GERB party majority in parliament imposed a moratorium on shale gas exploration following growing protests throughout the country.12 This ban gas exploration following growing protests throughout the country.12 This ban came in an already existing general atmosphere defined by suspensions of came in an already existing general atmosphere defined by suspensions of construction on the Black Sea coastline after environmentalist protests for construction on the Black Sea coastline after environmentalist protests for violation of the EU’s Natura 2000 nature protection programme. After the violation of the EU’s Natura 2000 nature protection programme. After the spontaneous protests against the planned amendments to the Forestry Act of spontaneous protests against the planned amendments to the Forestry Act of June 2012, the GERB government delayed its adoption, the President vetoed the June 2012, the GERB government delayed its adoption, the President vetoed the act and a process of consultation was launched with citizens, experts, investors act and a process of consultation was launched with citizens, experts, investors

12 “Bulgaria bans shale oil and gas drilling”. Reuters, 18 January 2012. Available at 12http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/bulgaria-shalegas-ban-idUSL6E8CI2ML20120118 “Bulgaria bans shale oil and gas drilling”. Reuters, 18 January 2012. Available at . http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/bulgaria-shalegas-ban-idUSL6E8CI2ML20120118.

154 and other stakeholders.13 In the course of the # withMe protest movement against the BSP and DPS-backed government of PM Oresharski from June 2013 to July 2014, the then opposition GERB party filed a total of five no-confidence votes against the cabinet.14 Albeit unsuccessful, the motions were a political continuation of the will of the citizens voiced every day in front of the parliament building, and given the minority nature of government, they definitely unnerved the ruling establishment. Also as result of public pressure from the June movement Volen Siderov, the leader of the xenophobic Ataka party informally backing the Oresharski government, was forced to cede his immunity as MP and face charges for hooliganism by the Prosecutor’s Office.15 And finally, after social network publications and authored pieces in the media by representatives of the June protest movement, the newly elected Bulgarian parliament in October 2014 rejected a law that envisaged the use of taxpayers’ money for the bail-out of the country’s fourth largest bank.16

Large Projects Two big projects which were earmarked as priorities by BSP in their election campaign failed to see progress under the BSP-led Oresharski government – the Russian-backed Belene nuclear power plant project and the Bulgarian section of

13 See Alex Bivol, “Bulgarian Government moves to quell protests over Forestry Act”, The Sofia Echo, 15 June 2012, available at http://sofiaglobe.com/2012/06/15/bulgarian-government-moves-to- quell-protests-over-forestry-act/, and Hristina Dimitrova, “Bulgarian President vetoes Forestry Act amendments”, The Sofia Globe, 16 June 2912, available at http://sofiaglobe.com/2012/06/16/president-rossen-plevneliev-vetoes-the-forestry-act/. 14 See for example Elizabeth Konstantinova, “Bulgaria's Cabinet Survives Fourth No-Confidence Vote”, Bloomberg, 30 May 2014, available at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-30/bulgaria- s-cabinet-survives-fourth-no-confidence-vote.html. 15 See Sam Bell, “Volen Siderov: Bulgaria’s far right psychopath”, CafeBabel, 13 March 2014, available at http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/politics/article/volen-siderov-bulgarias-far-right- psychopath.html. 16 See “ : # !  [Facebook: #Weshallnotpay]”, Dnevnik, 14 July 2014, available at http://www.dnevnik.bg/bulgaria/2014/07/14/2343169_feisbuk_niamadaplatim/; “         [New protests and blocked traffic in front of Parliament]”, Novini.bg 31 October 2014, available at http://www.novini.bg/; Elizabeth Konstantinova, “Bulgarian Parliament Rejects Plan to Bail Out Corporate Bank”, Bloomberg, 31 October 2014, available at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/bulgarian-parliament-rejects-plan-to-bail-out-corporate- bank.html.

155 Russia’s South Stream natural gas pipeline.17 While the strained financial and economic situation continuing following the 2008-09 downturn may have been one reason for this, another strong factor was the constant pressure from the June protest movement on every government plan aimed at incurring additional debt (both projects involved sizeable Russian state loans, which would mean significant commitment of resources from the Bulgarian state budget in the long term). In fact the bloodiest day of protest in the summer of 2013, when clashes occurred between demonstrators and the police in the midst of a parliament blockade, was about a planned budget revision that involved an opening for new 1.0 billion lev (500 million) debt of the government.18

