Date:
Location:
Oleksandr Fisun, Petro Jacyk Distinguished Fellow, HURI; Professor of Political Science, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University
Moderated by Emily Channell-Justice, Director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, HURI
In Person and Online
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Abstract
Oleksandr Fisun will provide his perspective on the development of the Ukrainian political system before and after the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. He underlines the decisive role of informal politics and shadow patron-client networks in Ukraine, which have been under-researched for a long time. He investigates how a neopatrimonial democracy in which state capture is the primary gain unexpectedly stimulates competitive politics. Surprisingly, after the Euromaidan revolution, patrimonial politics are paradoxically contributing to the institutionalization of political pluralism and political competition via a series of formal and informal power-sharing arrangements between the major political players. Fisun argues that the Ukrainian political system's internal durability or fragility since the 1990s depends on several key variables, namely: the success or failure of establishing a presidential "party of power"; the extent to which the economic, bureaucratic, and regional elites are autonomous; and the depth and scope of the informal patronage networks set up by the state ruler and/or its competitors.
About the Speaker
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Oleksandr Fisun is a professor of political science at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine (B.A. with Highest Honors in Political Economy, 1987; C.Sc. in Philosophical Sciences, 1990; D.Sc. habil in Political Science, 2009). His research interests concentrate on Ukrainian and post-Soviet politics. During the past ten years, he has held visiting fellowships at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute; the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto; the Ellison Center at the University of Washington (Seattle); the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta (Edmonton); the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Amsterdam); and the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Warsaw). His publications include Democracy, Neopatrimonialism, and Global Transformations (Kharkiv, 2006) and numerous book chapters and articles on comparative democratization, neopatrimonialism, regime change in Ukraine, and post-Soviet Eurasia. He serves as President of the Observatory of Democracy policy research center, which he founded with a group of political experts in 2016 to improve democratic accountability, civic activism, free and fair elections, and citizen awareness in eastern frontline Ukrainian regions. Twitter: @sashafisun LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oleksandrfisun/ Official university web page: http://philosophy.karazin.ua/en/kafedra/staff_pol/fisun_A.html |
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