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 Strategic Studies Institute
and
U.S. Army War College Press

DEMOCRATIZATION AND INSTABILITY IN

UKRAINE, GEORGIA, AND BELARUS

Robert Nalbandov

June 2014

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and
do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the
Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.
Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and
U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Press publications enjoy full
academic freedom, provided they do not disclose classified
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official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to
offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the inter-
est of furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared for
public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code,

Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not be
copyrighted.

iii
 *****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should

be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute and U.S.
Army War College Press, U.S. Army War College, 47 Ashburn
Drive, Carlisle, PA 17013-5010.

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This manuscript was funded by the U.S. Army War

College External Research Associates Program. Information on
this program is available on our website, www.StrategicStudies
Institute.army.mil, at the Opportunities tab.

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iv
the role of political culture in institutional transformations in
post-imperial and post-colonial societies will continue to grow.
I would like to especially thank Dr. Korneli Kakachia, Associ-
ate Professor, Tbilisi State University; Roland Kovacs, Country
Director in Ukraine, Pact, Inc.; Hanna Shelest, Senior Researcher
at National Institute for Strategic Studies, Ukraine; Sergiy Shtu-
karin, Executive Director at Center for Political Studies, Ukraine;
and numerous content experts from Belarus. I am greatly indebt-
ed to the organizers of the “6th Kyiv Security Forum ‘Security In
An Unsecure World’” which I had the pleasure of attending.

ISBN 1-58487-628-X

v
 FOREWORD

Nations democratize at a different pace: Some

achieve high governance standards, lasting political
stability, and robust economies; others are lingering
in their desires to look and act like their democratic
counterparts. While no country strictly follows similar
patterns of democratic institutionalization, there is a
variable that defines the rate of success of their efforts:
their political culture.
The empirical study by Dr. Robert Nalbandov un-
veils this “democratization puzzle” of incongruence
between the levels of democracy, internal peace, and
economic prosperity between the newly independent
states of Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus. By investigat-
ing the political cultures of the three post-Soviet coun-
tries, Dr. Nalbandov concludes that it was the distinct
political cultures of these states (flexible in Georgia,
rigid in Belarus, and bifurcate in Ukraine) that pro-
duced diverse outcomes in each specific case.
The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer
this monograph, which gives valuable insights into the
matters of democratization in politically volatile new
environments. The three patterns of political cultures
identified in the monograph can be easily generalized
and applied in most instances of new nation-building
projects. The recommendations for the U.S. military
and the government produced by the analysis provide
the roadmap for short- and long-term partnerships in
the countries of post-Soviet space.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director
Strategic Studies Institute and
U.S. Army War College Press
vii
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROBERT NALBANDOV is currently an Assistant Pro-

fessor of Political Science at the Utah State University
where he teaches the courses on U.S. foreign policy
and European and Russian politics and security. Since
2008, he has taught at Macalester College, St. Paul,
Minnesota; University of St. Andrews, Scotland; Uni-
versity of Birmingham, England; Smolny College of
Liberal Arts, St. Petersburg University, Russia; and
Center for Security Studies, Angelo State University,
Texas. Dr. Nalbandov is the author of Foreign Inter-
ventions in Ethnic Conflicts (Ashgate Publishing, 2009)
and numerous articles on international and regional
security, counterterrorism and U.S. foreign policy. He
is currently working on his new book entitled Rus-
sia’s New Foreign Policy (University of Nebraska Press,
forthcoming). Dr. Nalbandov holds a Ph.D. in po-
litical science from the Central European University,
Budapest, Hungary.

ix
 SUMMARY

This manuscript analyzes the interconnections be-

tween the democratic institutionalization of the newly
independent states using the examples of Ukraine,
Georgia, and Belarus, their political (in)stability, and
economic development and prosperity. By introduc-
ing the concept of regime mimicry into the field of
public administration, the author expands the episte-
mological frameworks of the democratization school
to the phenomenon of political culture. Successes and
failures of the democratic institutionalization pro-
cesses in these countries largely depend on the ways
their institutional actors reacted to internal and exter-
nal disturbances of their domestic political, economic,
and cultural environments. While Georgia’s political
culture revealed the highest degree of flexibility in
accepting the externally proposed institutional frame-
works and practices, the bifurcate political culture in
Ukraine impeded its democratic institutionalization,
while the rigid political culture in Belarus completely
stalled the process of institutional transformations.

xi
 DEMOCRATIZATION AND INSTABILITY IN
UKRAINE, GEORGIA, AND BELARUS

INTRODUCTION

In 1991, the process of liberalization of political,

economic, and cultural settings in the post-Soviet
countries came somewhat unexpectedly to many. Af-
ter 70 years of existence under communist rule, and
notwithstanding the wide cultural diversity of the for-
mer Soviet republics, all of them decided to take a path
toward democratization, at least nominally. Out of the
political systems previously tested elsewhere, all the
former Soviet republics settled on democracy, which
was considered the best choice possible. With the as-
sistance of the Western democratic world, the newly
established, but historically well-placed, nations were
rapidly exposed to the democratic realities of politics,
economy, and culture existing elsewhere in the form
of democratic institutions. The choice for a democratic
way seemed obvious: What was working “out there”
should work here, too. Democratization enjoyed the
overwhelming consensus among the newly indepen-
dent states, not only as the evolutionary hallmark
among the existing and empirically tested governance
regimes, but also as the preferred choice for the newly
created nation-states across the geographic regions.
While the ex-Soviet republics had the same starting
point in their newly independent existence (the end of
Soviet rule), three countries—Georgia, Ukraine, and
Belarus—in particular stand out with regard to the
diverse outcomes of their democratization processes.
Moving away from the Soviet Union was difficult, and
the choice of democratic governance was, in a way,
the hardest transformation the three countries had

1
ever faced in their histories. The results in each of the
three cases show a remarkable diversity. Georgia be-
came the champion of public administration and eco-
nomic reforms, turning it from the hotbed of Soviet
corruption into the “beacon of democracy.” Belarus
has been suffering for 2 decades from the authoritar-
ian governance of its lifelong president, Alexander
Lukashenka. Finally, Ukraine occupies somewhat of a
middle ground with its half-stagnant democratization
after the disillusionment from the Orange Revolution
of 2005.
Democracy—with the institutions of rule of law,
free market relations, the spirit of equality, and pro-
tection of human rights and fundamental freedoms—
is popularly considered the most conducive regime
for building political stability and economic and so-
cial development. From an institutional standpoint,
democracy, as the process of creation and interaction
of the “socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that
are created, communicated, and enforced outside of-
ficially” by the domestic policy (the citizenry) as well
as “through channels that are widely accepted as of-
ficial,”1 involves the synergy of formal institutions
(free courts, transparent elections, three branches of
power, ombudsmen’s office, etc.) as well as informal
ones (rule of law, human rights).
From the point of political stability and economic
and social development, democracy, according to
Yi Feng:

tends to have a positive effect on economic growth

by inhibiting extra-constitutional political change and
favouring constitutional political change. Democracy
provides a stable political environment, which reduc-
es unconstitutional government change at the macro
level; yet along with regime stability, democracy of-

2
 fers flexibility and the opportunity for substantial po-
litical change within the political system.2

The reality in Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine, how-

ever, proves different. The impact of democracy on
these variables is quite diverse in the three countries
in focus. Georgia, the most democratically advanced
state, has had the worst performance concerning its
domestic political stability. The authoritarian rule in
Belarus is the clear case of a nondemocratic society,
which is, surprisingly, better developed economically
and quite stable politically than the other two coun-
tries. The situation in Ukraine displays a weak corre-
lation between the democratization level, on the one
hand, and political stability and economic prosperity
on the other.
The issue of political stability under the rapidly
democratizing and volatile domestic environments
is of utmost importance. Diverse outcomes of post-
communist liberalization efforts under similar start-
ing points represent the governance puzzle for the
democratization literature. The puzzle raises a num-
ber of questions on the reasons for and durability of
the democratization process. What makes democracy
such an appealing regime for post-authoritarian and
post-colonial societies to follow? How stable is the
process of democratic nation-building after the initial
installation of the institutions of democratic gover-
nance? Finally, can the future of political stability in
the target countries be predicted given their current
level of democratization and economic development?
The governance puzzle rests upon a number of
premises. First, it assumes the existence of causal link-
ages between the level of democracy and overall po-
litical stability. It is popularly viewed that the more

3
advanced the democracy, the lower the level of in-
ternal and external political disturbances. In general,
democracy is positively related to overall stability.
According to Feng:

democracy will increase the probability of major regu-

lar government change, lessen the chances of irregular
government change, and, in the long run, decrease the
propensity for minor regular government change.3

Democracies, therefore, are more conducive to

peaceful and systematic political change than vio-
lent sporadic transformations in their autocratic
counterparts.
The second part of the governance puzzle is hidden
in the variables that influence the level of democrati-
zation and, in turn, are influenced by the latter. The
first such variable is economic development. There
is a commonly accepted view that more prosper-
ous countries tend to be more democratic than their
poorer counterparts. According to K. Lundell:

when countries become more affluent, the prospects

of democracy increase. Countries with a high level of
socio-economic development tend to be democratic,
whereas poor countries most often lack democratic
institutions and procedures.4

Susanna Lundström believes:

the effect of democracy on economic freedom is posi-

tive and robust, supporting the so-called compatibil-
ity view . . . [A] higher level of democracy leads to
an increased reliance on the market as the allocation
mechanism, and to decreased restraints on interna-
tional trade.5

4
Internally, democracy is considered to offer a larger
degree and variety of freedoms than any other gover-
nance regime, including the protection of the econom-
ic and political rights. It creates incentives via reason-
able taxes and free and fair economic legislation for
the increased turnover of goods, services, and money,
thus cutting the costs of economic transactions. It also
protects businesses from unbridled tyranny of bu-
reaucrats, corrupt officials, and life-threatening envi-
ronments, allowing for them to operate and flourish.
The second variable is the third party participa-
tion, which can be critical domestic political land-
scapes of the target countries. This influence can be
both aggravating and mitigating the forces existing
on the domestic levels. External players may directly
contribute to the economies and finances of their pro-
tégés and act as “external homelands”6 for the ethnic
groups residing within the borders of states in ques-
tion, their “surrogate lobby-states”7 without ethnic
linkages, or intervene out of personal reasons in the
existing rivalry between the political groups by skew-
ing the local power balance towards the parties they
support.8 Third parties thus can have a very important
role in redirecting the course of the democratization
events depending on their own views with regards to
the target countries and the domestic situation per se.
Finally, diverse political cultures of the nations
are the very meta-variable influencing the outcomes
of the democratization processes from the point of
their acceptance, endurance, or rejection by the target
societies. Political cultures bring the identity compo-
nents into the democratic institutionalization equa-
tion. On a domestic level, they define the modes of
interactions within various actors of the domestic
institutional actors and their reactions on the internal

5
political processes. On a broader scale, political cul-
tures presuppose responses of the local polity to the
external challenges and disturbances. Overall, politi-
cal cultures are the necessary ingredients for defining
the longevity of the governance regimes, in general,
and individual rulers, in particular.
The empirical evidence from Georgia, Ukraine,
and Belarus reveals a very interesting deviation of the
commonly accepted patterns. Diversity between the
levels of democratization, political stability, and eco-
nomic development in Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus
can be explained by two factors. The first explanation
of political stability in the countries with low democ-
racy indicators is their “authoritarian resilience.”9 Au-
tocratic regimes are usually more successful in stifling
their opposition forces than democracies. On the one
hand, it is the low degree of freedom and disregard
for general human rights that the “autocracies” enjoy.
The other reason for the political longevity and do-
mestic stability of the autocracies is their strict control
over their own public administration apparatus. The
vertical hierarchy of governance allows authoritarian
leaders to suppress public processes and keeps all the
reins of power in their hands. The other side of the
“governance puzzle” is the fact that countries with
high levels of democratization, such as Georgia, have
low levels of political stability. This phenomenon can
be explained by the highly volatile domestic environ-
ment and presence of interest groups, which do not
abide by the common rules of political engagement.
The connection between the levels of democracy
and economic and social development in the three
countries also seems to refute the ascribed power of
democratic governance. The example of Georgia as
having the lowest economic and social development

6
indicators, as opposed to Belarus, which is on the
other end of the developmental spectrum, shows that
seemingly causal links between these two variables
mostly belong to the theoretical field. Even in autocra-
cies, there can be well-established and affluent middle
and upper-middle classes that are more interested in
keeping their wealth than in political freedoms. Like-
wise, hectic political domains prevent proper econom-
ic development and hinder social progress between
the institutional actors: citizens, their organized soci-
etal groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
mass media, and the institutions of governance.
In order to test the governance puzzle and see
whether democracy plays the assumed important role
in the matter of political stability and socio-economic
development, two working hypotheses will be tested.
The first one, the null hypothesis, postulates a reverse
relation between democracy as the independent vari-
able and political stability as the dependent variable.
According to such a pessimistic vision, in newly de-
mocratizing societies, democracy is unable to prevent
internal disturbances and external pressure or foster
economic development. The second hypothesis en-
gages in deeper exploration of the “democracy-stabil-
ity-development” nexus by bringing in two interven-
ing variables—economic development and political
culture—and viewing them as being influenced by the
factors of “authoritarian resilience” and “third-party
interest”—to examine political stability from internal
and external perspectives.
The authoritarian resilience of the ruling elite,
which manages to coerce successfully the domestic
institutional actors and to dissuade them from seek-
ing political freedoms, presents the internal side of
political stability. The assumption behind this factor

7
postulates that, in the absence of authoritarian resil-
ience, countries with unstable political cultures tend
to display higher levels of political volatility and unre-
lenting rivalry between domestic institutional actors.
The second variable investigates the external side of
political stability by bringing in third-party factors.
The assumption of this variable is that external actors
can support/hinder the domestic political stability of
the target countries by contributing to or decreasing
the durability of the existing governance regimes, and
providing for or lessening the financial well-being of
their populations. The ultimate and much broader is-
sue here is whether it is possible to credibly predict
the internal political developments in newly estab-
lished nations based on the examples of these three
post-Soviet countries.

DEMOCRATIZATION/POLITICAL STABILITY/
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Among all the governance regimes, democracies

enjoy the closest synergy of efficiency and legitimacy
because they offer the widest possible mechanisms for
public participation in the evaluation of these quali-
ties. Political stability, one of the main tasks of any
governance regime, is widely viewed as:

the capacity of a country to withstand internal and ex-

ternal shocks or crises.10 Internally, stability is created
by “members of society restrict[ing] themselves to the
behavior patterns that fall within the limits imposed
by political role expectations. Any act that deviates
from these limits is an instance of political instability.11

8
Internal political stability embraces the wide array of
interactions between institutional actors. Internal po-
litical stability keeps countries’ integrity and prevents
them from falling apart under the weight of domestic
disturbances. External stability helps them resist eco-
nomic, political, or military pressure from abroad. If
chronic and unresolved, internal instability can lead to
the failure of governments to satisfy the basic needs of
their populations, which will eventually lead to their
failure. Such failed states, or “cadaverous states,” as
Ahmed Samatar calls them,12 with practically no civil
life, no “central, regional, or local administrations
. . . [no] public utility services, no electricity, no com-
munications, no health services, [and] no schools,”13
have no visible prospects for peace. From this point
of view, political stability means “the degree to which
political institutions are sufficiently stable to support
the needs of [their] citizens, businesses, and overseas
investors,”14 as defined by the Global Peace Index.
Ideally, internal stability should mean peaceful re-
sponses to institutionalized succession of powers via
the planned long-term and peaceful change of politi-
cal leadership through constitutional means without
resorting to violence and adjustment policies. In its
most developed form, it is the ability of a political
system to ensure the functioning of its institutional
structures of power (the interaction of the branches
of government and their agencies), as defined in the
constitution of the political model. In this ideal model,
conflicts among the actors are resolved within the
countries’ constitutions and are not accompanied by
the revision of powers of political institutions on the
basis of illegal factors, such as the dictate of a politi-
cal leader, the use of direct force of pressure, or threat
of illegitimate use of force. Externally, such a model

9
would prevent any foreign control over domestic af-
fairs, including direct management from abroad or
indirect interventions. This essentially means the ab-
sence of any significant influence of extra-systemic po-
litical agents that can dramatically change the political
landscape in the country.

Democracy and Political Stability.

For governance regimes to be successful and sus-

tainable with regards to internal and external political
stability and economic and social development, two
qualities are necessary, according to Seymour Martin
Lipset: effectiveness and legitimacy. By effectiveness,
Lipset means:

the actual performance of a political system, the extent

to which it satisfies the basic function of government
as defined by the expectations of most of members of
a society, and the expectations of powerful groups
within it which might threaten the system. . . . 15

Legitimacy in this context is the “capacity of a political

system to engender and maintain the belief that exist-
ing political institutions are the most appropriate or
proper ones for the society.”16 Jack Goldstone capital-
izes on Lipset’s model and argues:

Effectiveness reflects how well the state carries out

state functions such as providing security, promoting
economic growth, making law and policy, and deliv-
ering social services. Legitimacy reflects whether state
actions are perceived by elites and the population
as ‘just’ or ‘reasonable’ in terms of prevailing social
norms.17

10
 The combined legitimacy and effectiveness of gov-
ernance is a prerequisite for political stability in most
societies, regardless of their governance regimes. The
difference is in the sources of internal and external
stability. In democratic societies, internal political sta-
bility is based on “the rule of law, strong institutions
rather than powerful individuals, a responsive and
efficient bureaucracy, low corruption, and a business
climate that is conducive to investment.”18
These democratic institutions serve a dual pur-
pose: They cut the transaction costs for its actors (citi-
zens) and, at the same time, limit the options available
for them. The first task is achieved by offering greater
opportunities for self-expression and active participa-
tion in the decisions vital for their communities and
countries. Citizens would have fewer reasons to revolt
against their governments if they felt they received
due protection concerning law and order. The effec-
tiveness of democratic governance spreads over the
majority of the institutional actors; legitimacy is creat-
ed via the free and fair expression of their choice. Ful-
fillment of the second task is more complicated. Feng
assumes that the more developed the democracy, the
lower the level of internal political disturbances, thus:

democracy will increase the probability of major regu-

lar government change, lessen the chances of irregular
government change, and, in the long run, decrease the
propensity for minor regular government change.19

This means that the institutional arrangements in

place limit the changes for sporadic political activity
while increasing the steady flows of political process-
es based on effective dialogues between governments
and their citizens.