Appointments The #withMe movement was conceived as a protest against a controversial appointment (that of Peevski as DANS chief), and public discontent against appointments of disputable figures was expressed both before and after June 2013. And in all instances it was conducive to change. Oresharski was forced to substitute his nominee for an investment projects minister, Kalin Tiholov, in May 2013 after a public uproar against Tiholov’s alleged violation of environment laws in the Black Sea coast area.19 Under massive street pressure, Parliament cancelled the appointment of Delyan Peevski, the symptomatic security agency chief that drove tens of thousand to the streets on 14 June, five days after it voted him in.20 And one day later PM Oresharski

17 Preparation activities for South Stream such as land appropriation and even some procurement orders took place throughout 2013 and 2014 despite warnings of the European Commission that the project did not comply with EU regulations. But Oresharski had to officially announce suspension of the project in June 2014 under the pressure from both Brussels and public opinion. 18 “Bulgaria protesters block parliament in Sofia unrest”. BBC News, 23 July 2013. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-23428628. 19 Clive Leviev-Sawyer. “Socialist PM-designate Oresharski names new candidate investment projects minister”. The Sofia Globe, 28 May 2013. Available at http://sofiaglobe.com/2013/05/28/socialist-pm- designate-oresharski-names-new-candidate-investment-projects-minister/. 20 “When protests succeed: Bulgarian street anger claims another victory”. Euronews, 19 June 2013. Available at http://www.euronews.com/2013/06/19/with-peevski-out-after-five-days-of-protests-what- is-next-for-bulgaria/.

156 dismissed Ivan Ivanov as deputy interior minister because of allegations he had ties with racketeering gangs back in the 1990s.21

Resignations Increased civic engagement in 2012-14 also caused several major public figures to resign from their posts. Despite the essence of the February 2013 protests as economically-motivated, they had also a purely civic and political impact. For one, the then-PM Boyko Borisov resigned, after a couple of days of upheaval involving serious clashes between police and demonstrators and injuries on both sides. Although he had done some calculations that resigning then rather than waiting for the regular election a couple of months later would keep his ratings higher, he genuinely believed violence cannot be tolerated on the streets and a resignation was due as a way to stop unnecessary consequences.22 These protests also brought down the long-standing mayor of Varna, notorious among his fellow-citizens for ties with shady business but re-elected for the post each time with the support of a different political party. Kiril Yordanov announced his resignation “on the day of national mourning for Plamen Goranov, the 36-year- old whose fatal self-immolation became a symbol of civic and political pressure for Yordanov to step down.”23 And finally, arguably the most anticipated resignation, that of PM Plamen Oresharski, became a fact in July 2014 after more than a year of #withMe protests on the streets of Sofia.24 Although the concrete cause of Oresharski’s resignation was the loss of trust between

21 “Bulgaria PM Ready to Dismiss Any Suspicious Appointees”. Novinite.com, 20 June 2013. Available at http://www.novinite.com/articles/151403/Bulgaria+PM+Ready+to+Dismiss+Any+Suspicious+Appoin tees. 22 See Sam Cage and Tsvetelia Tsolova, “Bulgarian government resigns amid growing protests”, Reuters, 20 February 2013, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/us-bulgaria- government-idUSBRE91J09J20130220. 23 “Kiril Yordanov, mayor of Bulgaria’s Varna, resigns”. The Sofia Globe, 6 March 2013. Available at http://sofiaglobe.com/2013/03/06/kiril-yordanov-mayor-of-bulgarias-varna-resigns/. 24 “Socialist-backed Oresharski Cabinet resigns in Bulgaria”. Deutsche Welle, 23 July 2014. Available at http://www.dw.de/socialist-backed-oresharski-cabinet-resigns-in-bulgaria/a-17803242.

157 government partners BSP and DPS after the former’s disastrous show in the European Parliament elections of May 2014, most observers agree that the longer process that inevitably led to this outcome was the consistent and devoted civic engagement demonstrated by the June movement.25

Political Consolidation and Maturity The June movement served as a catalyst for the formation of political coalitions which as a rule became more open and responsive to the demands of the citizenry. This is especially true for the right-of-centre political spectrum, which has traditionally been fragmented or dominated by the GERB party with its sometimes populist (as opposed to civic) leanings. The May 2013 early parliamentary election, the sequel to the February mass protests against utility prices and PM Borisov’s resignation, produced a hung parliament characterised by unprecedented homogeneity: only four parties cleared the 4% threshold, leaving more than one million people who voted for centre-right parties unrepresented. When the Oresharski government, a product of this kind of parliament, took office and started unnerving the public with its controversial appointments and policies, it was the centre-right voters who were most infuriated of all. The demands for representation and fairness of the centre-right segment in the subsequent June protest movement was the trigger that made all major, reform-oriented rightist parties who failed to make the threshold in May sit together and negotiate a new coalition to debut in Bulgarian politics in the subsequent early election. This union of parties was called the Reformist Bloc and included remnants from the traditional right which ruled Bulgaria during the reformist 1997-2001 period as well as prospective parties formed afterwards. Although their path for intensified partnership has been rough, the Reformist

25 See for example Nikolay Nikolov, “How long does it take to overcome an anti-democratic regime - lessons from Bulgaria”, Open Democracy, 24 July 2014, available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/nikolay-nikolov/how-long-does-it-take-to- overcome-antidemocratic-regime-lessons-f.

