Copyright by Regina Rose Goodnow 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Regina Rose Goodnow Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Post-Soviet Super-Presidentialism: Explaining Constitutional Choice in Russia and Ukraine Committee: Robert Moser, Supervisor Catherine Boone Zachary Elkins Thomas Garza Ami Pedahzur Post-Soviet Super-Presidentialism: Explaining Constitutional Choice in Russia and Ukraine by Regina Rose Goodnow, B.A.; M.P.Aff.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2013 Dedication In memory of my compassionate, talented, and adventurous brother, David Goodnow (November 14, 1983 – May 16, 2006), who inspired me to take a road less traveled. Acknowledgements I cannot thank my professors, family, and friends enough for their guidance and support throughout this stretch of my life in graduate school. I was fortunate to be advised from the beginning by Rob Moser. I could not have asked for a better adviser for both the practical and substantive aspects of every step in this lengthy and often difficult process. I am also grateful for the insights into comparative politics that I gained from my professors in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. They taught me new ways to view the world. My family and friends gave me much-needed moral support for this journey. I could not have succeeded otherwise. I am also grateful to the organizations that funded my research. The Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Program made two years of research and language training in Russia and Ukraine possible. The Department of Government at the University of Texas also supported many semesters of study through fellowships and teaching assistantships. I am humbled by the support of my work. v Post-Soviet Super-Presidentialism: Explaining Constitutional Choice in Russia and Ukraine Regina Rose Goodnow, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Robert G. Moser Abstract: The Russian and Ukrainian constitutions—like those in many other post-Soviet states—have concentrated political power in exclusive “super” presidencies. However, the concentration of power has persisted in only one of the two cases. Russian presidential authority was resilient in the face of attempts to increase legislative strength in the 1990s, even when severe economic and political crises undermined the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. In contrast, Ukrainian presidential power fluctuated over time, with “Orange Revolution” constitutional reforms shifting power to the parliament in 2004 and their annulment returning power to the president in 2010. What explains the different trajectories of Russia’s and Ukraine’s presidential systems? Using process-tracing to parse out the actions of elites during the 1990s and 2000s in combination with analyses of the electoral foundations of elite competition in the two cases, this dissertation develops an argument about the origins of super-presidential systems and the prospects for constitutional change in such systems. Concentrated executive power in Russia and Ukraine: (1) depended on elites’ preferences for more or less concentrated political authority; (2) these preferences depended on how elites perceived their political prospects for capturing and holding presidential power; (3) elites’ perceptions of their prospects for gaining and holding presidential power were conditioned by the relative balance of power vi between major political forces; and (4) this balance of power was very vulnerable to pressure from social forces. It was this final factor that distinguished the Ukrainian and Russian cases. Ukraine had more balanced political competition because of its coherent ethno-linguistic cleavage, and consequently more uncertainty about rival elites’ political fortunes, which produced challenges to super-presidentialism. Russia’s experience with regional politics, by contrast, has not produced a similarly stable balance of power between rival forces, because the country’s minority groups were too diverse and dispersed to form a unified constituency that could challenge the political dominance of the center. The structural underpinnings of elite competition help to explain why the preferences of self-interested politicians to concentrate or disperse political power changed over time in ways that promoted unstable super-presidentialism in Ukraine compared to much more durable super-presidentialism in Russia. vii Table of Contents List of Tables ...........................................................................................................x List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction ...........................................................................................1 Constitutional Design and Change in New Democracies ...............................2 The Cases and Methods of Analysis ...............................................................5 Building the Argument ...................................................................................8 Overview of the Dissertation ........................................................................16 Chapter 2: From Exogenous to Endogenous Constitutions ..................................18 Defining Key Terms: Parliamentarism, Presidentialism, Semi-presidentialism, and Super-presidentialism ....................................................................19 Constitutional Design: Conditions That Promote Success or Failure ...........30 Explaining Constitutional Choice .................................................................37 Chapter 3: The Process of Constitutional Creation in Ukraine ..............................49 Time 1: Conceptualizing an Independent State ............................................57 Time 2: Independence and Constitutional Stalemate....................................60 Time 3: The First Constitutional Bargain .....................................................66 Time 4: A New Constitutional Bargain ........................................................75 Time 5: The Return of the Strong Executive ................................................80 Conclusion: Prospects for Constitutional Change ........................................84 Chapter 4: The Process of Constitutional Creation in Russia ...............................87 Time 1: Soviet Disintegration and Russian Statehood .................................90 Time 2: Constitutional Bargaining in the New Russian State ......................95 Time 3: Constitutional Crisis and Super-presidentialism ...........................105 Time 4: Challenges to Super-presidentialism ............................................113 Conclusion: Super-presidential Durability and Democratic Decline ..........122 Chapter 5: The Structure of Constitutional Creation in Russia and Ukraine .......126 The Social Bases of Elite Competition: Class versus Ethnicity .................131 viii Data and Methodological Approach ...........................................................134 Analyzing Voter Characteristics and Vote Choice in Ukraine ...................137 The Ecological Inference Solution............................................140 Multilevel Models of Candidate Support ..................................151 Analyzing Voter Characteristics and Vote Choice in Russia .....................159 The Ecological Inference Solution............................................160 Multilevel Models of Candidate Support ..................................165 Conclusion: The Structure behind Concentrated versus Shared Political Power in Ethnically Heterogeneous States ...................................................167 Chapter 6: Conclusion.........................................................................................170 Political Competition and Constitutional Outcomes in the Post-Communist Region ................................................................................................174 Implications for New Democracies Worldwide .........................................178 Appendix A: Abbreviations and Acronyms ........................................................183 References for Archival Materials ..............................................................183 Archives ......................................................................................................183 Organizations, Political Parties, and Factions .............................................183 Appendix B: Transliteration and Translation .....................................................185 Transliterations ...........................................................................................185 Translations .................................................................................................185 References ............................................................................................................186 Books and Articles ......................................................................................186 Compilations of Primary Source Materials .................................................193 Primary Sources ..........................................................................................194 ix List of Tables Table 1: Values