11
 External political stability is created through peace-
ful interactions between the governments in question
and foreign actors. Unstable countries attract paro-
chial interests of their immediate and distant neigh-
boring states that are trying to capitalize on inefficient
governance, internal violence, and low levels of law
and order. Paul Collier holds that the lack of internal
stability imposes significant costs on the regional sta-
bility because the “neighbourhood spill-overs give
the foreign actors ‘reasonable claim to the right of
intervention in order to reduce them’.”20 External po-
litical stability is also desirable “because it provides
external players with the advantage of dealing with a
government whose actions are predictable,”21 which
contributes to the political, economic, and social de-
velopments of the nations in question.
Durability of internal and external political sta-
bility is closely related to the notion of a “social con-
tract.” First appearing in the trial of Socrates,22 “social
contract” is a mode of citizen/government interac-
tion, essentially between the citizens themselves and
the government, which acts as an external arbiter and
guardian of domestic stability. In this line of reason-
ing, John Locke views the political power as:

a right of making laws with penalties of death, and

consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and
preserving of property, and of employing the force of
the community, in the execution of such laws, and in
the defence of the common-wealth from foreign in-
jury; and all this only for the public good.23

An interesting aspect of any social contract is that

it can exist under both autocratic and democratic re-
gimes. The difference between the democratic and
authoritarian social contract is its durability and the

12
fulfillment of the “public good” obligation of the
governments.
Longevity of the social contract ultimately defines
the durability of the governance regime. This view on
stability fulfills Lipset’s requirement for the legitima-
cy of state, where “groups will regard a political sys-
tem as legitimate or illegitimate according to the way
in which its values fit in with their primary values,”24
and Aaron Wildavski’s political socialization, where
“shared values [are] legitimating social practices.”25
These views on political stability include both prereq-
uisites: internal (the societal “fit” and legitimacy) and
external (the recognition of the international commu-
nity). Problems in providing these prerequisites by the
governments are referred to, by Charles Call, as the
“internal” and “external” legitimacy gaps “where a
significant portion of its political elites and society re-
ject the rules regulating the exercise of power and the
accumulation and distri­bution of wealth” and “when
other states fail to recognize or accept its borders or its
internal regime,”26 respectively.
Historically, political stability depended on the
will of the ruling autocrat. Under the monarchic auto-
cratic rule of medieval Europe, people were deprived
of security, rendering their everyday lives extremely
unstable. In the jungle of human interactions popu-
lated by “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish” men, the Law
of Nature dictated the “warre of every men against
every men.”27 Internal political stability in monarchies
rested upon the fear of their subjects for their lives in
the omnipresent anarchy and uncertainty of the re-
alities and their trust of the benevolence of the rulers
who governed upon their sole discretion without any
notion of public accountability. Similar to as it was
in medieval Europe, social contract is also present in

13
modern autocracies around the globe, but there, ac-
cording to Vital Silitski, it:

is asymmetrical in its nature. . . . [T]he state proposes

the social contract in order to nip public discontent
in the bud, without resorting to excessive punitive
actions. . . . The asymmetrical nature of the social
contract is caused by the inability of social groups
to self-organize and elaborate horizontal contractual
agreements.28

The key variable that differentiates democratic social

contract from the autocratic one is the source of power.
Whereas in democracies the power vested upon gov-
ernments comes from their subjects, in autocracies:

it is the state, and not civil society, that sets the frame-
work of the consensus by offering material and non-
material benefits in exchange for citizens’ loyalty.29

Autocracies have different paths to political sta-

bility through the social contracts. The durability of
those contracts is achieved by their “authoritarian
resilience,”30 i.e., the tenaciousness of leaders to stay
in power by providing for the basic needs of most of
their subjects and effective mechanisms of coercion.
In most cases, the authoritarian resilience is based on
two pillars: coercion of the population and providing
them with limited benefits. The fruits of the effective-
ness of governance are offered to limited groups of
elite individuals (usually power actors and oligarchs)
closely affiliated with the ruling autocrats, creating the
unique rational choice-based societal “fit”: the more
benefits these groups receive from the governance, the
“fitter” and more legitimate would be the regime.

14
 Similar to democracies, autocracies provide ben-
efits to the rest of the population; however, while in
democracy:

citizens both decide the size of government and have

a right to the fiscal residuum, [in] autocracy . . . the
state apparatus both decides the size of government
and can appropriate the fiscal residuum.31

Due to the limits established by autocracies on civil

participation in the political and economic lives of
their countries, the benefits are provided to a much
narrower extent. Autocracies aim at satisfying the
basic needs of larger populations while keeping the
better and, ultimately, lavish lifestyles of the “close
circles,” allowing them to enjoy disproportionally
larger benefits. That is why the middle-class layers
in these societies are extremely thin. The individuals
from the privileged groups, on the other hand, enjoy
free and flexible interpretation of both the letter and
the spirit of the law, including economic legislation,
and receive preferential treatment by the institutions
of governance—all of which falls under the umbrella
of “corruption.”
The societal “fit” within the groups deprived of
the benefits depends entirely on the effectiveness of
coercion. The stronger the punitive mechanism of
governance, in other words, the more “resilient” the
regime is, the “fitter” it feels within the society. Au-
tocracies use the government apparatus, commonly
referred to in post-Soviet societies as “the administra-
tive resources,” to limit the freedoms of their citizens
and to disregard general human rights. Use of law
and order as punitive mechanisms coerces subjects to
the point where any expression of free will is punitive

15
by definition. In comparison, durability of the social
contracts for democracies depends on the constant
dialogue between the government and the electorate,
which is accomplished through wide civil participa-
tion in the institutional frameworks offered by democ-
racies. Kant considered republican governance, i.e.,
government elected by people, as the most viable ba-
sis for building long-lasting peaceful relations within
and between nations. He believed that what makes
democracy unique is that:

First, it accords with the principles of freedom of the

members of a society (as men), second, it accords with
the principles of dependence of everyone on a single
common [source of legislation] (as subjects), and,
third, it accords with the law of the equality of them
all (as citizens) [emphasis provided].32

Effective fulfillment of the Kantian trinity leads to the

“republican government,” or democracy, which de-
creases structural conflicts within societies and among
them based on people’s conscious decisions to pros-
per rather than conflict.
In modern times, Kantian ideas were further
elaborated by John R. Oneal. and Bruce Russett to
fill the requirements of modern political realities.
The “Democratic Peace Theory,”33 heavily based on
Kantian views of republican constitutions, economic
freedoms, and world governance, used a three-prong
approach to political stability: democratically elected
governments; increased role of intergovernmental
organizations (IGOs), such as institutions offering
nonconflictual means of communications between the
states; and the complex economic interdependence
that ties the countries together in the mutually ben-
eficial knots of trade and fiscal exchange. The result of

16
the interplay of these factors is that democracies are
positively correlated with political stability since the
two democracies would rather cooperate than fight.
Democracy is an evolutionary better suitable form
for achieving domestic and international political sta-
bility on the basis of Kantian arrangements developed
by citizens and vested upon their governments. In de-
mocracies, social contracts are concluded between the
people and safeguarded by their elected governments,
who are held constantly accountable to their elector-
ate for proper fulfillment of the terms of the contract,
i.e., their election promises. Politics in democracies
also depend on the “resilience” of the regime, but in
this case, the resilience is “democratic,” based on the
willingness and ability of its citizens to participate
in the political processes and, similar to autocracies,
the benefits offered to them by their democratically
elected government. Coercion is, by definition, absent
in democratic resilience and the effectiveness of the
regime is nondiscriminatory.

Democracy and Economic Development.

A very significant aspect of the democratic gov-

ernance is its link with economic development and
prosperity and, ultimately, peace. This link has been
enshrined in Preliminary Article 4 of the Kantian Per-
petual Peace as one of the preconditions for peace-
ful relations among the nations on the international
arena: “National debts shall not be contracted with
a view to the external friction of states.”34 However,
what might be obvious, at first—that democracy is
good for economic development—would appear to
be a much more complicated interaction, if closely
examined. Democracy may, indeed, be considered

17
to have a positive effect on economic development, a
significant part of which is the respect for individual
property rights and free market relations. The major
assumption in political economic literature is that de-
mocracies, with their strong power actors in the form
of businesses free from state control and independent
trade units, are closely related to Smithsonian “laissez
faire”35 approaches, whereas autocracies, with their
strict control over monetary flows and investments
via referential elitist politics, are more restrictive in
market relations.
The connection between democracy and economic
development is double-sided. On the one hand, it is
commonly assumed that:

the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances

that it will sustain democracy . . . [O]nly in a wealthy
society in which relatively few citizens lived in real
poverty could a situation exist in which the mass of
the population could intelligently participate in poli-
tics and could develop the self-restraint necessary
to avoid succumbing to the appeals of irresponsible
demagogies.36

Krister Lundell also supports the idea of democracy

being conducive to economic development:

When countries become more affluent, the prospects

of democracy increase. Countries with a high level of
socio-economic development tend to be democratic,
whereas poor countries most often lack democratic
institutions and procedures.37

The middle classes represent the sources for sup-

port for democracies because the latter provide the
benefits for the considerably wider circles of stake-
holders than the autocracies. Societies that can af-

18
ford wealthy middle classes are, thus, more inclined
to uphold the social contracts with their democrati-
cally elected governments than autocracies since they
have more assets to lose than the oppressed lower-
income societies, e.g., free market relations and self-
expression.
The opposite interpretation of the nature of the
link between democracy and economic development
is that the former promotes the latter. Milton Fried-
man argues that the more democratic the societies are,
the more political and economic rights they offer to
their populations.38 According to Feng, democracies,
together with:

the existence and exercise of fundamental civil liber-

ties and political rights, generate the social condi-
tions most conducive to economic development. Po-
litical and economic freedom enhances property rights
and market competition, thus promoting economic
growth.39

Democratically elected governments are more ac-

countable to their citizenry than autocracies, which
are based on unchecked, unrestrained, and uncon-
trolled powers of the absolutist regimes. Citizens can
use impartial and transparent democratic institutions,
such as courts and law and order agencies, to obtain
support for their economic activities and to seek rem-
edies in case of violation of their rights, including eco-
nomic rights. Under the autocracies, these institutions
resembling their democratic counterparts may exist as
well, but they would have only nominal roles. The real
interaction between governments and citizens in au-
tocracies happens via other institutional mechanisms,
for example, institutionalized corruption. The citizens
enjoy selective rights and receive preferential treat-

19
ment depending on the distance to the ruling elites:
the closer they are with those in power, the more they
benefit from freedoms, including economic freedoms.
Yet the third, somewhat counterintuitive, view is
that democracy is detrimental for economic develop-
ment. Here, again, market arrangements and prop-
erty rights come into play. As Adam Przeworski and
Fernando Limongi note:

The main mechanisms by which democracy is thought

to hinder growth are pressures for immediate con-
sumption, which reduce investment. Only states that
are institutionally insulated from such pressures can
resist them, and democratic states are not.40

Democracy facilitates consumerist society, which

craves for exceedingly more wealth than is available
at the expense of capital investments. The same au-
thors conclude:

[D]emocracy generates an explosion of demands for

current consumption. These demands, in turn, threat-
en profits; hence, they reduce investment and retard
growth. Democracy is thus inimical to economic
development.41

In laissez faire societies where the governments

have little, if any, control over market relations, fiscal
bubbles are frequent. Crises of financial overextension
and fiscal overexpansion lead to unchecked and un-
controlled information provided to the market actors.
The statistic analysis of Edward Mansfield et al.
explains this phenomenon of the separation of the
branches of government and the checks and balances
existing between them. According to their research:

20
 Having a legislature that ratifies the chief executive’s
trade proposals may create a credible threat that al-
lows executives in democracies to arrive at freer trade
outcomes than would otherwise occur. The possible
veto of a trade deal by one or both legislatures in the
dyad may lead the executives to search for lower mu-
tually acceptable levels of trade barriers. This, in turn,
may explain why pairs of democracies are better able
to lower their trade barriers than mixed pairs.42

In this view, too much openness of democracies to

the globalization processes and their overdependence
on each other lead to the negative domino effects.
Autocracies, on the other hand, tend to trade with
a limited number of like-minded states, hence the low
potential of global financial disturbances caused by
them. Together with the limited trade and economic
privileges of minority societal groups, autocracies,
paradoxically, can bring economic growth. Accord-
ing to Przeworski and Limongi, “‘[S]tate autonomy’
favors growth, and ‘state autonomy’ is possible only
under authoritarianism.”43 The main idea here is that
the notion of state autonomy positively correlates
with performance of domestic economies. This is the
opposite side of laissez-faire, a sort of Keynesian vision
on economy44 as influenced by governance regimes.
The more the government is involved in regulating
market relations, the more it is able to prevent situ-
ations similar to fiscal bubbles from happening by its
regulatory actions. A typical institutional example of
the “command-and-control” economy was the Minis-
try of Foreign Trade of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR), the only body representing Soviet
industries in external interactions. Such governing
from above is, obviously, negative from the point of

21
view of limiting the freedoms of the market actors but,
at the same time, a command-and-control economy
provides protection to the businesses in case of nega-
tive external influences.

DEMOCRATIZATION IN NUMBERS

Interplay between the variables of democratiza-

tion, political stability, and economic and social devel-
opment in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus is reflected
in the data collected on these countries by a number
of international organizations, research institutions,
and think tanks. The figures in this section include the
meta-indicators studied for the three countries: level
of democratization, political stability, and economic/
social development. Each of these meta-indicators in-
cludes multiple parameters that are jointly required
for presentation of the holistic explanation of the two
working hypotheses. The results of numerous statisti-
cal indicators mostly support the null hypothesis on
the inability of democracy to prevent internal distur-
bances and foster economic and social development in
Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The data also confirms
the positive hypothesis on the favorable influence of
authoritarian resilience and third-party support in
keeping internal and external political stability and
contributing to the financial and social well-being of
their populations.

Democratization.

The indicators put together in the “Democratiza-

tion” category comprise general human rights and
fundamental freedoms, as well as quality of govern-
mental performance, including the degrees of effi-

22
ciency and corruption. The annual report of Freedom
House, Freedom in the World 2013, named Georgia and
Ukraine as both “partially free” while Belarus as a
“not free” country. By comparison, a “free country”
is one with “open political competition, a climate of
respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic
life, and independent media.”45 The Polity IV dataset
gave similar rankings: Georgia and Ukraine received
polity scores (combined scores of institutionalized de-
mocracy and institutionalized autocracy) of 6 while
Belarus was given a polity score of -7.46
By the majority of other parameters, Georgia is on
top of the democracy scale. According to the Press Free-
dom Index, Georgia offers the best conditions for jour-
nalists to express their opinions (rank 100), followed
by Ukraine (126) and Belarus (157).47 The Worldwide
Governance Indicators48 presented by D. Kaufmann
and M. Mastruzzi offer additional valuable insights
into the understanding of the level of democratization
of the three countries. The survey includes the follow-
ing six indicators: Voice and Accountability, Political
Stability/Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Govern-
ment Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality,
and Control of Corruption. One of the most important
indicators is “voice and accountability,” which is the
ability of citizens “to participate in selecting their gov-
ernment, as well as freedom of expression, freedom
of association, and a free media.”49 In this category,
Ukraine has the highest ranking (44.1—a rounded per-
centile rank among all countries; ranges from 0 [low-
est] to 100 [highest] very closely followed by Georgia
[42.7]). On the contrary, Belarus offers the fewest op-
portunities for its citizens to express their views (7.1).
However, by their performance in the “Political Sta-
bility” category, Belarus and Ukraine are practically
close, with ranks of 41 and 42, respectively.

23
 The least politically stable country, according to
this survey, is Georgia, with the rank of 24.5. Para-
doxically, the most effective governance is in Geor-
gia (64.1)—in fact, it is five times more effective than
in Belarus (12), and almost three times more than in
Ukraine (24.9). Also, Georgia has the highest “Rule of
Law” environment (48.8), while Belarus has the low-
est capacity (14.7), with Ukraine being in between
(25.1). The “Regulatory Quality” of the government is
also the best in Georgia (70.8), which is almost twice as
high as in Ukraine (32.5), and more than seven times
higher than in Belarus (9.6).
Finally, the “Corruption” variable is of immense
importance in understanding the dynamics of democ-
ratization. By the Worldwide Governance Indicators,
Georgia is a champion of the “Control of Corruption”
with a rank of 54.1, while Ukraine is the most corrupt
country (17.2), and Belarus is in the middle (23). It
is notable that the poll conducted by the Razumkov
Center on corruption perception named the political
sphere, the state, and the judiciary as the most cor-
rupt out of all sectors of governance in Ukraine.50 The
Transparency International Corruption Perception Index
2012 named Georgia as the least corrupt country of
the three with a rating of 51, followed by Belarus (123),
and Ukraine as the most corrupt country (144).
Another dataset, the World Development Indica-
tors 2010, holds Georgia as the least corrupt of the
three studied (by the percentage of firms offering in-
formal payments to the public officials), with only 14.7
percent of companies paying bribes, and Ukraine as
the most corrupt country with one third of the bribe-
givers, with Belarus somewhat in between (26.1 per-
cent). Finally, public perceptions on corruption also
matter in the democratization processes. The Global

24
Corruption Barometer 2010/201151 holds three indica-
tors in the study of public opinion in this particular
aspect: perception of change, perception of most cor-
rupt institutions, and perceptions of governments’ an-
ti-corruption efficiency. According to the Barometer,
78 percent of the respondents from Georgia believe
that corruption decreased over the past 3 years, while
most of respondents from Ukraine (63 percent) con-
sider that corruption has not changed, and one-third
feel that it has even increased. Lastly, 49 percent of
the respondents in Belarus feel no change in the level
of corruption.

Economic and Social Development.