158 Bloc made a decent showing in the European Parliament election of May 2014, sending one MEP, and a more than satisfactory show in the early parliamentary election of October 2014, polling 8.9% of the vote with 23 MPs.26 It is now the junior partner in the ruling coalition with GERB, which is also supported by two other parties. Another expression of the benign effect of civic engagement on Bulgarian politics is the manner and tone in which the negotiation for the ruling coalition after the October 2014 vote took place. In an extremely difficult situation totally opposed to what the previous parliament was – eight parties made the 4% threshold this time raising representation but producing an unprecedentedly fragmented assembly with minuscule chances for a stable majority – GERB initiated consecutive negotiations with all parties to discuss chances for a ‘salvation’ majority in view of the dire financial and economic state of the country. The talks were calm, respectful, based on comparison of political platforms and mindful of the responsibility each party had been endowed with by being sent to parliament by the voters. 27 The key factor for this new spirit in politics was popular engagement during the previous two previous years: politicians knew that petty bickering or any irresponsible behaviour on their part in the face of a bank crisis, suspended EU structural funds and a real threat for gas shortages during the winter because of the crisis in Ukraine would once again easily drive people on to the streets.28

26 For good analyses of the 5 October election see “Experts react: 2014 Bulgarian parliamentary elections”, Europp Blog, London School of Economics and Political Science, available at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/10/07/experts-react-2014-bulgarian-parliamentary-elections/. 27 Tsvetelia Tsolova and Angel Krasimirov. “Bulgaria’s Borisov plasters together coalition government”. Reuters, 6 November 2014. Available at http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/11/06/bulgaria-government- idUKL6N0SW56V20141106. 28 See “EC suspends funding for Bulgaria’s environment operational programme – reports”, The Sofia Globe, 17 November 2013, available at http://sofiaglobe.com/2013/11/17/ec-suspends-funding-for- bulgarias-environment-operational-programme-reports/; Georgi Kantchev, “Caught in Indecision, Bulgarian Government Is Urged to Solve Banking Crisis”, The New York Times, 4 August 2014, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/business/international/Bulgaria-Under-Pressure-on- Corporate-Commercial-Bank.html; Sean Carney, “Central, East Europe Brace for Energy Shortages as Russian Gas Flows Fall”, The Wall Street Journal, 12 September 2014, available at

159

Conclusion Starting from 2012 up until the present, Bulgaria has witnessed an upsurge in civic participation expressed in numerous popular actions, protest movements and constant engagement with and critique of the ruling elite in the virtual space. This heightened activity was in fact the rebirth of true civil society in Bulgaria after the harsh and controversial transition years after the collapse of totalitarianism in 1989. More precisely, it is a triumph of the engaged individual in the modern digital era – the Bulgarian Homo Civicus. Problems persist but undoubtedly this new civic energy has brought about positive changes in the democratic discourse and politics in the country – laws have been slammed, unfavourable projects abandoned and governments have fallen under the watch of the newly engaged sovereign. However, the most important effect of the protest years of 2012-14 has been the newly established general spirit of transparency and accountability of those in power, which had all but disappeared in the late 1990s and early 2000s. If the vigilance of reinvented civil society in Bulgaria persists and this spirit is transformed into norm, the inevitable effect will be a better governed and more successful entity.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/eastern-europe-braces-for-energy-shortages-as-russian-gas-flows-fall- 1410517559.

160 ENVIRONMENTS: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE Alexandra DANCASIU Executive Board, Institute for Go-Governance, Vienna Environments1 can mean different things to different people. For instance, we talk about environment, when describing our general or immediate surroundings. Then there is the natural environment in its ecological dimension with climate, weather, and natural resources.2 Then, we live in a specific time, culture and society, with various relationships and institutions, which all form together another kind of environment, our social environment.3 The many levels and meanings of environment can be summed up by the plural, environments. The apparent complexity of the term may be a challenge for analysis for different disciplines, which would require first a concrete definition in order to explain the object of research, and the context. Nevertheless, for this paper, the wide range of the term is indeed the essence of the topic, which I will discuss. Hence, I will continue without introducing one specific environment and with it a definition of the term right at the beginning of the paper.

