The effectiveness of the Ukrainian political system has long caused much discussion. The shortcomings peculiar to the post-Soviet democracies are the reason for the instability of election campaigns, confrontation between the legislative and executive branches, and weak linkage with executive structures. Most importantly, the post-Soviet type of political output and its tools are marked by a noticeable absence of party platforms and political responsibility, made up for by what might be called the short-wave situational logic of bureaucratic intrigue, administrative-cadre bargaining, and loyalty to the apparatus. The emerging political parties are also abiding by the administrative logic of cadre horse trading, turning into an element of the bureaucratic and apparatus games. As a result, the Ukrainian party system consists mostly of parliamentary parties of deputies and people of the lawmaking elite, whose performance is reduced to the legislative arena and legislative lobbying. In this capacity the said parties somewhat aggravate political fragmentation and polarization, especially operating in modes akin to the US standards of the division of powers.
Under conditions such that administrative logic prevails over party, the failure of all attempts to create a stable legislative majority in parliament looks only natural. The formation of this majority is vitally important for Ukraine in that the political configuration of the future parliament will be the determining factor in both the executive format and the entire process of reform in the foreseeable future. Considering that the elections are one of the instruments for changing the structure of the political institutions and their logic of action, the task of overcoming the administrative-bureaucratic basis of the regime is of the highest priority at the stage. It is necessary to start putting together a new viable structure capable of transforming the majority to emerge from the elections into a parliamentary one and achieving a functional unity of the executive and legislative branches in a mode of real party policy and responsibility. For this reason, this ought to be considered from the standpoint of actual political planning, rather than as a most probable political scenario. After all, elections are not only a selection of personae and interests, but also building a certain algorithm of national development for the coming years.
The revamping of the electoral- party architecture after Presidential Administration Director Volodymyr Lytvyn and Premier Anatoly Kinakh joined the leadership of the For a United Ukraine Bloc marked a new lap in the parliamentary marathon. Most agreed that this was another attempt to set up yet another party of power based on an overly concentrated administrative resource. However, one can see something else behind this administrative wonderland. A comparatively new move was made by directly including the presidential resource and consolidating the entire executive elite before the elections. The construction technologies for parties of power, characteristic of post- Soviet regimes in the early 1990s when an active politician, the premier, became a formal party leader, were aimed primarily at mobilizing the administrative elite and converting the administrative resource into an electoral revenue and also at reserving seats for one’s own legislative lobby. However, the current situation makes it imperative to adopt a long-term strategy. The ongoing mobilization initiatives of the powers that be could be attempts to look for new resources and possibilities to gradually shape an effective model of a party regime. Reducing everything to the banal concentration of the administrative resource and setting up yet another faction in power would be too simple.
The strategy of creating an extensive party coalition could be presented in two stages. The first was struggle for the election law formula. Transition to a purely proportionate pattern looked premature, considering that the centrist parties, as public sites of the administrative elite, were weak ideologically and institutionally. Quite often they relied on either some natural political monopoly or the sum total of the politicians’ personal electoral assets. Also, that sum total would not always mean a given political party. For example, Labor Ukraine’s parliamentary activists bank on the majority constituencies (the Sharov-Pinchuk roster). In this sense Labor is a sum total of PR technologies and resource-backed politicians, rather than a party institution. Retaining the 50/50 formula secured the parity of party-individual- resource models at the current stage of Ukrainian party construction. Both parts of the mixed electoral system secure the centrists’ leadership in terms of parliamentary seats and the status as the nucleus of the future parliamentary majority. On the other hand, there is the trend to wager on established parties as the front-runners in the race, as evidenced by the current campaign scenario. First, support is controlled and measured out in a way meant to balance the chances of different parties and blocs; several centrist parties are enhanced, assisted by influential leaders (like Mykola Azarov heading the Party of the Regions, while Volodymyr Lytvyn and Anatoly Kinakh join the For a United Ukraine Bloc). Second, various party structures become potential members of the future parliamentary majority, using various delegating techniques (like Bezsmertny and Poroshenko joining the Yushchenko bloc). Third, in order to eliminate the risk of high election turnout on the part of established structures such as SDPU(o), Our Ukraine, and the Greens, a project conventionally titled Kyiv Defense was quickly worked out. It is the municipal-administrative resource of Hryhory Omelchenko’s Unity, meant to distract from Yushchenko most of the capital’s traditionally national democratic leaning electorate, thus balancing the rosters of Our Ukraine and For a United Ukraine, and keeping the United Social Democrats at the required numerical mark. By concentrating and reallocating the presidential resource to form a broad party coalition, attracting strong political figures, the chief executive actually tries to move party construction away from the administrative and toward the party pattern. Following this logic, the electoral majority could be the basis of a majority in parliament, so that presidential power could be identified with party power.
