Coalition Politics in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada
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Running Header: Coalition Politics in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada As the Post-Soviet World Turns: Coalition Politics in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada from 2006-Present By Jillian Kozyra Nr1072144 Masters thesis written under the supervision of dr hab. Marek Kucia, prof. UJ September 2012 Krakow, Poland Coalition Politics in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their many different ways of assisting me in writing this thesis: my adviser, dr. hab. Marek Kucia, for his support and trust along the way; my parents for scaring me into actually writing this, and for tempering the threats with patience as I muddled along; my big little sister, Alexandra, for many amusing stories and Skype chats with Sophie to keep my morale up; my little little sister, Nia, for providing a welcome distraction from work and adulthood, and for giving me glasses of water garnished with cheese for sustenance while I frantically wrote; Mairéad, my “other mother”, for allowing me to write in the most beautiful place imaginable, and for teaching me the fiddle to calm me down between bouts of writing; all of the the Mooneys, especially Ann and Granny, + Howard, for being my adoptive family and helping to keep me sane through their confidence in my abilities; Kirsty, for the panicked but encouraging, and always entertaining, marathon-writing-session gchats; Ronan, for helping me to actually get responses to the survey questionnaire; Jackie, for jokingly suggesting the first part of my title, never expecting that I’d actually keep it; and Blondie, for the constant cuddles , which I’m receiving even as I write this. Coalition Politics in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada 3 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 2: A General Theory of Coalition Behaviour & Literature Review .............................................. 8 Conditions encouraging coalition formation ......................................................................................................... 9 The episodic condition .................................................................................................................................................... 10 The redistributive condition ........................................................................................................................................ 18 Coalition formation under the redistributive and episodic conditions ..................................................... 21 Actor size and distribution of benefits ..................................................................................................................... 23 Strategic behaviour in coalitions: the redistributive equation .................................................................... 25 Risk-taking and need for achievement .................................................................................................................... 32 Organisation and success .............................................................................................................................................. 34 Coalition termination ..................................................................................................................................................... 35 Summary .............................................................................................................................................................................. 36 Chapter 3: The Ukrainian Context, 2002-present .............................................................................................. 38 Why Ukraine? ..................................................................................................................................................................... 38 The Actors ............................................................................................................................................................................ 41 The Coalition Environment .......................................................................................................................................... 59 Summary .............................................................................................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 4: Data and Analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 68 Size .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 68 Strategic Behaviour ......................................................................................................................................................... 80 Risk, success, and the need for achievement ......................................................................................................... 90 Chapter 5: Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................... 103 Conclusions about coalition politics ...................................................................................................................... 103 Implications for Ukraine ............................................................................................................................................ 106 Predictions for Ukraine’s political future ............................................................................................................ 107 Appendix I: Ukraine Election Results, 1998-2007 ......................................................................................... 109 Appendix II: Glossary of Party Names and Acronyms .................................................................................. 111 Appendix III: Maps ....................................................................................................................................................... 112 Appendix IV: Research Design ................................................................................................................................ 114 Appendix V: The Survey Questionnaire .............................................................................................................. 116 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................................... 121 Coalition Politics in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada 4 Chapter 1: Introduction In any multi-party system, the coalitions become an essential part of the political process. Not just the formation of a coalition, but its maintenance and termination as well, are all extremely important parts a political system’s activities, with conseQuences extending beyond the activities of the coalition and impacting the future successes and political influence of the parties within the system. In fact, all three phases of a coalition’s life cycle – the formation phase, the maintenance phase, and the termination phase – are all interconnected, and therefore, when examining one phase of a coalition, it is necessary to take in to account the other two phases for completeness. The goal of this study is to evaluate Bruce Bueno de MesQuita’s theory of coalition behaviour, as detailed in his 1971 book Strategy Risk and Personality in Coalition Politics: The Case of India, in the context of present-day Ukraine. This theory takes an iterative approach to coalition behaviour, making the assumption that an actor’s actions in one particular coalition have an impact on that actor’s future political influence, as well as its potential for membership in new, later coalitions. Because of this assumption, extreme behaviour is not generally in the best interest of the actor, if it wants to preserve its options for future coalition membership. Cooperative behaviour – consistently sacrificing individual goals in favour of the collective coalition ones – is not the best strategy for actors who are looking to increase their long-term political influence; however, it is the best strategy for actors who are looking to maximise their chances of inclusion in future coalitions. Consistent competitive behaviour, on the other hand, is the best strategy for maximising short-term gains, but can Quickly lead to exclusion from coalitions, minimising the amount of long-term gains to be had. According to Bueno de MesQuita, the ideal strategy is the so-called mixed strategy, a mixture of competitiveness and cooperativeness. Coalition Politics in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada 5 The theory set forth in Chapter 2 makes it possible to evaluate the ideal strategies that actors should follow in order to maximise their long-term or short-term benefits in a specific situation. However, it also makes it possible to establish why some actors may choose to apply a different strategy in a particular coalition situation. This is done by creating a model to link an actor’s need for achievement with its risk-taking preferences. The resulting model manages to explain the effects that certain strategies have on the fortunes of an actor, as well as the strategic preferences of party elites. The Ukrainian context was chosen for both its similarities