Due to the significant differences in the countries’

sizes and economic potentials, the data given in this
section will focus on the per capita economic and so-
cial developmental parameters instead of giving cross-
country comparisons in the levels of gross domestic
products (GDPs) and the comparative aggregate eco-
nomic growth. Overall, Belarus has the highest indica-
tors of economic and social development, while Geor-
gia, by many datasets, is the least developed, of the
three countries, economically and socially. According
to the World Development Indicators 2010,52 gross na-
tional income (GNI) per capita in Belarus in 2010 was
$5,950, with an overall GNI rank of 104. Belarus also
has the lowest child mortality rates (17 per 1,000 live
births in 1990 and only 6 in 2010), and the lowest ma-
ternal mortality ratio modeled estimate (15 per 100,000
live births in 2008). In addition, only 5.4 percent of the
population of Belarus live below the national poverty
line (national level in 2009), and the country has the
best income or consumption distribution, i.e., the low-

25
est 20 percent of the population possesses 9.2 percent
of income distribution, while the highest 20 percent
has 36.4 percent of income.
Notwithstanding the highest indicators of democ-
racy, Georgia has had remarkably low economic and
social performance over the years since its indepen-
dence. The GNI per capita of the Georgian population
in 2010 was only $2,690, with an overall GNI rank of
145. It is notable that Georgia has the highest child mor-
tality rates among the three countries: 47 per 1,000 live
births during the last year of the Soviet Union and 22
in 2010, with the worst maternal mortality ratio mod-
eled estimate: 48 per 100,000 live births in 2008. Out of
the three countries studied, Georgia has skyrocketing
numbers of citizens living below the national poverty
line at 24.7 percent (national level in 2009), and the
worst income or consumption distribution: the lowest
20 percent of the population possesses 5.3 percent of
income distribution, while the highest 20 percent has
47.2 percent of income distribution. The last figures
are the indicators of the growing disproportionality
between the wealthiest and the poorest layers of the
population. This is, in itself, a barometer for worsen-
ing internal political stability, since large social dis-
parities can lead to mass protests and political unrest.
Ukraine occupies a somewhat middle ground
among the three countries with regards to its eco-
nomic and social performance. The Ukrainian GNI
per capita in 2010 was $3,000—in between Belarus and
Georgia—with an overall GNI rank of 136. The child
mortality rates in Ukraine are also at midpoint: 21 per
1,000 live births in 1990 and 13 in 2010. The same situ-
ation can be found with the maternal mortality ratio
modeled estimate: 26 per 100,000 live births in 2008.
At the same time, Ukraine has the lowest percentage

26
of citizens living below the national poverty line at 2.9
percent (national level in 2008), and the best income
or consumption distribution: the lowest 20 percent of
the population possesses 9.7 percent of income distri-
bution, while the highest 20 percent has 36.3 percent
of the income. The indicators are slightly higher than
those for Belarus.
The three countries also differ significantly with
regard to their investment climates, the facilitation
of conducting businesses for the domestic and for-
eign entrepreneurs, as well as the overall dependency
of foreign aid. The Heritage Foundation has ranked
Ukraine the lowest among the three countries (161)
and Georgia the highest (21), with Belarus being
quite close to Ukraine (154)53 in its Index of Economic
Freedoms. According to the World Development Indi-
cators, Georgia also has the least amount of foreign
direct investments (FDIs)—$1.1 billion, surpassed by
Belarus with its $4 billion and Ukraine with the high-
est FDIs at $7.2 billion.
Additional valuable inputs in understanding the
domestic economic settings are contained in the data
of the International Financial Corporation (IFC). The
gap between the three countries with respect to doing
business, protecting foreign investments and the de-
pendence on foreign aid is quite striking. According
to the IFC, the easiest country to do business with is
Georgia (rank 9) while the most difficult is Ukraine
(rank 137). Of the three countries, Georgia (rank 4)
protects its investors the best. Ukraine, again, offers
the least protection for foreign financial interests (rank
21).54 Here, Belarus also occupies the middle grounds
by these indicators. The IFC has given Georgia the
highest indicators in the region of Eastern Europe and
Central Asia, while Ukraine is the third from the bot-

27
tom. Finally, Georgia depends the most upon foreign
aid: it has 5.5 percent of the GINI Index of the foreign
aid dependency ratio, whereas Ukraine and Belarus
depend the least, with 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent,
respectively. The high numbers of the population
living off the support of the donor organizations in
Georgia can be explained, among other factors, by two
civil conflicts with the Abkhazian and South Ossetian
secessionist regions starting from 1992, which led to
about 280,000 internally displaced persons by 2012.55
Finally, participation of the countries in the glo-
balization processes brings valuable insights about
their economic and social development. The increased
involvement in globalization may be a positive indi-
cator for their overall market liberalization and fa-
vorable investment climate. From this point of view,
the KOF Index of Globalization 2012,56 produced by the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, focuses on the
economic, social, and political openness of the coun-
tries. The Index considers “economic globalization” as
the combined indicator of actual monetary flows and
restrictions. According to these parameters, the coun-
try most open to economic globalization is Georgia
(rank 29) and the least open one is Belarus (rank 117),
with Ukraine occupying the middle position (rank 61).
“Social globalization” is considered as the sum of per-
sonal contacts (between the citizens of the countries in
question and the rest of the world), information flows,
and cultural proximity. According to this indicator, the
most socially globalized country is Belarus (rank 60),
followed by Ukraine (rank 69) and Georgia (rank 88).
One of the reasons for such high social globalization
of Belarus, notwithstanding its relative isolation from
most of the outside world, is its considerably high in-
tegration into Russian economic and social networks.

28
Strong personal and family links between Belarusian
and Russian populations, together with the Union
State of Russia and Belarus, an entity with common
political, economic, military, custom, currency, legal,
humanitarian, and cultural space, trampolined Belar-
us to the most socially globalized country out of the
three. Another explanation lies in the fact of frequent
shopping trips of the Belarusians to the neighboring
countries of the European Union (EU). As Alexan-
der Lukashenka himself complained, Belarusians are
spending $3 billion each year in their lucrative shop-
ping in the EU. In the first half of 2013, there were over
3.8 million foreign trips registered to the EU, with the
total population of Belarus of 9.5 million.57

Political Stability.

Most of the datasets prepared by the research insti-

tutions and public opinion polls named Georgia as the
least stable internally (durability of state institutions
to withstand internal disturbances) and externally
(durability of state institutions to withstand external
pressure). Belarus and Ukraine are significantly more
stable by various parameters. The Failed States Index
2013 developed annually by the Fund For Peace views
the political stability through the prisms of three cat-
egories of variables: cultural (demographic pressure,
refugees, group grievance, and human flight), eco-
nomic (uneven development, poverty, and economic
decline), and political (legitimacy of the state, politi-
cal services, human rights, security apparatus, factor-
ized elites, and external intervention).58 In these com-
bined categories, Georgia is ranked 51 of most failed
states in the world, with the worst performance being
in “group grievances,” “state legitimacy,” and “fac-

29
tionalized elites.” From the point of view of external
stability, the war with Russia pushed Georgia down
to the rank of the 33rd most failed state in 2008. The
least failed state is Ukraine, ranked 177, followed by
Belarus (rank 81). A similar dataset, the State Fragility
Index, developed in 2011 by Monty Marshall and Ben-
jamin Cole, focuses on the combination of governance
effectiveness and legitimacy parameters. The Index
named Belarus as the most politically stable out of the
three countries (rank 4) and Georgia as the least stable
(rank 8).59
The civil wars Georgia suffered from represent the
significant factor in decreasing the internal political
stability of the country. According to Eurostat 2012, in
2010, Georgia was ranked 10 out of non-EU countries
by the number of asylum seekers in the EU member-
states.60 Furthermore, in 2011, the World Prison Popula-
tion List noted Georgia as having one of the highest
prison populations per capita in the world (547 per
100,000). The same list noted Ukraine as having the
lowest numbers of prisoners (338 per 100,000), with
Belarus occupying the middle position out of the
countries (381 prisoners per 100,000).61
Much along the same lines, the 2013 Global Peace
Index of the Institute of Economics and Peace, which
includes multiple indicators for internal and external
political stability, identified Georgia as the least peace-
ful country among the three studied here, ranking it
139. This is largely due to the war with Russia in 2008
and the continuous domestic rivalry between its mul-
tiple political forces. The best peace score (rank 96)
was given to Belarus, while Ukraine was ranked 111.
The Index explains the high stability score of Belar-
us by the phenomenon of “authoritarian resilience”:
strong centralized authority limiting any political and

30
economic freedoms while suppressing the level of
criminality, which is a visibly positive development.
According to the Index, Belarus managed to suppress
“[a]n independent class of wealthy businessmen able
to exert a strong political influence. . . keeping corrup-
tion at lower levels than in neighbouring Russia and
Ukraine.”62 Belarus also keeps a considerably high ra-
tio of “internal security forces to population,” which
augments the authoritative resilience of its president
by making the expression of free will a punishable
venture. In Ukraine:

[t]he main factors behind the decline in peacefulness

. . . were a rise in perception of criminality under the
presidency of Viktor Yanukovych . . . alongside a
worsening of relations with an important neighbour,
Russia.63

These two aspects negatively affected the ability of

Ukraine to move up the peace ladder, which still put it
high above Georgia with its unresolved conflicts.
The Political Stability Index of the Economist Intel-
ligence Unit offers another look into the matter of in-
ternal durability of the governance regimes. The Index
views political stability as “the level of threat posed
to governments by social protest.” The Index includes
multiple variables that can be grouped, similarly to
the Failed States Index, into political (history of post-in-
dependence and political instability, corruption, insti-
tutional trust, external political environment, regime
types, and functionalism), economic (inequality, labor
unrest, income growth, unemployment, and GDP per
capita), and cultural (ethnic fragmentation, situation
with minorities, and social provision). In 2009-10, ac-
cording to the Index, the most politically stable coun-
try that thwarted public protests successfully was

31
Belarus (rank 124), while the most politically unstable
one was Ukraine (rank 16) followed by Georgia (rank
73).64 This is somewhat a deviation from the common
pattern, which kept Georgia at the bottom of political
stability. The Worldwide Governance Indicators pro-
duced by Kaufmann et al.65 also name Belarus as the
most politically stable (rank 41) country, and Geor-
gia as having the lowest political stability (rank 24.5).
At the same time, Georgia has the highest indicator
for the regulatory quality (rank 70.8), government
effectiveness (rank 64.1), and control of corruption
(rank 54.1).
The level of participation of the countries in glo-
balization can also be a measure of their external
political stability. If a country is included in the pro-
cesses of globalized economies, has wider political
participation, and enjoys a higher level of social and
cultural interactions, the more liberal and politically
stable it will become. In addition to the economic and
social globalization discussed previously, the KOF’s
Index of Globalization includes a third category, “politi-
cal globalization.” Political globalization is defined as
the availability of foreign embassies and globalization
inputs of the countries in question, such as member-
ships in international organizations, participation in
the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s missions,
and membership in international treaties.66 In this cat-
egory, the most politically globalized country of the
trio is Ukraine (rank 43), with Georgia and Belarus
having somewhat closer standings: rank 139 and rank
145, respectively.
The high rank of Ukraine can be explained by its
economic globalization via participating in the gas
transit from Russia to Europe and family links with
the large Ukrainian diaspora, mostly in Russia, but

32
also slowly growing in the European countries and
North America. The low ranking of Georgia and Be-
larus in the political globalization category can be ex-
plained by different reasons. Georgia’s global political
participation was somewhat stalled by its long-term
domestic political turbulence, including the civil wars
of 1992, 1992–94, and the recent war with Russia in
2008. The low standings of Belarus in political global-
ization, notwithstanding its strong economic and cul-
tural performance in the form of economic remittances
from and family links with Russia as well as frequent
travels abroad, are due to the general closeness of its
political environment, a vivid indicator of which is the
ongoing disputes with Europe and the United States
over human rights and political discrimination issues
in Belarus, including the expulsion of ambassadors by
Lukashenka.67

Does Public Opinion Matter?

With the purpose of further exploring the de-

mocracy/stability/development nexus in Ukraine,
Georgia, and Belarus, a questionnaire was distributed
among the social networks (country-specific groups in
Facebook and LinkedIn as well as various University
alumni networks) to study the opinion and views of
citizens of these countries concerning the three vari-
ables of the current study. The poll included 27 ques-
tions split into three sections: Citizenship, Law, and
Rights; Representative and Accountable Government;
and Civil Society and Popular Participation. The ques-
tions were borrowed from and based on the Democ-
racy Assessment Guide of the International Institute of De-
mocracy and Electoral Assistance68 and the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) Guide to Rule

33
of Law.69 The response levels to the questionnaire in
these three countries are characteristic of the high lev-
els of political activity of domestic policy in some and
the chronic apathy in others: 157 people participated
in the questionnaire in Georgia, 64 in Ukraine, and
only 13 in Belarus.

Citizenship, Law and Rights.

Almost half of the Ukrainian respondents think

that the rule of law is not provided throughout the
country, whereas 44 percent are neutral on this ques-
tion. The responses among the Belarusian pool are
practically the same: 54 percent believe that the rule of
law is not effective, and only 18 percent consider that
the level of the rule of law is acceptable. Of Georgian
respondents, 28 percent gave positive answers to this
question, while 57 percent are on the middle ground.
An overwhelming majority of the respondents in
Ukraine (78 percent) and Belarus (64 percent) do not
consider their country to have an effective separation
of the branches of government, including indepen-
dence of the courts from judiciary and executive pow-
ers. The answers among Georgian participants were
split between those who are of a neutral opinion on
this matter (43 percent) and those who do not con-
sider the branches to be independent from each other
(41 percent).
Only 1.6 percent of the respondents in Ukraine
have confidence in the legal system of their country to
deliver fair and effective justice, while most of them
(73 percent) think that the legal system is not effective.
In Belarus, the situation is different: 27 percent of par-
ticipants trust their legal system, whereas 27 percent
and 18 percent have low and the lowest trust, with an

34
additional 27 percent occupying the middle position
on this question. The numbers of those who trust and
mistrust the legal system in Georgia are almost equal:
24 percent and 27 percent, respectively, with 48 per-
cent having the middle opinion.
About half of the Ukrainian respondents think that
the situation with democracy and human rights is bad
or very bad (25 percent, respectively), and only 20
percent believe that the democracy level is high, and
that human rights are provided by the government,
with one third neutral on this question. More people
in Belarus (63 percent combined) are of a negative
opinion of their government’s ability to protect their
rights, while only 9 percent consider that their rights
are protected, with 27 percent having a neutral opin-
ion on this question. A remarkable 53 percent of Geor-
gian respondents think that human rights are better
protected now than 10 years ago, and only 12 percent
believe that the situation has changed for the worse.
When human rights are translated into specifics of
freedoms of movement, expression, association, and
assembly, the highest number of the Ukrainian re-
spondents (over 41 percent) think that they are more
or less provided; over 21 percent believe that the situ-
ation with these rights is good, and only 33 percent
of them think that these rights are not safeguarded.
The Belarusian respondents are mostly of an opposite
opinion: a combined 54 percent do not consider that
these rights are provided or are not fulfilled by the
state; a little more than 33 percent of them are of a
neutral opinion on this question; and only 9 percent
are satisfied with the situation. Of the Georgian re-
spondents, 46 percent positively evaluate the condi-
tion with these rights in Georgia, 40 percent more are
content with the situation, while 12 percent think that

35
these rights are provided for effectively and for all
residents. The rate of negative and positive respons-
es in Ukraine is balanced on the issue of freedom of
speech: 29.6 percent of them are satisfied with it, 22.2
percent are not, while 46 percent consider the level as
acceptable. Of the Belarusian respondents, 63 percent
believe that freedom of speech is not provided in the
country, and another 27 percent are of a neutral opin-
ion on this subject. The situation is drastically differ-
ent in Georgia: a combined total of 46 percent consider
the situation with freedom of speech as good and very
good, and 35 percent are of a neutral opinion.
The responses to the questions on another set of
human rights—freedom of religion, language, and
cultural rights—were not positive in Ukraine: 75 per-
cent believe that the situation with these rights ranges
from bad to very bad. On the contrary, 45 percent of
the Belarusian respondents consider the situation with
these rights as good, and 36 percent think it is accept-
able. The same occurs in Georgia: 61 percent of those
questioned think that the situation is good, 28 percent
are of the middle opinion on this question, and only 10
percent think it is bad.
The views of the Ukrainian respondents were al-
most equally split (20 percent each) between those
who think that individuals and organizations work-
ing to improve human rights are free from harass-
ment and intimidation and those who believe they are
harassed, while the rest occupies the middle ground
on this question. In Belarus, however, most of the re-
spondents (72 percent combined) believe that human
rights activists are harassed. The situation was, again,
different in Georgia, where, according to 45 percent
of the respondents, human rights activists are mostly
free from intimidation in fulfilling their duties; an-

36
other 43 percent think that the situation is acceptable.
The situation with economic freedoms in Ukraine is
considered bad by 40 percent of respondents, very
bad by 13.3 percent, and good only by 11.6 percent.
In Belarus, however, most of those questioned (54
percent) take the middle ground on this matter, and
the remaining are equally spread between opposing
opinion spectrums. A similar situation is in Georgia:
44 percent of the respondents have a middle opin-
ion on the matter of economic freedoms, 31 percent
believe that condition with these freedoms is good,
and 24 percent are not satisfied with the condition of
economic freedoms.
Finally, most of the Ukrainian respondents are ei-
ther somewhat unhappy (40 percent) or not satisfied
at all (44 percent) with the level of economic develop-
ment of Ukraine. The situation is different in Belarus:
45 percent of the respondents think that the economic
development of their country is on an average level,
and there is a balance between those who are satis-
fied and dissatisfied with the performance of the Be-
larusian economy. Most of the Georgian respondents
occupy the middle ground on this matter; another 24
percent are satisfied with the economic development,
while 32 percent are not happy with the situation.

Representative and Accountable Government.

The majority of Ukrainian (up to 60 percent) and

Belarusian (89 percent) respondents believe that the
elections in their respective countries have not become
more transparent over the last decade. The situation is
drastically different in Georgia: 90 percent of respon-
dents consider the elections procedure to have signifi-
cantly improved over the past 10 years. In Ukraine,

37
40 percent of participants think that the opposition
parties and NGOs are moderately free in organizing
themselves, whereas the numbers of those on the op-
posing spectrum of the opinion (fully free/not fully
free) are almost equal: 25.5 percent and 29 percent,
correspondingly. Most of the Belarusian respondents
consider their opposition parties and NGOs to be ei-
ther oppressed (22 percent) or highly oppressed (44
percent). In Georgia, the situation is different: a com-
bined 55 percent believe that their opposition parties
and NGOs are free from prosecutions, and 30 percent
think their freedom is on an average level.
Most of the respondents from Ukraine are either
somewhat not satisfied (46 percent) or mostly unsatis-
fied (18 percent) with their last elections, whereas 28.5
percent of them occupy the middle ground on this is-
sue, and only 8 percent of them combined are either
fully or partially satisfied with the elections. The re-
spondents from Belarus are most dissatisfied with the
elections (64 percent combined). On the contrary, most
of the Georgian respondents are either satisfied (40
percent) or very satisfied (31 percent) with the recent
elections, and another 20 percent occupy the middle
position on this question. The overwhelming majority
of Ukrainian respondents do not trust their govern-
ment to some degree (62.5 percent fully and 26.8 per-
cent partially), with only 1.8 percent having full trust
in it. The numbers of those trusting their government
are higher in Belarus (11 percent fully trust, 33 percent
partially trust, and 33 percent do not trust). The Geor-
gian respondents were almost equally split between
those who do not trust their government (27 percent)
and those who do (33 percent), with the remaining 40
percent having a middle opinion on this matter.

38
 On the question of access by the citizens to gov-
ernment information, the majority of the Ukrainian
respondents think that the situation is on a moder-
ate level (49 percent), whereas 33 percent think that
citizens cannot get access to information. Most of the
Belarusian respondents (44 percent) occupy the mid-
dle ground on this question; 33 percent of them share
their Ukrainian counterparts’ views on partial access
to the information, and 11 percent think that they are
deprived of such information. Half of the Georgian
respondents are of a middle opinion on this question,
and another 33 percent are satisfied with the access to
governmental information. Most of those questioned
in Ukraine (79 percent combined) think that police
and security services are not accountable to the public,
and so do 55 percent of their Belarusian counterparts.
At the same time, 22 percent of them think that po-
lice and security services are somewhat accountable.
In Georgia, 33 percent of respondents consider police
somewhat accountable, and 12 percent think they are
fully accountable to the public, whereas 37 percent
keep accountability at the average level.
Of the Ukrainian respondents, 43 percent believe
the crime level in their country to be on a moderate
level; 29 percent and 13 percent think that it is some-
what high and very high, correspondingly. Among
the Belarusian respondents, 44 percent think that the
crime level is moderate, 33 percent think it is low, and
22 percent believe that is it high. In Georgia, most of
those questioned (54 percent) think the crime level
is low, 31 percent consider it acceptable, and only 13
percent think it is high. Most of the respondents in
Ukraine (87 percent) think that businesses influence
public policy, and so do their Georgian counterparts
(60 percent), whereas in Belarus the majority (67 per-

39
cent) believes that politics is free from the influences
of large corporations.
Finally, on the question on corruption in the gov-
ernment, 20 percent and 35.7 percent in Ukraine con-
sider public officials and public services as somewhat
corrupt or very corrupt. In Belarus, the majority (44
percent) think that corruption is on a moderate level.
Most of the Georgian respondents (41 percent) take
a middle ground on this question; 36 percent believe
their civil servants are free from corruption.

