The Accommodation of Regional and Ethno-cultural Diversity in Ukraine

herausgegeben von: Aadne Aasland, Prof. Dr. Sabine Kropp

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Federalism and Internal Conflicts

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Über dieses Buch

Das Buch bietet neue Erkenntnisse darüber, wie Ethnizität, Sprache und regional-lokale Identität im Kontext der politischen Reformen in der Ukraine zusammenwirken und zeigt auf, wie diese Reformen den sozialen Zusammenhalt zwischen ethnisch-kulturellen Gruppen beeinflussen. Während sich die einzelnen Kapitel jeweils auf eine oder wenige Facetten der allgemeinen Forschungsfrage konzentrieren, zeichnen sie gemeinsam ein differenziertes Bild der vielfältigen Herausforderungen, die die Schaffung und Festigung des sozialen Zusammenhalts in einem sich verstaatlichenden Staat mit sich bringt. Das Konzept integriert verschiedene Disziplinen, darunter Politikwissenschaft, internationale Beziehungen, Recht und Soziologie. Dementsprechend basieren die Beiträge auf verschiedenen methodischen Ansätzen, die von rechtlichen Analysen über mediale Diskursanalysen, Einzel- und Fokusgruppeninterviews bis hin zur Analyse von Daten aus einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsbefragung reichen. Die Ergebnisse der eingehenden Studie werden im breiteren Kontext der vergleichenden Forschung über Diversitätsmanagement und sozialen Zusammenhalt in fragmentierten Gesellschaften diskutiert.

Mit KI übersetzt

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Political Reforms in Ukraine and Their Effects on Social Cohesion—A Conceptualization

Abstract

Ukraine, with its multiple and overlapping identities, is an instructive case for studying how ethnicity, language and regional-local identity interact. How have recent reforms affected the social cohesion among Ukraine’s ethno-cultural groups? This introductory chapter provides an overarching analytical framework that understands social cohesion as fluid and dynamic. It discusses the effects of recent decentralization as well as language and education reforms, which have the potential for reshaping the state of intergroup relations in Ukraine. Particular emphasis is placed on political parties as collective actors, as well as the relevance of Ukraine’s complicated geopolitical context. By discussing the case of Ukraine within the broader literature on social cohesion, this chapter also contributes to comparative research on diversity management and territorial politics.

Sabine Kropp, Aadne Aasland

Chapter 2. The Regional Diversity of Ukraine: Can Federalization Be Achieved?

Abstract

Why is Ukraine’s evident regional diversity not reflected in its multilevel set-up? Despite the still-ongoing decentralization reforms, Ukraine has retained a unitary system which only partially reflects its underlying ethno-linguistic diversity. Implicit in the concept of ‘federal society’ is the belief that societies characterized by diversity will gradually adapt their institutional make-up so as to achieve congruence between the societal and the political structures. In the current Ukrainian debate, however, a unitary understanding of national statehood remains dominant, further reinforced as a response to Russia’s use of culture, language and history in its policies towards Ukraine. This study discusses obstacles to the introduction of federal institutions in Ukraine—such as the fact that the party system does not peripheralize politics, the striking securitization of federalism as a contested issue, the complicated geopolitical situation with Russia as ‘motherland’ interfering with ‘nested’ identities, and that there is little to indicate a path-dependent federal development in the case of Ukraine. Analysis of the Ukrainian discourse on federalism and unitarianism reveals that most political actors regard these concepts as mutually exclusive. Conceiving federalization as a dynamic and often unfinished process, however, this chapter concludes that individual quasi-federal elements may nevertheless evolve.