In order to protect our environments a holistic approach seems suitable and necessary for recognizing the above-mentioned complexity. With this in mind, the idea of the three pillars of sustainability and with it the concept of constant and equal sustainable development on all three levels, including the social, economic and environmental pillars, seems a suitable model for protecting our environment on every level. Therefore it is no surprise that the United Nations (UN) has declared this comprehensive concept of the three pillars of sustainability in its 2005 World Summit Outcome a necessary framework for

1 I would like to thank Dr. Josef Mantl, Al Gore Climate Leader, Communication Entrepreneur and Deputy of the Institute for Go-Governance in Vienna for his significant contribution in researching the topics covered in this paper and assisting with its completion and finalization. 2 See Donald L. Johnson et al. Meanings of Environmental Terms, Journal of Environmental Quality, May 1997, Vol. 26 No. 3, 581–589. 3 See Elizabeth Barnett and Michele Casper, A Definition of “Social Environment”, American Journal of Public Health, March 2001, Vol. 91, No. 3. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446600/pdf/11249033.pdf

161 international politics and activities when addressing the world’s development: “We reaffirm that development is a central goal in itself and that sustainable development in its economic, social and environmental aspects constitutes a key element of the overarching framework of United Nations activities.”4 Hence, this definition and acknowledgment by the UN is a further argument for the complex and interlinked levels of environment, leading to the plural of the term environment. The natural environment is connected to the social environment just as much as the other way around. A region such as the Black Sea clearly shows this interconnection and the urgency for participation.

Environment, Participation and Multi-level Governance

When we talk about development and change, the idea and definition of sustainable development, as introduced by the Brundtland Report Our Common Future in 1987, introduces the concept of development under the paradigm of intergenerational equity.5 With this in mind, our environments are connected or affected by an additional important level, namely time. Our environments change. They develop. We change. We develop. And we are all interlinked, living in our social, economic and environmental world, today and tomorrow. Now, this might not be any news, but we often seem to forget that we actively shape the environments, which some of us so passively live in. Hence, there is a chance and some would argue, a responsibility towards our society, economy and our environment, to participate and contribute the best we can. This is not a moral call to act and go out and change the world, but rather a positive approach to the possibility itself to act on so many different levels and to shape any kind of environment - today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

4 United Nations General Assembly, 2005 World Summit Outcome, Resolution A/60/1, adopted by the General Assembly on September 15, 2005. Accessed December 20, 2014. http://data.unaids.org/Topics/UniversalAccess/worldsummitoutcome_resolution_24oct2005_en.pdf 5 See United Nations, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, General Assembly Resolution 42/187, December 11, 1987. Accessed December 20, 2014. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/42/ares42-187.htm.

162 Multi-level governance is a concept and term for the development of various levels of government as a result of decentralization of power that has taken place in many countries especially over the last decades. Again, this concept seems complex and hard to grasp with its wide range of stakeholders who shape governments on vertical and horizontal levels. 6 This agglomeration of participants in our environments can be perceived as a challenge to political analysis and other disciplines, which try to understand social dynamics, environmental problems and conflicts. Nevertheless, as stated in my introduction, my goal here is neither to define a specific environment or stakeholders nor to link them to any kind of argument or chain of causation. The fact is that our natural environment has changed rapidly and negatively over the last years and with it our climate. Even more so, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has convincingly shown that climate change and environmental degradation, with all its negative effects on our environments, is vastly related to anthropogenic cause. 7 Since our natural and social environments are connected on various levels, bringing the complex list of participants of multi-level governance to act on behalf of a sustainable development has shaped great ideas and initiatives for the protection of our society, economy and environment all together.

Multi-level governance introduces a vertical and horizontal level full of stakeholders, who influence the three pillars of sustainable development together with and parallel to traditional government. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has acknowledged the potential of multi-level governance action to address different topics e.g. public investment, regional development, urban development, regulatory policy as well

6 See OECD, Multi-level governance and Public Finance. Accessed December 21, 2014. http://www.oecd.org/gov/regional-policy/multi-levelgovernance.htm 7 See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Accessed December 21, 2014. http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI12Doc2b_FinalDraft_All. pdf.