Civil Society and Popular Participation.

Of the Ukrainian respondents, 42 percent believe

that the independence of mass media from the govern-
ment is on an average level, and another 40.7 percent
of them think that it is not independent. In Belarus,
these numbers are skewed towards the negative spec-
trum: 55.5 percent and 11 percent, respectively, con-
sider mass media somewhat dependent and very de-
pendent on the government. In Georgia, the situation
is similar: 43 percent of the respondents view mass
media as dependent on the government and only 21%
think it is independent.
The question on efficiency of media in investigat-
ing government and private corporations divided the
pool of Ukrainian respondents in half: 20 percent are
on opposite sides of the spectrum, while 52.7 percent
are neutral on this issue. The same response rate in
Ukraine can be found on the question of freedom of
journalists from restrictive laws, harassment, and in-
timidation. The respondents from Belarus are more
pessimistic in their estimates of media efficiency:
overall, 77 percent of them think that mass media is
not efficient. In Georgia, the majority of respondents

40
was either pessimistic (34 percent) or took the middle
ground (43 percent) on the investigative ability of
journalists. The situation with journalists’ freedom
in Belarus is radically different: an overwhelming 88
percent of respondents believe that their journalists
work under constant harassment by the government.
The political polarization in Georgia is also evident in
this question: while 40 percent are of a neutral opin-
ion on media liberty, 32 percent think that journalists
are harassed and another 28 percent think they are
not harassed.
Of Ukrainians, 49 percent are of a neutral opinion
on independence of voluntary associations, citizen
groups, and social movements from the government,
whereas 38 percent and 5 percent of them think that
they are somewhat independent and fully indepen-
dent from government pressure. Their Georgian coun-
terparts are of a different standing: 43 percent have a
middle view on this issue, while 43 percent think that
they are very independent from the government. The
Belarusian respondents are of a completely different
opinion on this question: 66 percent view the third
sector as not independent from their government.
From the point of view of external political stabil-
ity, most of the Ukrainian respondents think that their
country is somewhat independent (49 percent) or fully
independent (14.5 percent) from the influence of other
countries on its domestic political affairs. The Belar-
usian response rate is almost the same: 55.5 percent
think that their country is somewhat independent, and
11 percent consider it fully independent from outside
influences. In Georgia, too, most respondents (54 per-
cent) believe their country is free from outside influ-
ences, and another 34 percent are of a middle opinion.

41
 The future internal political stability for each coun-
try was evaluated quite differently within the three
countries. Of the Ukrainian respondents, 58 percent
feel that significant political changes will happen to
Ukraine in the next five years, whereas the rest believe
in political stability without any major transforma-
tions. Georgians are of a more radical view: 78 per-
cent anticipate significant changes in the political life
of their country. Their Belarusian counterparts are of
exactly the opposite opinion: 67 percent do not expect
any notable political change to happen in Belarus in
the next 5 years. Such an outlook in Ukraine is due
to, perhaps, the fact that most of those questioned
prefer political freedoms (69 percent) to economic
stability, which argues for an increase in the level of
political activity of the masses over the coming years.
In Georgia, too, 63 percent prefer politically free rath-
er than economically stable. In Belarus, the situation
is opposite: 56 percent prefer economic freedoms to
political liberties.

POLITICAL CULTURE AS AN IDENTITY

CONSTRUCT

The responses to the questionnaire reflect the in-

terplay between the levels of democratization, politi-
cal stability, and economic development in the target
countries. Political culture is the meta-variable that
glues together the other variables and affects the be-
havior of the institutional actors and their opinions re-
garding specific aspects of their respective governance
regime. It permeates the very core of the societal fabric
and profoundly impacts the ways the actors respond
to internal and external disturbances of their political
environment. Political culture is a very complex phe-

42
nomenon. It does not appear overnight. It is a complex
product of convoluted interactions of the actors at the
political, economic, and cultural layers intertwining
the social fabric. In order to understand the current
political settings in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus,
which influenced the course of democratization of
their societies after independence, it is necessary to go
back in their histories. The circumstances that led to
the creation of the complex phenomenon of political
culture are pivotal in understanding the responses of
the three nations to the changing domestic and inter-
national environs.

Political Culture.

In the present context, the notion of political culture

goes beyond Douglas North’s definition of culture,
which is a “language-based conceptual framework
for encoding and interpreting the information that the
lenses are presenting to the brain.”70 Dittmer defines
political culture as “a system of political symbols . .
. nest[ing] in a more inclusive system that we might
term ‘political communication’,”71 which is deeply
embedded in the identities of the actors reflected in
their political behavior. Political behavior, according
to Claude Ake, is:

ubiquitous. Members of society behave politically

insofar as, in obeying or disobeying the laws of the
society, they support or undermine the power stratifi-
cation system.72

David Laitin and Aaron Wildavski view politi-

cal culture as a three-prong phenomenon: it instills
“points of concern to be debated”; it guides people

43
“by the symbols of their culture and is instrumental in
using culture to gain wealth and power”; and it con-
tains the symbols, which “must be interpreted in full
ethno-graphic context.”73
For the purposes of the present research, political
culture is defined as “modes of responses of institu-
tional actors to challenges emanating from internal
and external environments.” Based on that definition,
political culture becomes, essentially, the symbolic
media of political behavior—what Stephen Chilton
calls “all publicly common ways of relating within
the collectivity”74—in other words, the ways in which
the institutional actors interact with their governance
regimes and react to the presented political agendas,
both domestic and international. Symbolic commu-
nications between the institutional actors within the
specific governance regimes make political culture the
product of their identities.
On the domestic level, political culture includes
the sets of behavioral responses of the actors towards
the changes of their governance regimes. The same ap-
plies to the level of international system, only in this
case, the changes in the governance are substituted by
the fluctuations of the regional and/or global environ-
ment, depending on the roles the countries in question
play in it. On either of these levels, changes occur on
the institutional level and follow the pace of norma-
tive “lifecycles.” These lifecycles involve three stages
defined by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink
as “norm emergence,” “norm cascading,” and “norm
internalization.”75
The normative change cycle starts with appear-
ance of a norm either from inside, for example, the
inception of human rights in England’s Magna Carta
in the 13th century and the French Revolution of 1789,

44
or from outside, such as the post-colonial and post-
imperial governance transformations following the
imperial collapses and based on externally proposed
governance models. Gradually, the change of a norm
in one sphere (for instance, in law enforcement) leads
to normative spillovers in other areas (healthcare, ed-
ucation, urban planning, social security, etc.) starting
to involve increased numbers of institutional actors.
The final stage of the democratic normative lifecycle—
when a norm becomes a part of the political culture of
a nation, an inherent component of its “moral fit,” and
the core of its national identity—is the lengthiest pro-
cess of all since it affects not only specific institutions,
but also the whole complexity.
For the process of institutional change of politi-
cal regimes to be successful and (more importantly)
durable, it should transcend through the institutional
actors with relatively insignificant interruptions. The
outcomes of all the three stages of the normative
lifecycle of institutional change depend directly on
the political cultures of the target societies and how
receptive they are to change. Political culture can be
lenient and well receptive to political change, or it
can be rigid and somewhat immune to institutional
transformations. In the first case, the institutional
change happens somewhat smoothly because of its
acceptance by relatively high numbers of institutional
actors. The rigid cultures, where the actors who prefer
institutional statism to change, slow lifecycles.

THREE HISTORICAL NARRATIVES

Political cultures of different nations are not ho-

mogenous inasmuch as their identities are different.
Political cultures are not created overnight; they are

45
born out of centuries of human development and in-
teractions with the neighboring societies and polity.
Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus had similar historical
conditions existing prior to their independence and
even before Communist rule, which draw parallels
between their overall socio-political and economic de-
velopmental levels. Nevertheless, there is a significant
diversity among their political cultures influencing
the current levels of democratization, political stabil-
ity, and economic development.

Historical Ukraine.

Historically molded, Ukrainian identity is com-

prised, according to Sergei Shtukarin, of triple con-
structs: “national,” where its bearer reacts positively
to the maxima “Ukraine for Ukrainians”; “civil,”
which implies loyalty to Ukraine’s statehood regard-
less of ethnic background; and “alien” identity, which
regards both Ukrainian ethnicity and statehood as for-
eign.76 Similarly, as Serhy Yekelchuk notes, the Ukrai-
nian national identity engulfed three components,
being “a direct descendant of medieval Kyivan Rus,
the 17th-century Cossack polity, and the 1918–1920
Ukrainian People’s Republic.”77 Current geographic
divide in the Ukrainian society into the pro-European
west and pro-Russian east was born of the centuries
of interactions with both sides of the bipolar identity
equation. Ukraine, with its historical core of the Kyi-
van Rus’ which gave birth to the medieval Slavic fief-
doms, represents the basis for common Eastern Slavic
identity78 and was the center which the future Russian
Empire would build around, but just at the outskirts
of it.79 The name “Ukraine” in Eastern Slavic dialects
means “at the edge,” the “borderland.” Ukraine had its

46
short period of independence during medieval times
in the form of the Galicia-Volhynia political entity in
the 13th and 14th centuries, which Ukrainian historian
Stefan Tomashivsky named as “the first undeniably
Ukrainian state.”80
In the 15th and 16th centuries, a part of present-
day Ukraine was included into the powerful Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth,81 after which some of its
western territories became semi-independent under
the rule of the Cossacks, who were “Orthodox men
roaming the steppes, and . . . famously independent
minded.”82 Cossacks were the military regiments gath-
ered in Zaporojskaya Sech’ who pledged no allegiance
to their neighbors, be it the Polish-Lithuanian union,
the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, or Mos-
cowia, the modern Russia. The governance regime
in Sech’ could be named as an embryonic democracy
with some sort of separation of responsibilities be-
tween the elected Hetman (the leader) and the Rada
(the equivalent of the modern Parliament), which was
a consultative body, as well as the equal voice given
to every Cossack. A century later, in 1710, Sech’ pro-
duced one of the first prototypes of a modern-day
democratic constitution under Hetman Orlyk,83 with
real attributes of democracy, including the separation
of powers and an elective governance style.
However, it was they, the Cossacks, who, after
the bloody defeat by the Polish army in 1651, asked
Alexei I, Tsar of Moscovia, to accept them under his
protection.84 They were seeking a temporary military
alliance, fearing the ultimate subjugation by the Pol-
ish reign. The initial arrangements provided for mu-
tual loyalty of Cossacks and Alexei I, wide autonomy,
and keeping of internal composition of Ukraine. Later
on, however, these accords were broken, and Mosco-

47
via totally subordinated the land it initially promised
to defend (temporarily) from outside enemies. This
marked the period of Ukrainian history under Rus-
sian rule, which transitioned to Soviet governance af-
ter the October Revolution of 1917. Ukraine did have
its independence, though, in the form of the Ukrainian
People’s Republic in 1918 and the West Ukrainian
People’s Republic, which joined the former in 1919
with the loss of its territory to Poland, Romania, and
Czechoslovakia in the Polish-Ukrainian war of June
1919. Ukrainian independence, however, turned out
to be short-lived, and Ukraine was ultimately van-
quished by the Soviet Army in mid-summer 1920,
creating the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Historical Georgia.

Situated “at a major commercial crossroads and

among several power neighbors”85—not all of them
friendly—right in the middle of the Great Silk Road,
a halfway point between the East and the West, Geor-
gian identity and culture has been historically exposed
to the influences of diverse cultures, religions, lan-
guages, and mostly authoritarian governance regimes
of the regional powers. The history of Georgia precipi-
tates with foreign conquerors with direct and indirect
reigns—Byzantine, Seljuk, Ottoman Turkey, Sassanid
Persia, Arabs, and Mongols86—up until 1783, when
eastern Georgia, followed by the western part of the
country, were incorporated into the Russian Empire.87
Notwithstanding the heavy external political pressure
and centuries of political subordination, Georgia re-
mained a country with unchanged Christian beliefs,
unique language (with its own written alphabet), and
a very specific set of cultural traits.

48
 The end of the Russian Empire as a result of the
October Revolution of 1917 gave a glimpse of hope to
the Georgian polity, which soon established the first
true modern independent country. However, what
appeared to be the start of its independent existence
on a par with the regional actors in reality was only
a short intermission between the two empires—the
Russian one and the Soviet Union one in the making.
In 1921, Georgia, along with its immediate Caucasian
neighbors, Armenia and Azerbaijan, was conquered
by the Russian military88 and forcefully made a mem-
ber of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Repub-
lic. Fifteen years later, this entity dissolved, with its
members becoming separate, but not sovereign, re-
publics within the Soviet Union.

Historical Belarus.

Creation of the Belarus nation dates back to the mi-

gration of the Eastern Slavic tribes in the 6th through
8th centuries further eastwards to the borders of con-
temporary Belarus. The name “Belarus,” or “White
Russia,” as noted by Jan Zaprudnik:

originated in the 12th century and initially designated

various parts of northwestern Russia or Ukraine. Since
the 14th century, it has also been applied to eastern
territories of present-day Belarus.89

Similar to Ukraine, Belarus had its first independent

states of Polatsk, Turai, and Navahradak between the
9th and 13th centuries.90 In later centuries, largely ow-
ing to the Mongol conquest of the Kyivan Rus’ in 1240,
the lands populated by the Belarusian tribes were
taken over by, first, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,

49
and later in the 16th century by the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted until the
late-18th century when, as a result of the three par-
titions of Poland, according to Andrew Wilson, “Be-
larus was swallowed almost whole by the Romanov
Empire. . . .”91—the growing strength of Tsarist Russia.
With the long history of Belarus, scholars stumble
upon multiple roadblocks of defining Belarusian iden-
tity: is it Russian, similar to Russian, or something
else? Historically, its origins, as Serhii Plokhy notes,
“the Belarusian [identity] was based on the Ruthenian
identity that had previously developed in the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania but failed to produce distinct iden-
tity in modern times.”92 Among the possible reasons for
the Belarus identity limbo was the systematic policy of
Russification of the Tsarist rule, which was a part of the
grand objective to de-Polonize the eastern Slavic lands
within the Russian Empire and, thus, to pave the road
for the gradual spread of Eastern Orthodoxy replacing
Western Catholicism. In the push to eradicate the na-
tional consciousness of the Belarusians, Russian Tsar
Nicolai I prohibited the usage of the term “Belarusia”
and renamed the land the “North-Western Territory,”
simultaneously banning the use of Belarusian as a
distinct language in the 1840s.93 At the same time, the
spread of socialist ideology in the Russian Empire and
the industrial revolution had together emancipated
the national self-consciousness of some of its nations,
including the Belarusians. Following the defeat of
Germany in World War I, the Belarusian Soviet So-
cialist Republic was created in 1918, marking an era of
new communist governance, which, after the end of
1922 (the official inception of the USSR), received the
name “Sovietization.”

50
Under the Soviet Union.

During the Soviet period, and even for quite some

time after the USSR dissolution, the political cultures
of its former republics were viewed from outside as
somewhat uniform, as either all “Soviet” or all “Rus-
sian.” They were considered as parts of the gigantic
ex-communist monolithic society with homogenous
norms, rules, and practices. There was, indeed, a fair
amount of truth in having such an approach to the
nations willingly or forcefully brought under Soviet
rule. The process of conversion of the identities of
the multiethnic population speaking different lan-
guages and having quite diverse (and somewhat alien
to each other) cultural traits and customs into a uni-
form one had the purpose of creating a single Soviet
political culture.
The primary aim of the Soviet Union can be pre-
sented as the process of cultural homogenization of
the Soviet nations. The manual on Cultural policy in
the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, as quoted by
David Marples, identified three stages of the Soviet-
ization process. The purpose of the first one was “to
introduce a ‘social attitude’ among the population and
to develop the ideological base of the working class.”94
The pinnacle of this endeavor, as rendered by its
mastermind, Joseph Stalin, was:

[t]he flourishing of the cultures, which are national in

form and socialist in content, under the dictatorship
of the proletariat in one country with the purpose of
merging them into a single socialist (both in form and
content) culture with a common language.95

This was, however, illogical in its core; while the aim

of Sovietization was eradication of the ethnic/nation-

51
al characteristics of its member-nations and creation
of the one-size-fits-all Soviet identity, the process itself
encouraged existence and, even more so, fermentation
of national consciousness.
The politics of Russification had an important part
in the overall Sovietization process (conversion of citi-
zens into Homo sovieticus), but it was conducted quite
subtly and mostly had to deal with the promotion of
the Russian language as the medium of inter-republi-
can communication while keeping the national identi-
ties alive. In Belarus, for example, the policy of kore-
nizaciya (“indigenization”) gave the Russian language
the status of the “second” language after Belarusian,
while Belarusian retained its official language status.96
In Georgia, according to J. Parsons, the:

Soviet policy has given active encouragement to the

rastsvet or flourishing of Georgian culture (as of that of
the other nationalities) in the belief that by providing
for both the socio-economic development of the repub-
lics and for political and cultural equality, attachment
to national differences would, by itself, subside.97

As a result, neither the Georgian language nor

the Georgian orthodoxy was stifled by early Soviet
authorities. After Stalin, an ethnic Georgian was de-
posed post-mortem from his “personality cult,” and
the anti-Stalin campaign started, which was viewed
by many Georgians as anti-Georgian. In 1978, the Rus-
sian language was elevated to the level of official lan-
guage along with Georgian, which was vehemently
rejected by the Georgian establishment.
In Ukraine, this process, according to Anna Reid,
was stricter than in either of the two communist re-
publics in question. Reid identified a number of rea-
sons for the more rigorous Russification of Ukraine:

52
comparatively early existence under the Soviet geopo-
litical umbrella and the denial of the unique Ukrainian
identity by Russian nationalists. According to Reid:

Russians deny their [Ukrainians’] existence. Ukrai-

nians are a ‘non-historical nation,’ the Ukrainian
language is a joke dialect. . . . The very closeness of
Ukrainian and Russian culture, the very subtlety of
the differences between them, is an irritation.98