In that case, however, the party in power would not be equal to the administrative resource. The party of power model under construction no longer consists of any single party or lobby, but is a presidential one. The party of power has become a kind of federation of parties and blocs. The administrative resource as such will be mostly in the majority constituencies, for it still works there (most of the administrative elite stake their bets on what might be called customer connections at the regional level). The administrative resource’s mission, originally reduced to containing and neutralizing brothers-in- arms, the Left opposition and the so-called oligarchic resources, is drawing to a close. This process is objective in many respects, but still somewhat inert. It could be expedited by transition to the party principles intended to change the parties’ status on the political market; the parties no longer can, nor do they have any right to serve as implements in the competition for posts, businesses, and laws.
The new operating principles of the political party market will make it possible to change the now obsolete logic of the competition between the Left and Center. This tripartite formula reduced the regime’s tactic to balancing between the polarized Left and Right. This only stresses the centrist parties’ ideological insipidness and waffling, acting as a mediating and containing factor. Hence the regime’s quest for a new ideological and organizational platform for the centrist parties is quite justified. On the other hand, building a parliamentary majority is impossible relying only on the Center and a single doctrine. They must put together several political forces on an extended ideological-program platform. Coalition drift to the Left has no prospects for several reasons. First, such cooperation is problematic because of the ideological collision of reformers and conservatives (as graphically illustrated by the vote on the land code bill). Second, it is important for the new political forces to break down the Communist machine of the legislative dОjИ vu generating the Soviet past in the new legislative space. Although it is true that the Communists were sometimes urged to support the regime in critical situations, in the new policy after the election they will have to make do with a conservative opposition minority.
The national democratic parties can and must become partners of the Center in the course of a new political ideologization. The dynamism of the Right and Center party platforms is complimentary; the national democrats lack pragmatism, instinct, and awareness of real politics. The centrists lack the Right’s ideological missionary spirit and the required minimum of political idealism and ability to project. A single party or group will never build an ideological-political majority. Even if one tried, the result would be a sharp repartition of power upsetting the internal balance. On the other hand, cementing a homogenous centrist majority is possible using the scaffolding of the administrative, cadre, party, information, expert, and other resources. A new compromise by the executive, legislative nonaffiliated and party-affiliate segments of the political elite, along with the Right and Center parties could result in the projected party orientation of the regime.
The transition to a new political output structure will allow renovating the ideological foundations of the Right-Center majority. It is safe to assume that the time is ripe for some ideological rejuvenation of the national democrats; the declining popularity of the Right points to the need to change from an ethnic cultural to political economic identity. Viktor Yushchenko, as a political figure that has gone through the school of real politics can help the national democrats fit into the context of this new ideological program more or less quickly, albeit not without losses. The SDPU(o) ideology is close enough to such a political economic program; it is essentially social-liberal rather than social-democratic in the European Left-Center, not to speak of the post-Soviet concept. Moreover, the SDPU(o), after declaring its stand as an electoral mobilization party relying on ideological and organizational resources, ideologically oriented toward gradually acquiring party of power status, can and must be part of any majority coalition. Thus, it is actually possible to create a basic majority structure on the ideological program basis of two blocs and one party: Our Ukraine, For a United Ukraine, and SDPU(o).
Building a legislative majority on the basis of a common program will be a real opportunity to overcome the shortcomings of post-Soviet democracy. The fact that the president had no ideological-program support in parliament and in the executive branch caused it to be blocked. For this reason the president’s men, in order to defend their positions, had to use the veto option. If the post-election policy is built using the legislative-electoral-public-majority pattern, it will be an actual chance to lay the foundations of a united democracy. The paradox, maybe the sad irony, is that it is precisely the top official elite that could push the whole elite class toward party-oriented politics, using the entire arsenal available, thus creating a new institutional reality of power.
What about the consequences of such transition to a party-oriented regime? Obviously, the task of the coming parliamentary elections is to provide seats for a new ideological-program majority. However, getting the seats is just a preliminary result for that majority, considering the rest of its term in parliament. Lowering the risk of electoral blocs falling apart after the elections can be achieved by procedural changes in Verkhovna Rada’s rules. Whether the majority can show a stable performance will depend on the ideological-program issues on the parliamentary agenda and that of the future party-coalition government.
The future majority’s party affiliation offers a real opportunity to introduce such an affiliation in the next presidential campaign, so that we could have a new party-affiliated head of state. In fact, the party coloration of the presidential elections, given the dominant Right-pragmatic majority, will mean basic changes in the presidential campaign scenarios, compared to 1999 when the presidential trophy was contested in the second round by a Communist and a man from the so-called anti-Communist national team. Party affiliation of the presidency will, in turn, mean completion of the transition to a responsible party orientation of the entire regime.