163 as environmental issues such as climate change. To give an overview, I want to introduce both, vertical and horizontal level, in accordance with the OECD definitions. The vertical dimension refers to the linkages between different levels of government from international to national, regional, local including their institutional, financial, and informational sides such as the economy and civil society. The horizontal dimension refers to co-operation arrangements between different states, regions etc.8

As mentioned above, this paper is about the possibilities of participation. Hence, instead of pointing the finger at those, who seemingly contribute to the degradation of our environment, I prefer focusing on best practices. On that note, I want to present two innovative examples of effective collaboration and participation between levels of government, which shape and contribute to our environment. Even more so, they each represent two traditional stakeholders with new ways of participation to our environments. First, I will show that budgetary aid for saving the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) cultural heritage sites in Italy has come from no-one less than Giorgio Armani as well as from other big names of the fashion industry. Who would have thought that fashion would assist the government in saving its, or rather, our cultural heritage? My second example will shed some light on traditional government in its role as a big innovator that has not only formed laws for innovation hubs like the Silicon Valley, but has also shaped the ground for entrepreneurs and start-ups.

I. What do UNESCO and the Fashion Industry have in common?

According to UNESCO, Italy is home to fifty historical and natural world heritages. This cultural treasure is evidence of our history and civilization.

8 See OECD, op. cit.

164 Hence, its protection should be self-evident. However, two enemies appeared making the protection of the UNESCO world heritage sites a real challenge for the Italian government. On the one hand, time has taken its toll on the sites, and on the other, the lack of funding prevents the application of necessary measurements which could slow down the deterioration caused by time and weather. The Italian government spends only a fraction of its budget on art preservation. Efforts to attract private donations to support the arts has failed so far, due to the country's tax system, which does not favour charitable contributions, but rather sets up bureaucratic obstacles. Where the Italian government has failed to protect, another stakeholder steps in. Unexpectedly help for the common good arrives from the fashion industry. Italian National Trust (FAI), which is responsible for much of that national inheritance, is being helped by famous and traditional Italian fashion houses and families like Trussardi, Zegna and Max Mara Maramotti families. Thanks to the Zegna and Giorgio Armani FAI projects, including the restoration of Milan's famous modernist Villa Necchi, as well as the Abbey of San Fruttuoso, near Portofino, could be realized. In addition to this philanthropic gesture and contribution to the social environment, there is a great opportunity for the fashion houses to boost their image and link their brands to culture and art. Despite the controversial marketing and advertising strategy of the fashion industry it is nevertheless a good opportunity for a government to welcome the industry’s money, in order to save cultural heritage and with it, sharing the responsibility of the government towards culture and art as common goods.9

II. The State as the Big Innovator.

9 See Christina Binkley, Preservation, Italian Style, The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2012. Accessed December 23, 2014. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324894104578115292142288024

165 Uncle Sam invented the iPhone. Well, not exactly. However, the development of essential features that make the iPhone the well-known smartphone and favourite gadget of the 21st century society were publicly funded. For example, the iPhone’s touchscreen technology was created by the company FingerWorks, which was founded by a professor at the publicly funded University of Delaware and one of his doctoral candidates, who additionally received public grants from the National Science Foundation. And then there is SIRI. The iPhone’s voice- recognizing intelligent personal assistant feature has its technological roots in an artificial-intelligence project funded by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is no less than an agency of the United States Department of Defence. These technologies and innovations are best practice examples par excellence, since many stakeholders of different levels of government participated in the development of the successful iPhone. Many think of the state in the neoclassical economic sense as a slow, inefficient and bureaucratic entity, whose main economic duty is to correct market failures. This may seem true enough on some levels. But the state itself is a big complex entity consisting again of many levels and participants. Thus, it should not be a surprise that the state is also investing in public goods such as innovation and technology at an early stage. As a further step, companies pick up marketable outcomes of these researches and develop together with engineers and venture capitalists a product. But indeed, when entering an Apple shop, that last thing that would cross my mind, while being mesmerized by the “i-gadgets” on display, would be that the government had something to do with such a trendy and state of the art technology. The government is an important participant and driver of the market, which can support innovation, technologies and markets that help fight social challenges such as climate change and others. In this

166 example, funding and support comes from the state and on behalf of industry, economy and innovation.10

Shaping our environments can be seen as an obligation we have towards our natural and social environments or simply as a possibility to interact with our environments: different cultures, societies, countries, regions, nature, you name it. In this sense, I want to leave you with the two inspirational examples mentioned above indicating solutions and possibilities to participate in environments, which we would not have interfered with at first but which merged into fruitful solutions for all the participants. In regions such as the Black Sea where environments of different dimensions present a challenge there may be some hope, some lessons and a new way forward.

10 See Mariana Mazzucato, The Innovative State, Foreign Affairs, January 4, 2015. Accessed January 4, 2015. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142496/mariana-mazzucato /the-innovative-state.

167