The denial of the ethnic uniqueness of Ukrainians,

which Chaim Kaufman considers as the “strongest”
identity of all,99 became an integral part of the system-
atic nationalism policy towards Ukraine in the Soviet
Union. This process, however, was not uniquely So-
viet. Similar to the Belarusian language ban, it started
when Ukraine was a part of the Russian Empire. The
so-called Valuevskiy Cirkulyar (Circular Letter of Val-
uev) by the Minister of Interior, and Ems Ukaz (in 1863
and 1876, respectively) banned the use of the Ukrai-
nian language and dialects in the western provinces.
A somewhat lackadaisical approach to Soviet Rus-
sification in Belarus and Georgia, as opposed to the
relentless take on Ukraine, can be explained by the
differences in the views of Moscow on these nations.
In Belarus, the lax Russification could be explained,
among other reasons, by the fact that the ruling Rus-
sian elite of the Soviet Union felt little urge to change
the Belarusian identity, since they largely viewed it as
Russian by definition. In Georgia, the situation was
on the opposite side of the spectrum of Russification
policies. The Georgian language and culture were so
alien to the Slavic language and culture that complete
Russification efforts were not rationally justifiable.
Besides, similar to the Belarusians, the Georgian elite
and intelligentsia already had been integrated tightly

53
within the Russian environment for several centuries
after joining the Russian Empire, which made the pro-
cess of socialization between these nations easy. Last,
but not least, is the personality of Joseph Stalin, quis
fabricates of the Soviet policy on nationalities, who, be-
ing an ethnic Georgian, was strict with the Georgian
establishment in political matters100 but was some-
what lenient toward the expression of national self-
consciousness.
Ukraine occupies the middle ground in the Rus-
sification policies in the three countries. Ukraine in
its current territory appeared only in 1947 (excluding
Crimea); the two parts of the country were growing
in different political cultures—those of Russian and
Austro-Hungarian Empires, respectively. On the one
hand, although the Ukrainians were always tightly
associated with the Russians themselves, the former
felt strong nationalistic impulses coming from the
Ukrainian elites, especially from its western parts.
De-Ukrainization, including eradication of the Ukrai-
nian language and culture, also embraced the identity
factor. These policies extended far beyond mere lin-
guistic subordination; since Ukraine historically was
considered a core of the Russian identity, having this
history belong to another nation or being narrated
in another language would mean deprecation of the
Russian identity. As Zbigniew Brzezinski rightly ob-
served, “[W]ithout Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an
empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subor-
dinated, Russia automatically becomes as empire.”101
There was, thus, a political reasoning behind the
identity denial: The stronger the Russian/Soviet cul-
tural linkages were with the Ukrainians, the stronger
the cultural cleavage between Ukrainians and the
Western world, especially with its immediate neigh-

54
bors—Poland and Lithuania. The systematic identity
denial by the Russian imperial and then Soviet author-
ities created long-lasting stigmatization in Ukraine
and had its part in the regional divide in Ukraine. The
process of Sovietization in Ukraine had another sig-
nificantly more tragic side. As a result of the policies
of dekulakization (resettlement of the wealthy peasants
to the northern territories) and collectivization (expro-
priation of the land and its transfer into the collec-
tive ownership, basically, abolition of private prop-
erty),102 nearly 5 million people103 vanished in what
became known as the Ukrainian holocaust, or the
“Holodomor.”104
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the com-
mon political identity of the three nations as “Sovi-
ets” slowly began to vanish. In early-1990s, Georgia,
Ukraine, and Belarus were suddenly exposed to the
completely new international and domestic political
realities and challenges of the independent statehood
demanding some sort of reaction on the parts of their
newly established national elites. Their responses to
the new international environment were, however,
quite predictable. Without the proper institutional
knowledge of democratic practices and procedures,
the newly created states used past experiences of com-
munist bureaucracies merged with existing democrat-
ic institutional designs to build the bridges into their
future. Lundell noted the phenomenon in the follow-
ing passage: “Autocratic continuance [there] is largely
due to the Soviet legacy. One-party communism has
in many former Soviet republics been replaced by
absolute presidential power.”105 By 1992, Georgia,
Ukraine, and Belarus slid into the quagmire of stag-
nant ex-communist leadership with varying degrees
of post-Soviet autocratic governance, but with signs

55
of democracy embodied in such formative practices as
elections and institutions of governance. Such a gov-
erning anomaly led to a volatile state in the domestic
polity, and in some extreme cases, in grave turmoil.

Independent Ukraine.

Ukraine had its share of domestic problems during

the early years of its independence. The anti-commu-
nist national self-determination group People’s Move-
ment of Ukraine, or the Rukh, according to Anders,
Aslund, and Michael McFaul, “served as an umbrella
group for hundreds of local and national civic, cultur-
al, political, and human rights organizations”106 in the
late-1980s. The Rukh organized mass rallies calling for
the removal of the communist party bosses and for the
ultimate democratization of the country. It culminat-
ed in setting up a human chain from Kyiv to Lviv in
1990 in commemoration of the short-lived Ukrainian
independence in 1919 and to show the unity of the
Ukrainian lands from the west to the east. Right after
independence, however, the Rukh lost its momentum
and popular influence among particularly radical in-
stitutional actors, giving way to the old communist
apparatchiks.
The first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk,
a former communist bureaucrat and member of the
Ukrainian Politburo, was at the time of independence
the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada (the Parliament).
Kravchuk managed to transform “himself within less
than 2 years from communist ideological policeman
to national communist leader and . . . Ukraine’s first
president and national leader.”107 Although Ukraine
received large economic and industrial resources from
the Soviet Union as a part of its independence inheri-

56
tance, this potential appeared to be obsolete and ill fit
under the burden of independent existence. Skyrock-
eting inflation, coupled with the completely severed
tentacles of the command-and-controlled economy
centrally providing both the demand and supply line
for the Soviet economy and thoughtless economic
reforms, led to rapid economic downfall, includ-
ing hyperinflation, severe GNP crush, corruption in
the privatization policies, and the chronic budgetary
deficit.108
In 1994, Leonid Kuchma replaced Kravchuk as a
result of the fierce presidential pre-election battle and
immediately started the painful process of economic
stabilization of Ukraine. The results of the market
liberalization reforms were the decrease of the coun-
try’s budgetary deficit, inflation, shrinking of public
spending, increase of the GDP (although still lower
than pre-1990 levels), and price stabilization.109 With
this, Kuchma’s activities were aimed at attracting
foreign loans, coping with balance of payments, and
dispersion of credits, in other words, postponing the
resolution of problems of real market reforms for an
undefined future.110Also, Kuchma was not free from
preferential political and economic regionalism and
nepotism. He was accused by some in Ukraine of al-
legedly ordering the kidnapping and assassination of
local journalist Georgiy Gongadze (coincidentally an
ethnic Georgian), who was famous for his anti-corrup-
tion articles.111 The “competitive authoritarianism”
type of governance developed under Kuchma where:

democratic institutions exist and are regarded as

principal means of obtaining and exercising political
authority, but powerholders violate those rules so of-
ten that the regime fails to meet minimum democratic
standards.112

57
The regime was, thus, not fully authoritarian but not
democratic enough to allow for the free and fair ex-
pressions of the institutional actors of their political
preferences.
The eventual failure of Kuchma’s regime, notori-
ous for corruption, is largely considered as the main
precondition for the Orange Revolution in 2005. The
public protests staged as a response to mass elec-
tion fraud allegedly committed by the forces acting
against the presidential pro-western runner-up Viktor
Yushchenko enjoyed wide popular support. The re-
gional split was also present here; while Yushchenko
was mostly considered a pro-Western politician and
enjoyed the support of western and central Ukraine,
Viktor Yanukovych, then Prime Minister of Ukraine
and the principal contender in the presidential elec-
tions in November 2004, had his electorate largely
based in eastern pro-Russian Ukraine. The democratic
part of the Ukrainian society predominantly viewed
Yanukovych as a “Kuchma reincarnate” with the
same Soviet-style bureaucracy and Kuchma’s backing.
Yushchenko, who, by independent exit polls won by
a margin of 10 percent in the second round, was put
behind Yanukovych by the Central Election Commit-
tee. This sparked mass protest rallies by Yushchenko’s
supporters in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine113 except
for its eastern regions. The third round of elections
held in December confirmed Yushchenko’s victory.
The promises of political change and economic
revival made by incoming President Yushchenko ap-
peared to be short-lived and the democratic path too
difficult to continue. Because of internal struggle be-
tween powerful political and economic forces, Yush-
chenko appointed Yanukovych as Prime Minister in

58
2006. As a result of subsequent presidential elections,
4 years later Yanukovych became the President of
the country,114 marking an almost 180-degree rever-
sal from the volatile democracy to possible stable
but stagnant rule. The result of the elections further
widened the regional political divide in Ukraine on
the pro-democratic West and the pro-Russian East. A
clear sign of the fluctuations of the bifurcate political
course of Ukraine is the May 2013 conclusion of the
memorandum on obtaining the observer status in the
Customs Union of the Eurasian Economic Communi-
ty and the forthcoming agreement with the EU about
the free trade zone in November 2013. The latter, to
his credit, was initiated by Yanukovych, who is strug-
gling to keep balance between the two gravity centers.
The first direction is towards Vladimir Putin’s pet
project of in vitro testing for the possible reanimation
of the Soviet Union. The second direction is toward
closer integration with the democratic communities.
Ukraine does not want to “upset” both sides of the
equation; according to Suzdalcev, Ukraine:

wants to have all the benefits of the Customs Union

but is not going to join it; instead, it wants to enter the
European Union.115

These are, essentially, mutually exclusive steps,

which would define the foreign political alignment of
Ukraine for generations to come.
Notwithstanding these oscillations, Ukraine con-
tinues to receive foreign support. According to the
USAID “Greenbook” website, Ukraine received ap-
proximately U.S.$1.7 billion in economic assistance116
with an additional U.S.$103.593 million in 2012, a
planned U.S.$104.407 million for 2013, with another

59
U.S.$95.271 million planned for 2014.117 Ukraine is also
a recipient of European aid; in 2011, the EU provided
€30 million (euros) as an:

assistance package to support the Ukrainian govern-

ment in their institutional reform efforts in several key
areas, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free
Trade area, sanitation, state aid, and migration.118

Independent Georgia.

Early years of independence for Georgia were

marked by the civil war against its first president,
Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who came to power on the
nationalistic and chauvinistic wave. Gamsakhurdia,
whom Per Gahrton described as a “tactical fanatic,”
“was an attractive and even efficient leader and a sym-
bol of national liberation movement . . . [but] a catas-
trophe as executive administrator and president.”119
Gamsakhurdia’s reign proved to be short-lived when
a significant part of his own close entourage and some
military regiments revolted in early-1992. The result-
ing coup d’état paved the road to Georgian leadership
for Eduard Shevardnadze, a mastodon of Soviet poli-
tics. By that time, Shevardnadze, probably the most
well-known Georgian to the world outside of the
former Soviet space, already ruled the republic from
1972 to 1985 as the first secretary of the Georgian
Communist Party.
Shevardnadze re-entered Georgian politics first
as the Chairman of the State Council, then Chairmen
of Parliament from 1992–95, and finally its president
from 1995 until the Rose Revolution of 2003. His early
years in power were notable for the rollercoaster of
internal Georgian political preferences and the disas-

60
trous economic condition. Most of Georgian economic
potential in Soviet times was centered on the sum-
mer Black Sea resorts, tea production, citruses, and
wine making, most of which were located in western
Georgia, namely, in the breakaway Abkhazia. During
Soviet times, Georgia had no strong and independent
industrial production, and even the few factories that
managed to survive the painful first years of indepen-
dence, such as the metallurgical, chemical, cement,
and fertilizer plants, could not survive without the
centralized economy and steady and uninterrupted
supplies of raw materials. Even more so, much of its
agricultural potential was devastated because of the
conflict sparked in 1992 in Abkhazia.
To his credit, Shevardnadze was a very shrewd
politician. Called by some ill-wishers, “fox with a
split tail,” Shevardnadze was an exemplary diplomat
when it came to turning the most uncomfortable and
failing situations to his benefit. In 1983, at the 200th
anniversary of the unification with Russia, he made
the following public comment for which he was rep-
rimanded repeatedly by political rivals: “Georgia is
called the country of the sun. But for us the true sun
rose not in the east but in the north, in Russia—the
sun of Lenin’s ideas.”120 His pro-Russian attitude radi-
cally changed because of the conflicts in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, who were backed up politically and ec-
onomically by Russia. The reversal of Georgia’s politi-
cal course culminated at the 2000 election campaign,
when Shevardnadze promised to bring Georgia to
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by
the end of his presidential term.121 To Shevardnadze’s
credit, Georgia started showing a slow but sure drift
towards the West politically, with its membership in
NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994, and eco-

61
nomically, by joining, as a transit land, the energy car-
riers’ transportation projects from the Caspian Sea to
the European markets. Nevertheless, his legacy is tar-
nished by unresolved conflicts, thousands of refugees,
and absolute economic downfall, but, paradoxically,
quite stable although stagnant domestic political envi-
ronment fostered through overwhelming and chronic
corruption.
The corruption in Georgia deserves separate men-
tioning here. This phenomenon had deeply reaching
roots. It was imposed by the Russian tsarist apparatus
starting from the 18th century and further perfected
by the Soviet bureaucratic machine. Independence
brought to Georgia another type of corruption, called
“state capture” by Wheatley, when “the political elite
uses the apparatus of the state to further its own pri-
vate interests.”122 This highly institutionalized form of
corrupt behavior was accepted by the larger masses of
society with very little resentment.
It was only after 2000 that the new democratic forc-
es started to appear in the Georgian establishment,
which by 2003 consolidated around the triumvirate of
the young Georgian politicians Mikheil Saakashvili,
Zurab Zhvania, and Nino Burjanadze. Saakashvili, a
U.S.-sponsored and educated lawyer who was prac-
ticing commercial law at Patterson, Belknap, Webb,
and Tyler, joined the Parliament of Georgia in 1995.
Soon after entry into the Georgian political scene, Saa-
kashvili ignited the democratization processes mod-
eled after the United States. These moves included the
merit-based election of judges to the local courts, ini-
tiation of the prison reforms, and the anti-corruption
campaign in the early-2000s. In November 2003, as
a result of the Parliamentary elections called by the
Organization for Security and Co‑operation in Europe

62
(OSCE) a “spectacular fraud”123 orchestrated by She-
vardnadze’s political circles, the progressive forces led
by young triumvirate flooded the streets of Tbilisi and
other major Georgian cities in what became known
as the bloodless “Rose Revolution.”124 Saakashvili
accused Shevardnadze of a massive manipulation
of votes; his followers stormed Parliament, bringing
democracy to Georgia with a single red rose.
Democratic transformations, however, were not
endemic to Georgia, although it was born in the minds
of the Georgian people tired of the inept and corrupt
government unable to solve even the simplest prob-
lems of its population, such as ensuring 24/7 electricity
and gas. The change was fostered and supported from
outside. The United States has been the primary lobby
state of Georgia ever since its independence, support-
ing it mostly financially. Linkoln Mitchell notes “that
by 2003, the United States wanted Shevardnadze to
move Georgia in a more democratic direction, with a
special focus on parliamentary elections. . .”125 Accord-
ing to a Congressional Research Service note, Geor-
gia regularly led the list of world states in terms of
per capita U.S. economic aid. Between 1992 and 2010,
Georgia has received U.S.$3.3 billion. In 2001, the eco-
nomic support was U.S.$87.1 million; another U.S.$87
million was earmarked for 2012, with a subsequent
budgetary appropriation request for U.S.$68.7 million
in 2013.126 These means were directed in support of the
Georgian democratic institutions, cultural heritage
retention, economic development, and military aid.
As a result of titanic efforts to change the mental-
ity and the culture of corruption and nepotism, the
new government after the Rose Revolution undertook
a number of significant steps to eradicate the cul-
ture of bribery and preferential treatments. This led

63
to the dismissal of significant numbers of officials, a
decade later many of whom joined in opposition to
Saakashvili. Currently, Georgia is viewed by many
as an exemplary young democracy with an effective
rule of law and liberalized society, notwithstanding
the unsuccessful war with Russia in 2008127 and con-
tinuous domestic political havoc of the power diarchy
between President Mikheil Saakashvili and the in-
cumbent Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, an ethnic
Georgian tycoon from Russia.

Independent Belarus.

The last years of the Soviet Union gave rise to

nationalist feelings in Belarus. Suddenly the people
started to realize that they are different from Russians,
notwithstanding their strong linkages with Russia,
including linguistic and cultural similarities, and the
centuries-long acceptance of the fact that they are an
inseparable part of the overall Russian ethnos.128 The
Belarus Popular Front was created in 1988, and, from
the onset, started to prepare the country for the forth-
coming independence. Already by the early-1990s, the
Belarusian political establishment and the public felt
strong winds of change. In 1990, while still within the
USSR, Belarusian Supreme Soviet declared its state
sovereignty without having de facto independence.
Independence came a year later when, in December
1991, the heads of the three Slavic Soviet republics—
Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia—concluded a historical
agreement to dissolve the Soviet Union.
Similar to Georgia and Ukraine, in the first years
of independence, Belarus was ruled by former com-
munist party leaders: Stanislav Shushkevich as the
chair of the Supreme Committee and Vyachaslav Ke-

64
bich as the prime minister. However, neither of them
lasted long; Shushkevich resigned under the burden
of corruption accusations by Lukashenka, and Kebich
lost the presidential elections to Lukashenka, who
was rapidly gaining popular support. Lukashenka’s
ascent to power started from his membership in the
Supreme Soviet in 1990, where he served as the chair
of the Anti-Corruption Commission. Right from this
time, Lukashenka revealed a craving for power via
highly populist means. As the commission chair, Lu-
kashenka did his best to show the people that he was
a true leader. According to Savchenko:

He exhibited all the conspicuous stringency of a com-

mon man visibly outraged by the machinations of ne-
farious elites, promptly accusing top officials, includ-
ing . . . Kebich and . . . Shushkevich of embezzlement,
abuse of office, and general corruption.129

By the majority of indicators, Belarus is the most

autocratic out of the three countries in this analysis.
Its current president, Lukashenka, has been ruling
the country with an iron fist ever since 1994. Immedi-
ately after the elections, Lukashenka applied heavy-
handed authoritarian tactics aimed at staying vser’ez i
nadolgo—”for real and for long.”130 After the elections,
Lukashenka undertook a number of steps directed to-
wards limiting the fundamental freedoms of its own
citizens, including the freedom of speech. He “cen-
sored state media, closed Belarus’ only independent
radio station and several independent newspapers
. . .”; ignored the decisions of the Supreme Court pro-
claiming his decrees as unconstitutional; blocked the
impeachment claims by the opposition by organizing
the popular referendum in 1996, granting the power
to rule over the parliament, eventually disbanding