Jørn Holm-Hansen, Sabine Kropp

Chapter 3. A Triadic Nexus Conflict? Ukraine’s Nationalizing Policies, Russia’s Homeland Nationalism, and the Dynamics of Escalation in 2014–2019

Abstract

This chapter examines the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian conflict from the perspective of Rogers Brubaker’s triadic nexus theory, as developed in his seminal 1996 comparative investigation Nationalism Reframed. We juxtapose post-Euromaidan Ukraine’s new memory, education and language policies to official Russian criticisms that feature sweeping references to Nazism and ‘ethnocide’, inter-regional tensions within Ukraine, as well as the common ‘heroic’ past of Russians and Ukrainians. At first glance, the rhetorical and political escalation between Ukraine and Russia in 2014–2019 appears to constitute a typical trilateral conflict involving a post-colonial nationalizing state, an ethnic minority, and the external homeland—as conceptualized by Brubaker. From closer examination of the historic context, we conclude, however, that classic triadic nexus theory can only partly explain the causal mechanisms underlying the escalation of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict. The sequence of events leading to the explosion of tensions between these two post-Soviet countries since 2014 contradicts the logic of triadic nexus theory. Paradoxically, violent conflict preceded, and was not triggered by, Ukraine’s official nationalizing legislation and policies of 2017–2019. Military escalation came before, not after, Ukrainization, which appears as a reaction to rather than the cause of Russian armed intervention on behalf of Ukraine’s Russian-speakers. We conclude with some deliberations on the implications and determinants of the observed reversed mechanism of nationalist conflict escalation in the Russian–Ukrainian case.

Kostiantyn Fedorenko, Andreas Umland

Chapter 4. Regulating Minority Languages in Ukraine’s Educational System: Debate, Legal Framework and Implementation

Abstract

The chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of the development of policies on minority languages in Ukraine’s educational system, and in public debate, from 1991 to the present, combining legal analysis with the analysis of media discourses. Finding high politicization of the language-in-education issue in Ukraine, it maps key trajectories for the future course of Ukraine’s policies as to language in education.

Maryna Rabinovych, Mikkel Berg-Nordlie

Chapter 5. The Discourse of Moderation and Cohesion as an Effective Electoral Tool: Sluha Narodu in Ukraine’s 2019 Parliamentary Campaign

Abstract

The July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary elections were won by newly elected president Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s recently established party, Sluha Narodu. With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the violent conflict in Donbas since 2014, the stage had been set for a belligerent electoral campaign centred on designating external and internal enemies. In Ukraine this could have been expected to involve references to underlying ethnic, regional, linguistic and memory political cleavages. However, Sluha Narodu did the opposite. It avoided mention of such cleavages, and, although vague on specifics, signalled willingness to compromise and work for peace in the eastern areas of Ukraine. Drawing on cleavage and political party theory, this chapter offers a detailed discourse analysis of the pre-election campaign, in order to explain how Sluha Narodu managed to succeed with its moderate message despite the heated rhetorical climate of the campaign. We argue that the party responded to the quest for cohesion and, paradoxically, gained trustworthiness from not being more programmatic. The chapter brings new insights into the role of cleavages in Ukrainian politics: Sluha Narodu’s electoral success shows that cleavages are not either frozen or manifested in mobile fault lines, but may also be rhetorically annulled.

Artëm Lytovchenko, Dmitriy Boiko, Daria Yashkina, Jørn Holm-Hansen

Chapter 6. Decentralization, Social Cohesion and Ethno-Cultural Diversity in Ukraine’s Border Regions

Abstract

A main feature of the ongoing decentralization reform in Ukraine has been the amalgamation of small local communities into larger and more viable territorial units—leading, among other things, to a mix of populations formerly living in smaller, more homogeneous local communities. This chapter examines whether issues of social cohesion, including ethno-cultural aspects, have been on the agenda when these new amalgamated territorial communities (ATCs) have been formed, and the effects of the reform on social cohesion, including relations between ethno-cultural groups, in these new entities. It is based on case studies in two very different border regions in different corners of the country, Chernivtsi and Kharkiv, both characterized by mixed ethno-cultural landscapes. We draw on Jane Jenson’s theory of the multidimensionality and axes of social cohesion, as well as on contact and conflict theories explaining how ethno-cultural diversity may affect social cohesion. In the two regions studied, economic motivations have by far outweighed ethno-cultural and other social cohesion considerations for the establishment of ATCs. Although constructing social cohesion takes time, a new sense of unity is already evident in many of the newly formed ATCs, building on enhanced local participation and practical day-to-day problem-solving, cutting across ethno-cultural divides.