65
it with the Russian support; and establishing a fully
puppet legislator.131 According to Juri Cavusau, be-
tween 2003 and 2005, Lukashenka’s government shut
down 347 NGOs,132 while most of the remaining ones
were forced to go underground or to immigrate to the
Baltic States, such as the Belarusian Institute for Strate-
gic Studies, the leader in independent policy analysis.
The limitations of civil society activities were institu-
tionalized in the form of Article 193 of the Belarusian
Criminal Code, which envisages 2 years in prison for
cooperation with unregistered NGOs, while Article
293 holds punishments for those who train people in-
volved in public protests.
Systematic gross human rights violations, suppres-
sion of political freedoms and rights of its citizens, and
persecutions of the political opposition became the
distinctive feature of Lukashenka’s autocratic regime.
The recent establishment of an ideological expertise
office within the Ministry of Defense over the public
administration’s decisions133 further strengthens the
positions of the “last dictator in Europe.” The follow-
ing description of Lukashenka’s character by Brian
Bennett tells a lot about this long-lasting leader with
personality cult:

Lukashenka was a loner. He saw no need to belong

to a political party. . . . He was uniquely fitted to
rolling up his sleeves and making decisions without
sharing the burden or delegating. He liked the idea
of the presidential system: it offered the prospect of
power without having to cooperate much with oth-
ers or make promises. Sharing power did not suit his
temperament.134

66
Petr Kravchenko, former Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Belarus, gave another very vivid account of Lu-
kashenka’s character:

like a 16-year-old youth wants intimacy with a wom-

an, so Lukashenka with any fiber of his spirit, every
cell of his organism, desired power as such. Because
power for him was the real pleasure, in a way, as an
end in itself and as a pleasure in wealth.135

The thirst for power of a typical Soviet-style apparat-

chik personality of Lukashenka at the dawn of his ca-
reer became the trademark of the future autocrat.
Economically, Belarus did not “get out” of the So-
viet Union in complete shambles, unlike Georgia. The
country kept most of its industrial potential intact and
working, including oil refineries processing Russian
oil and transiting it further to Europe; valuable natu-
ral resources processing, such as the potash mines,
metallurgical, and chemical plants; and heavy in-
dustrial equipment factories, such as the Soviet giant
MAZ truck factory and MZKT which manufactures
heavy military machinery. These industrial capabili-
ties, together with most of the economic potential of
the country, are currently controlled by Lukashenka
and his loyal oligarchs.
Belarus is no stranger to foreign aid, although not
on the scale of Ukraine and Georgia. The assistance
was provided mostly in the form of developmental
grants to the Belarusian civil society from Western
democracies. The United States has been supporting
democratic institutionalization for a number of years,
although not encouraging the American companies to
invest in Belarus due to overwhelming corruption and
massive human rights violations. From 1992 through
2007, total U.S. assistance to Belarus amounted to

67
U.S.$340.96 million, with an additional U.S.$141.36
million in the form of the Freedom Support Act with
the assistance apex in 1993 reaching U.S.$129.87 mil-
lion (little less than half of all assistance) and drop-
ping dramatically with Lukashenka’s ascent to power,
with the lowest point in 2007 of U.S.$0.15 million.136
Economic aid is closely followed by sanctions, includ-
ing visa restrictions for Lukashenka, his closest en-
tourage, and corrupt businesses and firms.137 The EU
also tried to help Belarus; in 2011-13, the EU assistance
programs of the European Commission amounted to
€17.3 million.138 Finally, individual European gov-
ernments, including Belarus’ immediate neighbor,
Poland, extended their support, which, according to
Gordon Fairclough, amounted to U.S.$120 million in
aid to opposition groups.139

CAN DEMOCRACY LEAD TO

POLITICAL STABILITY?

The data on the levels of democracy, political sta-

bility, and economic development, as well as the pub-
lic perceptions of these variables in Ukraine, Georgia,
and Belarus presented earlier, differ significantly with
respect to their post-independence performance. All
three countries jumpstarted their histories anew after
1991 and, at first glance, should have taken similar
paths considering vast similarities in their pre-inde-
pendence state and general social cultural resem-
blance. However, as the countries progressed further
into an independent existence, they evolved in com-
pletely different directions.
A significantly high corruption level and unsatis-
factory human rights conditions in Ukraine fit within
its comparatively low political stability. Georgia is

68
characterized by vibrant democracy, coupled with a
low level of political stability alongside its poor eco-
nomic performance. It is ahead of Ukraine and Be-
larus with its low corruption measures and relatively
better situation with the human rights. The lowest
democratic indicators in Belarus are intertwined with
the highest level of political stability among all three
countries, as well as good economic and social condi-
tions created by the authoritarian governance for its
people. The causes of the governance puzzle are deep-
ly rooted in the diversity of the political cultures of
Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus and how they respond
to globalized democratization.

Ukraine.

Ukraine is politically, economically, and culturally

fragmented with several powerful centers of gravity.
The rivalry between these poles creates an uneasy do-
mestic environment that negatively affects political
stability and economic development. Relationship be-
tween these variables has been unstable ever since its
own Orange Revolution. Post-revolutionary disillu-
sionment is quite frequent in politically volatile coun-
tries. Desperate electorates usually put too much hope
in their leaders, who tend to over-promise their sup-
porters, hoping for favorable votes. In Ukraine, on top
of its political fickleness, the society rushed from one
extreme to the other. A historically preexisting geo-
graphic divide was exacerbated by political diversity
of the regional actors, with Yushchenko representing
mostly the west and central Ukraine and Yanukovych
harnessing his support from the pro-Russian East.
The process that led to the Orange Revolution
started as a response to the political stalemate of

69
Kuchma’s government. The most important choice
for the country, which, according to Krushnelnycky,
was “wedged between the European Union and an
increasingly autocratic Russia”140 was born out of the
quest for the modern Ukrainian identity, on the one
hand; and the popular repulsion of omnipresent cor-
ruption, chronic electoral fraud at all levels, the old
Soviet style of governance, and overwhelming power
centralization, on the other. After the fiasco with the
fulfillment of the Orange Revolution pledges, politi-
cal regionalization exacerbated. The pro-Western and
pro-Russian forces did not lose their political orienta-
tions, but, under the changing realities, this was no
longer a matter of concern. The south part of Ukraine
is quite a special case, which is somewhat centrist and
balanced. According to the Razumkov Center’s poll,
only 1.3 percent of the sample of respondents believed
that Yushchenko’s government had fulfilled its elec-
tion promises.141 The post-revolutionary apathy and
overall disappointment with the incompetence of
Yushchenko’s government to solve the vital problems
of economic and social development of the country
led to a comeback of the Orange Revolution under-
dog, Yanukovych, first as prime minister in 2006 and
later, in 2010, as president.
Under the current circumstances, political stabil-
ity is understood in Ukraine as the peaceful dialogue
and political consensus between the opposition and
the government. Ideally, the process of political com-
munication between various political factions can be
safeguarded by strong democratic institutions, such
as parliament, making viable decisions and supervis-
ing their fulfillment. Due to the highly volatile domes-
tic content before and immediately after the Orange
Revolution, the Ukrainian political establishment is

70
looking for a high predictability of governance. One
possible explanation for this is that the political en-
vironment in Ukraine, especially after the failure of
the results of the revolution to live through the next
elections, had become more insensitive, more thick-
skinned to withstand the influences of the political
processes. There is, however, an important difference
between political predictability and political stabil-
ity. While in both cases the political environment is
shielded from internal and external disturbances,
political stability offers the continuity of political
processes, whereas political predictability offers the
ability to predict political processes via institutional
mechanisms of power retention; all other instances
of hypothetical political change connote political
unpredictability.
From the point of view of internal political stabil-
ity, the current situation in Ukraine is mostly immune
from large-scale and unexpected transformation. This
is achieved by high quasi-authoritarian resilience
of the government, which, nevertheless, allows for
some expressions of political deviance, unlike in Be-
larus. There is no catastrophic political or economic
crisis, but the disillusionment of society is total after
the disastrous outcomes of the revolution and their
apathy for any repeated tries to change reality. The
logic “we tried; it did not work; why bother again?”
is overwhelming among the domestic polity. This is
notwithstanding (or, perhaps, due to) the fact that the
political sphere, the state apparatus, the judiciary, and
the political parties are considered the most corrupt
institutions in Ukraine.142 There are many in Ukrai-
nian society willing to give up some of their freedoms
to keep the country away from political instability,
which negatively affects their economic well-being.

71
At the same time, due to high political regionaliza-
tion, the prospects for peaceful transition of power
are quite vague. A domestic elitist environment is
highly polarized, but paradoxically, interrelated and
presents multiple forces of power each with its own
agendas and lobbies.
The human rights situation remains within the fo-
cus of many external actors, including human rights
watchdogs and international organizations. The most
conspicuous case is the ongoing imprisonment of
Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister and cur-
rent opposition leader. Her “alleged ill-treatment in
prison where she is serving a 7-year sentence, and
two of her former political allies,”143 raises the con-
cerns of the EU and the United States. According to
Freedom House:

Ukraine suffered a decline for a second year due to

the politically motivated imprisonment of opposi-
tion leaders, flawed legislative elections, and a new
law favoring the Russian-speaking portion of the
population.144

Tymoshenko still has her supporters who are not nu-

merous but, nevertheless, represent a political power
that cannot be neglected—over 18 percent of the vot-
ers support her party, Bat’kivshina (Fatherland).145
In Ukraine, internal political stability is not connect-
ed with the effectiveness of democratic institutions; it
depends more or less on a strong economic base and
absence of any significant political disturbances. Due
to the overwhelming political and economic control
of the current leadership, the chances for a forceful
change of the ruling regime in the Orange Revolution
style are quite limited, at least in the short run. Not-
withstanding quite serious clashes between different

72
clans and power interest groups, there is a high level
of political predictability of Yanukovych’s “Party of
Regions” not to yield its power to the opposition in
any perceivable future. The government is highly re-
silient and monolithic with strong elites increasing
family- and clan-based political fragmentation with
the rest of the Ukrainian population.
The absence of real and tangible change after
the Orange Revolution had somewhat discredited
the forces presently in the opposition. Failure of the
revolution stiffled a previously active Ukrainian civil
society, putting it into a lethargic sleep. Advocates
for political transformations attribute this tenacity of
the government to the overall passivity of the public.
On the other side of the political spectrum, there is
also no common vision and consensus on how politi-
cal change would happen among opposition forces,
which are separated by their internal quarrels. The
most recent development in the Ukrainian political
arena is the decision of Vitaliy Klichko, the world box-
ing champion and chairman of the pro-Western party,
Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR),
to run for the forthcoming March 2015 presidential
elections, while calling for the rest of opposition lead-
ers to unite.146 This, however, does not mean that the
two remaining opposition candidates— Arseniy Yat-
senyuk and Oleh Tyagnibok—will withdraw from the
presidential race. The real opponent of Yanukovych,
according to Victor Sumar, is neither of these candi-
dates, but the dire “economic situation, social discon-
tent, and numerous ‘discriminated’ businesses that
can manage to support the opposition.”147
The process of democratic institutionalization in
Ukraine is still undergoing growing pains. Here, in-
dividual trust prevails over organizational trust. This

73
trust is, however, not stable, which reflects the chang-
ing loyalties to individual institutions. A part of the
fluctuating preferences is that actors have chameleon
loyalties to different institutions and may very eas-
ily switch their preferences, leading to high political
unpredictability. This makes the domestic political
environment extremely volatile. A peculiar nature of
Ukrainian political culture is extremely low popular
understanding of democratic institutions and their
purposes. To a certain extent, this is due to the organi-
zational behavior of incumbent government: political
revenge. Not only does each incoming power get rid
of most of the representatives of the former ones, it
also engages in political persecutions. The most noto-
rious cases are the imprisonment of Tymoshenko in
2011 and Yuri Lutsenko, also the inspirer of the revo-
lution and former Minister of Interior, in 2010 (par-
doned in 2013); both were charged with corruption
and embezzlement of public funds.
Absence of a clear correlation between democracy
and economic development can be explained by sky-
rocketing corruption and elitist economies. From the
point of view of economic development, there is little
economic stability due to the elitist nature of the busi-
ness transactions. Since the economy does not benefit
everyone, the biggest problem here is that there is no
well-developed and established middle class, which
is the backbone of any democratic society. According
to the Razumkov Center, there is the phenomenon of:

Ukrainian middle class [which] is emerging as a ‘new

middle class’ in the Western perception of the term—
i.e., as the middle class whose social basis is made up
by specialists (rather than owners).148

74
 This means that the middle class is not self-sus-
tainable in the long run and is very much project and
program dependent. Among the factors impeding the
flourishing of the middle class, the following can be
mentioned: underestimated cost of labor, very high
level of shadow social relations, and crisis of the state
legal system. As a result, the authors of the article
concluded:

the middle class as the social backbone of civil society,

not established yet, and the authorities of a state not
ruled by law can be neither partners nor opponents,
as they are estranged from each other and never meet,
existing ‘in parallel worlds’.149

In addition to the uncertainty within the opposi-

tion ranks and the popular apathy, the government
is also at a political limbo with regards to its foreign
political course. External political stability of Ukraine
depends on the balance between the two factors: the
historical cultural, political, and economic influence
of Russia, and the craving of Ukraine to join (return)
to the family of European nations. The Russian fac-
tor has been both the positive and negative force in
domestic Ukrainian politics, pressing on it politically
and economically whenever it showed signs of drift-
ing away from its geopolitical space. Russia tradition-
ally has been one of the largest foreign investors in the
economy of Ukraine, both by the amount of FDIs150 as
well as other, less transparent investments. According
to Boris Heifetz:

Russian business owns in Ukraine four out of six oil

refineries, almost all non-ferrous metallurgy plants;
has its interests in the energy sector, steel industry and
began expansion in engineering, chemical industry,
and the financial sector.151

75
 However, the money is invested not to contribute
to economic development, but the contrary—to hin-
der it. A vivid example includes the shipyard Zarya in
the Crimea, which was bought by the Russian United
Shipyard Company, and its production is steadily
decreasing not to present competition to Russian
shipyards.152
The other foreign policy direction is towards the
West and, more specifically, Europe. This part of
Ukrainian identity is, however, quite weak. Accord-
ing to a public opinion poll conducted by the Razum-
kov Center, Ukraine is considered a European country
only historically and geographically—by other pa-
rameters, including economically, socially, politically,
and culturally, the sample respondents considered
Ukraine as a non-European country.153 Moreover, only
12.3 percent of the respondents consider themselves
Europeans.154 Ukraine is a part of the European Neigh-
borhood Initiative (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership
(EaP). It has a separate Partnership and Cooperation
Agreement (PCA) with the EU to foster further inte-
gration. Ukraine is about to sign the next important
milestone, the Associated Agreement with the EU,
which will harmonize its economic, political, and cul-
tural basis with the latter.
The Ukrainian government is trying to keep the
visibility of balanced policy, showing clear aspirations
towards ultimate membership in the EU but, at the
same time, signing the Memorandum on the Observer
Status in the Customs Union with Russia.155 On the one
hand, this is a nonexistent status in a nonexistent enti-
ty, which brings no tangible benefits to Ukraine, even
in the long run. On the other, however, with this step,
Ukraine pledged not to undertake the steps that could

76
harm the Customs Union, which is directly against the
Euro-integration process, which, on its own account,
is quite sluggish. For its part, Russia does not refrain
from using the economic tools of its soft-power pres-
sure on Ukraine to keep it within its own spheres of
influence. An example of such economic blackmail is
the recent ban imposed on all Ukrainian imports to
Russia.156
Another part of the external political stability is
covered by the NATO factor. Mykola Sungurovskiy
noted several obstacles to the successful Euro-Atlantic
integration of Ukraine:

[a]bsence of national consensus and consolidation of

political forces and society; lack of political will and
strategic management at the level of state administra-
tion [and] the influence of the ‘Russian factor’.157

Even after the Soviet Union, NATO remains the

major security threat for many in the eastern parts of
the country. According to one of the public opinion
polls, most Ukrainians (61.9 percent) do not support
NATO enlargement,158 and this number is tradition-
ally higher in the Eastern regions under the predomi-
nant Russian political, cultural, and economic influ-
ence. Another 44.5 percent of respondents think that
Ukraine should abandon its plans to join NATO,159 and
numbers of those who would not support Ukraine’s
accession to NATO has always been very high.160
Inability of current Ukrainian government to
choose a foreign policy course and strictly adhere to it
(due to multiple reasons) shows the political dualism
inherent to the Ukrainian political culture. According
to Pavel Haydutski, in Ukraine:

77
 [s]ome give priority to the European vector, others—
Eurasian. However, all [are] trying to appeal to the
public’s opinion and manipulate them. Today, in ad-
dition to studying public opinion on this matter, the
legal mechanisms—the referendum—can be enacted.
As a result, Ukraine, in fact, moved even closer to the
danger of the split society.161

The “identity split and confusion of values”162 is also

mentioned by Mikola Riabchuk in his analysis of the
Ukrainian political future.
Under the current political realities of weak and
segmented opposition, a strong grip on power of
the current leadership and political lethargy of the
masses, the domestic political climate is notable for
its high predictability, at least for the short run. Not-
withstanding some internal friction between various
interest groups and oligarchs within the ruling re-
gime, domestic political landscape has some degree of
stability. Under the contemporary Ukrainian realities,
political stability is achieved by means of an intrac-
table government not conducive to political change,
which is very close to the definition of political stabil-
ity used here. At the same time, there are some signs
of the “Party of Regions” losing control over Kyiv
and other central areas. The future of the retention of
power within the close cycles of the “Party of the Re-
gions” is through keeping Yanukovych in power for
another term or coming up with his approved succes-
sor for the subsequent elections round. With all the
growing popular discontent among the politically
active population, the propensity for the Ukrainian
political establishment to witness its own version of
Lukashenka is quite low.

78
Georgia.

The real test for democracy happened in Georgia in

October 2012. The United National Movement (UNM)
party under President Saakashvili lost the parliamen-
tary elections to its main contender, the “Georgian
Dream,” headed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili,
who made most of his fortune in Russia. By publicly
acknowledging the defeat during the parliamentary
elections, Saakashvili’s government showed high
“democratic resilience.” According to a Human Rights
Watch report, the elections “marked Georgia’s first
peaceful transition of power since independence,”163
which is a significant achievement in this turbulent
country, especially after the painful defeat in the war
against Russia in August 2008.
Freedom in the World 2013 mentioned Georgia as
the “most notable positive political development in
Eurasia” but also pointed out the post-election politi-
cal persecutions of the opposition:

Georgia, which experienced its first orderly transfer of

power to the opposition through democratic elections,
finished the year on a less than satisfying note after the
new government quickly arrested some 30 officials of
the previous government, raising concerns about po-
litically motivated prosecutions.164

The Georgian opposition throughout the years has

been known for having maximalist agendas. Since the
early days of independence, the opposition has been
trying not only to mend the shortcomings of the for-
mer governments, but also to destroy completely its
achievements. Saakashvili’s reign was remarkable for
epic anti-corruption trials and prosecution of former
government officials, with eventual dismantling of

79
Shevardnadze’s “Citizens’ Union” party. Ivanishvili’s
current government continues this line of politically
motivated revenge by imprisoning former govern-
ment figures, the most notable including the ex-Min-
ister of Interior Kakha Targamadze, who was consid-
ered for a while as the front-runner for Saakashvili’s
party in the October 2013 presidential elections.
The notion of political stability is understood in
Georgia as the predictability of future political devel-
opment and the political continuity of powers. This
means both the stability of a single political power
within the constitutionally allowed framework and
the anticipatory nature of governance, as well as the
general sustainability of political environment as a
whole. Georgia is on the path towards democratic
institutionalization, which is more conducive to long-
term political change, at least allowing for short-term
political disturbances. Institutions as “systems of es-
tablished and prevalent social rules that structure
social interactions”165 set the “humanly devised con-
straints that structure political, economic, and social
interactions”166 for their actors. In terms of democratic
institutionalization, these tasks are achieved by the
fully functioning, transparent, and fully accountable
government apparatus, decreasing the propensity for
the unstructured and/or forceful changes of govern-
ments and governances, and allowing for long-term
political, cultural, and economic projects under the
politically stable domestic climate.
In Georgian realities, the mere existence of demo-
cratic institutions stipulated the presence of democ-
racy. Having been a victim of multiple internal and
external disturbances, there is an overwhelming
consensus among Georgian society to avoid political
extremes by prognosis of forecasting future political

80
changes. In a February 2012 survey conducted jointly
by the National Democratic Institute and the Cauca-
sian Research Resource Center, the views on whether
Georgia was a democracy or not were equally split
between the respondents.167 From the point of inter-
nal political stability, considerable political maturity
and political tolerance is required in order to provide
for the fulfillment of democratic institutions. Instead,
Georgia has been suffering for decades from political
ambivalence. In a country where the political prefer-
ences of the electorate change with oscillating pendu-
lum frequency, a political environment is stable only
when it is based on a number of parameters. These
parameters include a sustainable legal system protect-
ing individuals and businesses from organized crime;
a continuity of economic development through diver-
sified business models; and protection of fundamental
human rights and freedoms, including the freedom
of opposition from political persecutions, is upheld.
All these mean a developing political culture, i.e., the
behavior of the actors within the legal institutional
frameworks, which presupposes no frivolous inter-
pretation of the institutional constraints.
Political stability in Georgia requires the pres-
ence of multiple political powers, which would cre-
ate a healthy political competition with respect to the
rules of engagement. Absence of these forces is, per-
haps, one of the most important reasons for the low
level of long-term political stability. There is no visible
middle class to support democratic institutions. This
point is very much in line with Lundell’s argument
on economic development being the precondition for
democratization.168 A well-established and vibrant
middle class would further lead to sustainable and
planned long-term political change since it would be

81
more cautious to keep stability rather than biannual
dramatic transformations. Long-term change will oc-
cur when democratic institutions are trusted and their
decisions respected on a countrywide scale.
Another peculiarity in Georgian politics is high
individual versus low institutional trust. Because the
new government has just started, at this point in time,
it enjoys high trust from the electorate willing to allow
it some time for political try-outs. According to the
National Democratic Institute (NDI) public opinion
poll conducted in March 2013, Bidzina Ivanishvili en-
joys the highest trust of the people, alongside the head
of the Georgian Church (75 percent and 92 percent,
respectively), while the trust in Saakashvili is three
times less (25 percent). Ivanishvili’s party also has
more than 65 percent of trust of the Georgian popula-
tion to solve vital issues, such as relations with Russia,
economic development, healthcare, and law and or-
der.169 This can be temporary, however, depending on
the actual performance of the new institutional actors.
On the other hand, institutional trust in Georgia,
while being low, is quite selective. The domestic pol-
ity believes in its institutions on the basis of their indi-
vidual performance. According to the Freedom House
issue of Nations in Transit 2012:

Confidence in the court system is slowly improving

with 53 percent of respondents trusting the system in
2011 compared to 22 percent in 2007. Courts are better
equipped and funded and generally perceived as less
corrupt.170

The existing political diarchy between Saakashvili

and Ivanishvili, however, tears the political blanket
in the country in futile attempts to draw and retain
the choices of the electorate. The October 2013 presi-

82
dential elections mark an important milestone in the
Georgian political history; they will show whether the
country is ready for true democratic transformations.
External political stability in Georgia is intimately
linked with the restoration of its territorial integrity.
There is common consensus that, until the areas of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are back under Geor-
gian jurisdiction, the country will continue to expe-
rience phantom threats to its political stability from
Russia. External stability, in the view of many Geor-
gians, consists of three hypothetical parts: return of
the secessionist territories; membership of the coun-
try in NATO; and a balanced foreign policy, which
places Georgia firmly among the interests of the major
regional players, Russia and the EU included.
The first two parts of external stability are inter-
changeable and equally unattainable, at least in the
perceivable future. If Georgia joins NATO, this would
mean automatic inaction of the “one-for-all-and-all-
for-one” Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This
would inevitably draw the Alliance into political
and possible military confrontation with Russia. The
Greece-Turkey scenario over Cyprus would not be ap-
plicable here since Russia’s membership in NATO is
far more unrealistic than that of Georgia. NATO tries
to avoid this political and military gambit with Rus-
sia but simultaneously sends promising but mislead-
ing messages to Georgia. NATO’s General Secretary
Anders Rasmussen recently said:

[L]et me be clear. Meeting the requirements for NATO

membership [for Georgia] must not be viewed only
through a military prism. . . . As I look up the path
ahead, I can see our shared destination of a stable and
democratic Georgia at the heart of the Euro-Atlantic
community. Georgia will become a member of NATO.

83
 But further work is needed to meet the requirements
of membership.171

This is one among many encouraging verbiages

NATO has been sending for years to Georgian
leadership.
In addition to its military nature, NATO has the
mandate to support the democratization processes
happening in the associated countries. Georgia is a
member of the PfP program; it is involved in the Plan-
ning and Review Process (PARP) and has the Individ-
ual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) for NATO mem-
bership. Georgia has repeatedly “declared NATO
membership aspirations”; it has fully participated in
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in Afghanistan and the Operation ACTIVE EN-
DEAVOR in the Mediterranean. Finally, there is a spe-
cial NATO-Georgia Commission to oversee the pos-
sible accession process. On the other hand, NATO has
to understand that Georgian membership will bring it
back in confrontation with Russia, who views Georgia
and, largely Caucasus, as its arrière-cour, and NATO as
its chronic nemesis.
The last part of the external stability—a balanced
foreign policy—is also quite difficult to achieve. Geor-
gian partnership with the EU is framed by a number
of legal instruments, such as the Partnership and
Cooperation Agreement (1999) and the European
Neighborhood Policy Action Plan. It is involved in the
negotiations over the association with the EU, includ-
ing the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agree-
ment,172 although much will depend on the will of
the Georgian leadership. Being less under the direct
pressure from the EU’s main competitor than Ukraine
and Russia, Georgia can freely advance on the path

84
towards fuller integration with the EU, provided there
is high commitment of the current government.
Finally, the discrepancy between a high level of
democracy and low levels of political stability and
economic development, which goes contrary to the
“democratization hypothesis,” can be explained by in-
congruence between form and contents of democratic
institutions. Immediately after independence, Geor-
gia took the path towards building democratic gover-
nance with its standard attributes, such as separation
of the branches of power, free and transparent judi-
ciary, law and order organizations, including the Om-
budsman’s office, and their relevant agencies. These
institutions proposed by Western organizations, in-
cluding the U.S. Government and the EU, as a means
of democratic revival of the post-Soviet nations from
communism, found a very receptive environment in
Georgia. However, their contextual side—the essence
of democratic institutions—has been lagging behind
its formative part.

Belarus.

Belarus is a communism incarnate, with most of

its spirit and letter, including the notorious abbrevia-
tion “KGB,” a watchdog of state security. The Soviet
Union has not lost its relevance for the contemporary
Belarusian political environment. According to Balazs
Jarabik and Alastair Rabagliati:

Lukashenka exploited the nostalgia many Belarusians

felt for the Soviet Union over a long period of time,
although in reality he was busy building a new system
of power, one which is different, both institutionally
and functionally, from the Soviet model.173

85
Once in power, Lukashenka cut down all possible
forms of a free country while leaving the domestic po-
litical landscape deprived of its early aspirations for
a democratic state. The human rights violations be-
came an inherent part of the system of governance in
Belarus. World Report 2013 informs:

The government severely restricts freedom of expres-

sion. Most media is state-controlled, and television,
radio, and internet censorship is widespread. Authori-
ties continue to harass independent journalists for
their work, including through arbitrary arrests, warn-
ings, and criminal convictions. Journalists face great
difficulties obtaining accreditation.174

As a matter of political control over the opposi-

tion, Wilson mentions the existence of secret “death
squads” operating in Belarus since the late-1990s.175
Notwithstanding mostly repressive tactics, the
domestic political environment was not always cloud-
less for Lukashenka. Time and again, protesters ap-
pear united in the common aspiration to ignite re-
gime change. These opposition actors were, however,
quickly suppressed, with subsequent harassment of
the general population to prevent the expressions
of disagreement. The failed “Jeans Revolution” in
2006,176 an analogy with the revolutions in Georgia
and Ukraine, was a response to the rigged presidential
elections leading to suppression of the opposition and
imprisonment of its leader, Alexander Kozulin, with
charges of “hooliganism and incitement to mass dis-
order.”177 The public rallies were repeated during the
2010 presidential elections, when about 700 protesters,
among them seven presidential candidates, were sen-
tenced with similar charges. Some of them, including
presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, sustained

86
serious bodily injuries.178 The websites of opposition
parties and groups were hacked and taken down, and
their leaders thrown in jail.179 According to the Inde-
pendent's report, Lukashenka’s “security forces have
gone after his opponents with a ferocity that would not
have looked out of place in Soviet times.”180 Another
cycle of protests hit Belarus in 2011, with thousands
of people demanding Lukashenka’s resignation.181 As
a result, the regime outlawed further assemblies and
public gatherings.
Political stability has its peculiarities in Belarus.
The authoritarian resilience keeps all the political pro-
cesses under its strict control, which diminishes the
propensity for popular upheaval. The current high
level of stability in Belarus is explained by growing
internal contradictions in the economic and political
structures. Vertical authoritarian model copes well
with standard situations of domestic shocks and is
largely immune to external challenges, too, but is not
very capable of evolving and solving crises. Economic
shocks extrinsic to the political system (global crisis of
2009 and the domestic crisis of 2011) require respons-
es in the form of modernization and reform, but they
can undermine the foundation of the most authori-
tarian systems. In other words, a systemic change is
required, but the system is not used to such changes.
In essence, the notion of “political stability” can be ap-
plied to the vitality of Lukashenka’s regime per se and
not the ability of the country to survive the external
and internal shocks. Belarus is among those consoli-
dated authoritarian regimes, especially with a high
degree of legitimacy (but not legality), which quite
naturally would show “better” results from political
and economic standpoints than the number of liberal
democracies.

87
 Political stability in Belarus, thus, depends on two
factors: the autocratic leadership of Lukashenka (in-
ternally) and Russian economic subsidies (externally).
The internal stability is explained by the iron-fist poli-
tics of Lukashenka, who created one “of the world’s
most repressive states,”182 and with its systematic hu-
man rights violations and stifling of the freedoms of
the Belarusians, which dissuaded them from any ex-
pressions of free will. The Belarusian paradox is in le-
gitimizing the governance regime—”fitting” it within
the polity—by the high level of authoritarian leader-
ship of a single autocrat, by suppressing the civil and
political freedoms and liberties, and by allowing for
the development of socio-economic parameters of the
country. This paradox, at first glance, refutes the the-
sis on the middle class being the backbone for democ-
racy. Unlike most of the countries where the middle
class prefers to keep democratic governance because
it would allow it to have a better future via protecting
their freedoms and economic interests, in Belarus the
middle class is credibly harassed by Lukashenka to a
point where it prefers to keep the situation as it is in
fear that it could get worse.
An overview of the study, “Social Situation in Be-
larus in 2009,” conducted by the Belarus Institute of
Strategic Studies,183 gives a good picture of the total
political and economic stagnation in the country. Most
of its respondents (39.5 percent) do not anticipate any
changes in their economic well-being and 54 percent
do not worry about losing their jobs in coming years.
Of the respondents, 58.9 percent believe that nothing
has changed in the state’s support in times of econom-
ic crisis; 46 percent are satisfied with what the govern-
ment does with varying degrees of problems. Out of
those who are not happy with the government, 37.9

88
percent do not think that anything can be changed,
and 48.8 percent do not think that public uprising is
possible due to the worsening of the economic situa-
tion, whereas 52.4 percent absolutely deny their par-
ticipation in the riots and demonstrations. A total of
54.8 percent do not want to go on strike; 44.5 percent
will not sign any petition or appeal to the government;
47.5 percent will not help the families of the protesters;
and 67.0 percent will not participate in any forceful
actions against their government. At the same time,
48.4 percent do not plan to immigrate, of which 26.9
percent do not want to leave because they are happy
with what they have.
Given a relatively high degree of forced legitima-
cy of the political regime and despite the repeatedly
rigged elections at all levels, the weakness of the politi-
cal opposition and dissent in society, and the apparent
cohesion of the ruling elite, the stability of the current
political regime appears to be high. By a systematic
policy of repressions, Lukashenka dissuaded any po-
litical activity that deviates from his approved course.
The Human Rights Watch states that currently “[a]t
least 12 political prisoners remain jailed. Allegations
of torture and mistreatment in custody persist.”184 Ac-
cording to the study conducted by the Independent
Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Research, the
predominant number of respondents (60.7 percent)
believe that everybody is afraid to express their po-
litical views. With that, most of the respondents (51.1
percent) consider that human rights are provided; 68.1
percent claimed that the government did not abuse
their rights; and only 26 percent think that their rights
were violated.185 The resulting stagnation in politi-
cal thought is overwhelming and omnipresent in the
daily lives of people and in the country’s economy,

89
where the government-based racket stifles small and
medium businesses.
Among the positive traits of the current regime
is the coverage of the primary needs of the popula-
tion, which, on the one hand, discourages ordinary
citizens from taking political actions in protection of
their rights. This is the clear case where economic ben-
efits significantly overweigh political ones. According
to another study of the same think tank, most people
(42 percent) view an ideal country as the one in which
they can be successful and make good money. Simi-
larly, on the question, “What would you do if you
were the president in a country with hardships and
unhappy people?” 41.6 percent answered that they
would create the conditions where citizens could be
successful and make good money,186 while 72 percent
of the respondents consider themselves supportive of
the current government.187
Belarusian developmental authoritarianism is
based on a comparatively better economic and social
situation and on the control over larger industries and
businesses by the close circle of elites. The Index of
Democracy 2011 notes:

rampant corruption, small elites control the bulk of

their nations’ assets, institutions have been corroded
by the effects of minerals-based development (the Be-
larusian regime depends on Russian subsidies), and
governance and social provision are poor.188

All these became possible by the:

state control over the economy [which] allowed

President Lukashenka to starve opponents of resourc-
es and black-knight support from Russia [which] lim-
ited the regime’s vulnerability to Western democratiz-
ing pressure.189

90
 Belarusian elites are under Lukashenka’s absolute
control and enjoy his somewhat patrimonial approach
and the divide-and-rule policy which prevents them
from being too independent. As Alexander Feduta
claims, Lukashenka, being the sole ruler of Belarus,
did not consider it wise to steal from himself. He
viewed “the whole country as his household, and a
good boss of the household, which Lukashenka con-
siders himself to be, does not steal his own stuff.”190
Due to the close nature of the Belarusian business-
es to external oversight, the full extent of corruption
is unknown. Some information on the shadow deals
and the political persecutions in Belarus, neverthe-
less, sporadically appears mostly in the Russian press,
when its Russian patrons are upset with Lukashenka’s
performance. This was the case with the information
about the corruption and political pressure, as well as
on Lukashenka’s lavish lifestyle and the shadow gains
of his pocket oligarchs.191 The same was true with the
movie that was supposedly a political blockbuster in
Russia, Godfather, in which the pro-governmental Rus-
sian TV station NTV talked about mysterious disap-
pearances and assassinations of political opponents to
the regime and also quoting Lukashenka’s statements
on Hitler’s regime being a model for his own gover-
nance.192 Interestingly enough, the movie was made
in 2010, and the events it covers go back to 1999; this
shows the level of political manipulations and control
between the two “brotherly” nations. In return, the
Belarusian state channel ONT had a special program,
which criticized Putin’s propaganda drive in a Rus-
sian car and openly calling him “a fool on the road”193
in reference to his test-driving a new Lada.

91
 Despite these occasional mutual stings, Russia, for
the most part, has been the biggest actor contribut-
ing to political stability of Lukashenka’s regime and
accounting for its highest level of economic develop-
ment among the three countries. In 2011, Russia had
more than 75 percent of the FDIs in the economy of Be-
larus.194 In 2012, the FDIs decreased by almost a quar-
ter,195 but, nevertheless, the share of Russia was the
highest: 46.7 percent.196 For example, in 2009, Russia
invested U.S.$4 billion in the Belarusian economy.197
In 2011, Belarus became the sixth-most attractive for-
eign investment location for the Russian capital.198
The politics and economy in Russian-Belarusian re-
lations are entangled to a point when Lukashenka’s
domestic political support closely correlates with the
fluctuation of Russian’s financial backing. According
to Margarita Balmaceda, the Russian oil giant “Lu-
koil supported Lukashenka’s 2001 reelection cam-
paign in exchange for promises that Naftan [the major
Belarusian state-owned oil company] would be priva-
tized. . . .”199 So-called “rent relations” with Russia are
used to support the government at a level sufficient to
ensure the loyalty of the majority of the population.
The Belarusian government can, thus, provide for a
higher growth of welfare of its population (and, hence,
a greater degree of forced legitimacy) than more dem-
ocratic governments in other post-Soviet countries
(including Ukraine and Belarus), which do not have
such lavish and immediate external rents and try to
foster economic development primarily through the
implementation of structural long-term reforms.
Because of the systematic policy of eliminating
political rivals, Lukashenka’s governance faces no
internal threats due to virtually absent systemic op-
position and no external threats by too weak and un-

92
willing external actors. The EU has lost active interest
in Belarusian politics since freezing of the EU-Belarus
Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 1997.
Currently, the EU pursues what it calls a “policy of
critical engagement”200 in Belarus through supporting
the civil society development and imposing economic
and travel sanctions on the country and its leadership.
These two factors—coercive legitimacy and ex-
ternal political “calm” achieved through autocratic
resilience and support/inaction of the third parties,
respectively—made the current system developed by
Lukashenka quite stable. In the short-term, stability
increased with deliberate restrictions imposed on the
development of democracy based on a noncompeti-
tive model of the public interest (corporatism). In the
longer-term, various elites would inevitably grasp
their interests, which under the conditions of the crisis
of the personal model of stability (inevitable death of
the leader whom the stability of the system is clinging
on) can become destabilizing. In such a crisis situation,
the main factor in the stability of the system can be
the interference of external forces (mostly from Russia
and less so the EU and the United States). The main
question is whether the national institutions and, in
particular, the ruling political elites will have enough
time during the personal dictatorship to develop and
fully perceive their interests via proposing acceptable
successors.