Aadne Aasland, Olga Filippova, Oleksandra Deineko, Ruslan Zaporozhchenko

Chapter 7. Educational Reform and Language Policy in Ukraine: Implementation in the Border Regions

Abstract

In September 2017 Ukraine adopted a new Education Act. However, a paragraph on ‘language of instruction’ has spurred dissatisfaction among ethno-cultural groups (Hungarians, Russians, Romanians, Moldavians) and state leaders in their ‘external homelands’. Ever since the Soviet era, there had been minority-oriented schools in Ukraine where all or most subjects were taught in locality-specific minority languages. The new law, however, limited the amount of instruction allowed in these languages, and favoured the state language, Ukrainian. Drawing on focus groups with parents and teachers, as well as interviews with local experts, this chapter examines how the language paragraph has been received in two very different regions: Chernivtsi, which borders on EU member Romania and has a large Romanian minority; and Kharkiv, bordering on Russia and with a significant Russian/Russian-speaking population. The languages of these groups are treated differently in the law ‘On education’, where instruction in the languages of the EU, like Romanian, is allowed to a greater extent than non-EU languages, like Russian, for which there are no provisions. Russians/Russian-speakers as well as Romanians see the language provision of the Education Act as part of the Ukrainian state’s ongoing nationalizing efforts, but Russians and Russian-speakers in Kharkiv seem to accept it more than do Romanians in Chernivtsi, where some have been defending their rights as an ethno-cultural minority.

Marthe Handå Myhre, Olena Muradyan, Oksana Nekhaienko

Chapter 8. The Politics of Identity in Ukrainian Border Regions

Abstract

This chapter explores identity politics in Ukraine’s border regions, focusing on how the ongoing education reform affects identity and identity politics in heterogeneous ethno-cultural communities. The emphasis is on the newly formed territorial units known as hromadas, as the arenas where such identity politics unfold. By focusing on the intersection of identity and power at local, regional, national and international levels we seek to pluralize the sites of identity-politics engagement, including institutionalized agents as well as non-institutionalized actors. We argue that the various ethno-cultural groups are not mere passive recipients of identity-meanings imposed by elites: they are dynamic non-institutionalized actors that participate in identity politics through everyday educational practices, proposing and defending their own meanings of identity and their rights to be recognized. This chapter draws on the results of our fieldwork in hromadas in Ukraine’s border regions of Kharkiv (east) and Chernivtsi (west), and on focus group interviews with local residents.

Olga Filippova, Oleksandra Deineko

Chapter 9. Citizens’ perspectives: Reform and social cohesion in Ukraine’s border regions

Abstract

This chapter presents the results of a representative population survey. It shows how Ukrainians perceive the recent decentralization reform and the laws regulating Ukrainian as the language of instruction in the schools, and outlines how the border regions of Kharkiv and Chernivtsi differ in this respect. Drawing on Chan et al.’s model of social cohesion, the analysis measures two general components of social cohesion—people’s mindsets (subjective component) on the one hand and behavioural manifestations (objective component) on the other. Each component is investigated in its horizontal dimension (cohesion within the civil society) and its vertical dimension (state–citizen cohesion). Applying multiple correspondence analysis, we identify four basic types of respondents, which are, in relative terms, included or excluded, as well as active or passive. The results suggest that the reform policies have affected these two dimensions in different ways. Future research on diversity in Ukraine will need to go beyond regional and ethno-cultural features, as they intersect with socio-economic and elite–ordinary people cleavages.

Aadne Aasland, Oleksandra Deineko, Olga Filippova, Sabine Kropp

Titel: The Accommodation of Regional and Ethno-cultural Diversity in Ukraine
herausgegeben von: Aadne Aasland
Prof. Dr. Sabine Kropp
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-80971-3
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80970-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80971-3