POLITICAL CULTURE MATTERS

Three separate types of political behavior differ-

ent from the communalistic ideology-infused politi-
cal cultures started to develop in Ukraine, Georgia,
and Belarus soon after their independence. While in

93
all three cases, the process of defining their political
egos happened through revival of historical roots,
for the future identity constructs, the three nations
had developed distinct political cultures. These po-
litical cultures—flexible (open and allowing change in
Georgia), bifurcate (undetermined and ambiguous in
Ukraine), and latent (dormant and suppressed in Be-
larus)—developed sets of preconditions affecting the
democratic institutionalization and political stability
in different ways.
The study of the three democratization projects
received a dual correlation between their political cul-
tures and the governance regimes. Not only does the
political culture define the “fit” of the regime within
the domestic polity (the citizens), but it also envis-
ages the variations in the degrees of their durability.
If the political culture is conducive to fluctuations, it
will negatively affect the political stability, as it will
be more open to the shifts within domestic polity and
foreign influences than the political culture, which re-
jects change. In this latter case, political stability will
be guaranteed by the regime type that predisposes
specific behavioral patterns of its citizens.
Economic development also affects political stabil-
ity. The more visible and affluent the middle class is,
the more it would prefer internal and external stability.
From the point of view of internal stability, accumu-
lated wealth and property can be decreased as a result
of sporadic and uncontrolled processes of unexpected
political instability, such as revolutions, riots, civil un-
rest, and coup d’états. This can also happen during the
short-term change of government within democrati-
cally accepted frameworks, such as impeachments of
presidents or stepping down of the incumbent gov-
ernments. Politically less active but better-off masses

94
would prefer political alterations, hoping for the
positive changes in their lives. Generally, a well-to-do
electorate would prefer peace to war since it would
have more to lose then to win from the participation of
its country in military actions (given their uncertainty)
and would also come up with increased unity in the
face of negative political externalities.

Ukraine.

The evolution of Ukrainian political culture reflects

the regional split between the West and the East. The
roots for this conflicting bipolarity go back to the Brest
Church Union in 1596, which divided the country into
the Greek-Catholic (western) and Orthodox (eastern)
regions. The signing of the Union and the subsequent
religious schism led to a long and bloody struggle be-
tween the followers of the two Christian denomina-
tions in Ukraine and had far-reaching cultural conse-
quences for the country as a whole. In modern times,
almost all leaders of the country had the election slo-
gans of closeness with Russia, giving the Russian lan-
guage a status of second official state language, and
with Russia’s political, economic, and moral support.
At the same time, they continue to seek integration
with the western political structures in hopes of re-
ceiving economic support.
This was the case of Yushchenko and later Yanu-
kovych, as well as all other political leaders of smaller
scale. Political flirtation with the West by express-
ing the desire for integration with Western political
structures, including the EU and NATO, resulted in
simultaneous rejection of such moves by “removing
Ukraine’s aspirations to [NATO] membership from
the list of the state policy priorities in the sphere of

95
national security.”201 Such political oscillations turn to
the detriment of the “other side” of the political ori-
entation since Russia, too, demands political loyalty.
As analyst Vadim Karasev, notes, “current Ukrainian-
Russian relations are suffering from serious uncer-
tainty, probably the biggest uncertainty for the entire
period.”202 This was due to the fact that Ukraine has to
make decisive steps in the nearest future in the direc-
tion of further integration with the EU, whereas Russia
is pressing for Ukraine’s membership in the Customs
Union, the two conflicting prospects for its political,
cultural, and economic future.
The Ukrainian political personality split suggests
the general conceptualization of this phenomenon as
the Ukrainian predicament, the core of its bifurcate
political culture developed since the times of existence
under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: to seek
patrons abroad, instead of relying on the loyalty of lo-
cal constituency. As it seems, for the purpose of attain-
ing the domestic legitimacy, it is paradoxically trans-
ferred abroad to receive the legitimacy externally to
prove it to the local constituencies. After having suc-
cessfully risen to power, the leadership cannot aban-
don the modus operandi of playing on the two different
boards and, eventually, both the external lobby-states
and the domestic constituency become disillusioned
in their political performance.
Another significant part of the political culture
in Ukraine is popular apathy born as the result of
the omnipresent electoral fraud and the inability to
achieve high political impacts on the popular level.
The orchestrated mass “protests,” such as concerts
or marches with paid participants holding banners
of political parties they do not support, contribute to
the public disillusionment of the potentially politi-

96
cally active citizenry and disbelief in their own abil-
ity to change things in the country. These facts stress
the low levels of domestic legitimacy and efficiency
of the governance and the self-destructive nature of
current political culture, the political behavior, which
is rather petty rent-seeking instead of being directed
at attainment of long-lasting political capital and
popular support.

Georgia.

The centuries of foreign dominance forced upon

Georgia a political culture that is highly adaptive to
fluctuations of the geo-political environments. A pos-
sible explanation of this phenomenon could be its
geographic location, which put Georgia at the junc-
tions and overlaps of the traditions and interests of
the Western and Eastern hemispheres. Nevertheless,
it is not easy to pinpoint what accounts for frequent
modifications in Georgian political culture and what
made the Georgian political establishments so condu-
cive to new political realities. A possible explanation
is in external environment: the Georgian nation, hav-
ing been under constant threats of annihilation from
numerous invaders, had to adapt its political behavior
constantly to the influence of external factors in order
to survive physically.
The existence of Georgia under Russian rule for
more than 3 centuries is particularly notable from the
point of view of the flexible identity of the Georgian
political culture under the external influences. Ronald
Suni very rightly pointed out the cultural change:

In the half-century of Russian annexation of Eastern

Georgia . . . Transcaucasian society was irreversibly

97
 transformed. The effects of the Georgian metamor-
phosis were fundamental and profound. . . . [W]ith the
Russian occupation, a historical progress began that
rent the fabric of traditional Georgian society, produc-
ing new opportunities and loyalties. . . . By the end of
the first 50 years of Russian rule, the once rebellious,
semi-independent dynasties of Georgia had been
transformed into the service gentry loyal to their new
monarch.203

This change turned to be quite durable: even after

a short period of its independence, Georgia, having
been annexed by the Soviet Union, forcefully or will-
fully, continued to follow its northern neighbor in the
political, cultural, and economic choices.
Another explanation for the pliable political cul-
ture is that Georgian society has been particularly
known for its cultural openness and the ability to eas-
ily accept, test, and live through the newly proposed
norms, be they cultural, economic, or political. The
process of norm socialization, “of inducting actors
into the norms and rules of a given community,”204 has
always been easy for the Georgian establishment. A
good example of this is the changing orientation of the
Georgian elite after they had left the Turkish/Persian
sphere of influence and fell onto the Russian one. This
was revealed in the language selection, cultural as-
similation, and incorporation of external traits in their
everyday lives.
The current Georgian establishment follows the
path-dependence and the traditions of political ver-
satility of its former leadership, including Shevard-
nadze’s political curtsy to Moscow on the sun rising
from the north for the Georgians; Zurab Zhvania’s
statement at the Council of Europe meeting in 1999,
“I am Georgian and therefore I am European”; Saa-

98
kashvili’s craving for the NATO membership for
Georgia; and more recently, the carefully pro-Russian
stance of the new Georgian leadership. These last de-
velopments in the political orientation in Georgia can
be seen in purely cultural and economic acts, such
as sending the Georgian athletes to take part in the
Universiade Games in Russia in the summer of 2013,
participation of Georgia in the 2014 Winter Olympic
Games in Sochi, as well as talks on possible resump-
tion of imports of the Georgian to Russia banned well
before the war of 2008. At the same time, Ivanishvili’s
government made recently a serious political state-
ment showing aspirations to join the Eurasian Union,
a proposed political entity of selected former Soviet
republics, including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyr-
gyzstan, and Tajikistan—together with its breakaway
regions.205 If taken, this step with all its grave conse-
quences for the Georgian political orientation could
possibly become the most significant departure from
the 2 decade-old Georgian pro-Western political and
cultural orientation.

Belarus.

Unlike Georgia and, to a certain degree, Ukraine,

the political culture in Belarus is limited-elitist, coer-
cive, patrimonial, and mostly geographically homog-
enous. There is no regional political divide in Belarus,
nor is the identity split as in Ukraine. The Belarusian
political identity is not flexible to easily respond to
change, as it is Georgia. It is quittist,206 as Wilson de-
scribes, which signifies the highest possible level of
apathy among the three countries. Whereas the Ukrai-
nians had a limited chance to try and test the vox populi
in action, and the Georgians experienced its lasting ef-

99
fects after their respective revolution, Belarusians were
never given such opportunity to enjoy the democratic
freedoms due to the highly oppressive ruling regime
almost immediately after their independence. The
dormant and suppressed Belarusian political culture
is clearly seen in such defeatist popular statements of
the critics of democratization as “Belarus is not ready
for democracy,” which, as Alexei Pikulik contends,
“are not just a way to secure ideological legitimiza-
tion, but also a sincere belief of a significant part of the
country’s political class.”207 Here, too, unlike in Geor-
gia and Ukraine, the polity prefers stagnant political
stability to uncertain but vibrant change.
Another side of the political culture in Belarus is
“limited-elitist” due to a lack of historically estab-
lished interest groups and diverse elites who would
engage in political interplay that would include po-
tentially wider cycles of players. The benefits of the
regime are provided to the small groups of individu-
als in or closely affiliated with the ruling circle. As a
result of the highly paternalistic and feudal political
culture developed under Lukashenka, the elites do not
possess the real power to influence the domestic po-
litical environment. There are no significantly strong
personalities or charismatic figures, let alone opposi-
tion leaders (not jailed), who would possess enough
political gravitas to instigate cultural change among
the electorate. The regime simply “buys the loyalty”
of those groups who may be affected by economic lib-
eralization, which is identified with democratization.
This is evident on the level of external political stabil-
ity, where large industrial enterprises and agricultural
business are subsidized via lavish Russian donations.
Russia supports the existing Belarusian political-
economic model via direct grants and loans, “energy

100
rebates,” including in exchange for mostly symbolic
military and political alliance with the former.
The political culture in Belarus is also “minimalist”
in a sense that the domestic institutional actors prefer
the token satisfaction of the primary needs in fear that
“it could get worse.” In comparison to the post-inde-
pendence economic, social, and political chaos of most
of the ex-Soviet republics, including the civil wars in
Georgia and economic hardships in Ukraine, the peo-
ple in Belarus choose to have minimal but guaranteed
benefits offered by their government rather than try
to change the situation in pursuit of vague benefits.
These include the average quality but free medical
services; local enterprises making mediocre profits
but not “owned” by foreigners, which signifies the
perceived pride in independence; state-owned enter-
prises offering more stability than private ones; and
predominant popular preferences for lower wages,
but with guaranteed jobs.208 The minimalist political
culture, according to Silitski, is:

[a] replica of the old Soviet one, but at a lower level

of incomes with the following common expression
regarding democracy, ‘We don’t need this democracy
with hullabaloo. We need a democracy when a per-
son works, earns some wages to buy bread, milk, sour
cream, sometimes a piece of meat to feed his baby’.209

Such a stance is well aligned with the preferences

of the majority of the local polity for economic benefits
as opposed to political freedoms.

101
DEMOCRATIZATION THROUGH “REGIME
MIMICRY”

Most of the modern societies that had sprung up as

a result of the imperial collapses, including the post-
Soviet nations, do not try to reinvent the wheel. They
all tend to adopt already existing and tested gover-
nance frameworks, which are mostly democratic. Their
choice for the governance regimes is mainly based on
two considerations. On the one hand, the new nations
reveal purely rational anticipation of political and eco-
nomic benefits concomitant upon joining the newly
acquired hosts of like-minded but developmentally
advanced nations. This is what James March and Jo-
han Olsen call the “logic of expected consequences”
when institutional actors make their choices in pur-
suit of increased anticipated utility. The other reason
is contained in the wish to “look alike” with the rest
of the democratic community of states by copying/
pasting their democratic structures and institutions
that had proved effective there and, thus, should, in
principle, achieve the same success in the local politi-
cal, economic, and cultural environments. Such a be-
havior is based on the “logic of appropriateness”: the
countries consider it suitable to adopt the norms, rule,
and practices of the democratically advanced societies
because this is how they start viewing themselves.210
There can be, of course, the combination of both choic-
es, and the variable of political culture is fundamental
in understanding the rationales behind them since it
defines the modes of responses of democratizing na-
tions to external and internal institutional challenges.
The choice goes for democratic institutions as op-
posed to those of other regimes because, through its
institutional mechanisms, it provides most of the po-

102
litical stability in the long run and creates more du-
rable conditions for the economic development of the
policy. The regimes created in Georgia and Ukraine
fall under the category of “hybrid,” which are not
yet fully democratic but already not completely au-
thoritarian (and the qualitative and quantitative data
gathered here confirms that). In the year preceding
the Rose Revolution, Lucan Way and Steven Levitsky
placed Ukraine (Georgia was absent from the analy-
sis) within the “competitive authoritarianism” subsec-
tion of the “hybrid regimes” since their:

formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as

the principal means of obtaining and exercising po-
litical authority. Incumbents violate those rules so
often and to such an extent, however, that the regime
fails to meet conventional minimum standards for
democracy.211

In the same issue, Larry Diamond placed Georgia

and Ukraine into the category “ambiguous regimes”
because they had “the form of electoral democracy
but fail to meet the substantive test, or do so only
ambiguously.”212
The essential peculiarity of “hybrid regimes” is
that they would allow for a limited degree of demo-
cratic expression of political choices of their con-
stituencies without proper democratic internaliza-
tion. The regimes, such as in Kuchma’s Ukraine and
Shevardnadze’s Georgia, allowed for comparatively
higher degree of political freedom.213 Fully authoritar-
ian regimes, such as in Belarus, rule with an iron fist
and prevent any possible expression of political will,
thus are more politically stable. However, they, too,
choose the democratic facades. There, the political sta-
bility depends directly on the physical well-being of

103
an autocrat and the degree of effectiveness of public
coercion. As soon as the authoritarian regimes allow
for some signs of political competition, skillful “norm
entrepreneurs,” such as Yushchenko and Saakashvili
and later Ivanishvili, start to appear on the political
scene and attempt to change the situation.
Implementation of the three democratization sce-
narios in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus is based on
the externally provided blueprints. The democratic
institutional frameworks are transplanted into their
domestic realities by means of regime mimicry—a
comprehensive process of political, economic, cultural
identity change. This process is similar to isomorphic
mimicry in biology, where “one organism mimics
another to gain an evolutionary advantage.”214 An
example of isomorphic mimicry is a frog, Lithodytes
lineatus (commonly known as Sapito listado), living in
Pan-Amazonia. Lithodytes is a harmless creature that is
often confused with a highly poisonous Allobates femo-
ralis. During the process of physical evolution, Litho-
dytes had adopted the form of its poisonous look-alike
without its poisonous content to avoid being eaten by
other creatures. In biology, this phenomenon is given
the following explanation, “individuals of a more pal-
atable species (mimic) gain advantage by resembling
members of another, less palatable species (the mod-
el)”215 in order to evolve into a seemingly dangerous
form (usually a predator) to attain increased protec-
tion from other predators, while retaining the nonma-
levolent content.
The scholarship on organizational management
and economic development extends the notion of
mimicry to such actors as “key suppliers, resource and
product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other
organizations that produce similar services or prod-

104
ucts”216 from more developed countries. Here, the “[o]
rganisations can mimic other organisations without
having evidence that mimicry would actually in-
crease functional performance.”217 According to Lant
Pritchett et al.:

[O]rganizations adopt—‘modern’ or—‘best practice’

forms or notional policies even when these are not
followed up by, or are even consistent with, actual
functional performance in the context of a given orga-
nization’s actual capability for policy implementation.
Moreover, these carbon-copy organizations are then
asked to perform tasks that are too complex and/or
too burdensome, too soon.218

Furthermore, Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell

talk about several types of organizational isomor-
phism: coercive isomorphism (formal and informal
pressure on domestic organizations by their external
counterparts and by cultural expectations of own soci-
ety); mimetic isomorphism (when domestic organiza-
tions vaguely see their functions, they adopt the forms
of other organizations hoping that what works there
would work at home); and normative isomorphism
(when organizational actors blur the distinction be-
tween organizational commitment and professional
allegiances).219 The difference between isomorphic
and organizational mimicry is that while the former
renders a life-saving service to its actor, the latter, on
the contrary, fails the actor: isomorphism helps the
species to survive and the organizational mimicry
offers an ineffective remedy to the organizations by
focusing on the formative and not contextual sides of
the matters.
In matters of public governance, both “hybrid” and
“authoritarian regimes” opt for the democracy to sur-

105
vive in new and vastly unfamiliar settings of the insti-
tutional jungle into which they were plunged. The re-
gime mimicry develops where the whole governance
regime mimics the advanced democratic institutions
and notionally reflects the externally implanted and
not organically developed rules, norms, and practices.
In the field of democratic institutionalization, the re-
gime mimicry would mean adoption of comprehen-
sive forms of institutions of democratic governance
(courts and the legal system, in general; offices of
Ombudsmen; systems of human rights protection;
elections; local self-governance agencies, etc.) with-
out the full “lifecycle” of their socialization. This usu-
ally happens when newly independent nations, after
the painful process of gaining sovereignty, suddenly
side with the institutions of other countries that have
been developed in the process of cognitive evolution.
These nations are faced with the painful normative
conundrums of defining their developmental paths
and, while making the choice towards democracy,
adopt the institutions of more democratically devel-
oped countries without proper grasp of their purpose
and content.
Countries engage in regime mimicry for a variety
of reasons. They may adopt practices of the institu-
tions foreign to their popular “fit” because they would
expect to receive purely tangible benefits from “joining
the club” of democratic countries. These benefits may
include developmental milestones through increased
socialization with the countries whose institutions are
adopted, such as memberships in international organi-
zations (for instance, in the World Trade Organization
[WTO] or NATO) through implementing institutional
reforms. In this case, the mimicking countries will fol-
low the “logic of expected consequences.” They may

106
also mimic the existing structures and undertake the
reforms because they started associating themselves
with the advanced democratic countries they want to
look like. Here the benefits may also be available, but
they are not the primary rationale for the regime mim-
icry; it is the identity construct that matters in build-
ing associations with other regimes. Such a behavior
follows the “logic of appropriateness.”
For a case comparison, consider the EU’s external
conditionality as an example of the externally provid-
ed institutional frameworks. Frank Schimmelfennig
and Ulrich Sedelmeier identify three models of accep-
tance of institutional learning: the external incentives
model, which “follows the logic of consequences and
is driven by the external rewards and sanctions”; the
social learning model, which follows the logic of ap-
propriateness and emphasizes identification with the
institutional model and “the legitimacy of its rules as
key conditions for rule adoption, rather than the pro-
vision of material incentives”; and the lesson-draw-
ing model, in which states adopt the “rules because
they judge them as effective remedies to inherently
domestic needs and policy changes rather than out of
consideration about the incentives.”220 In this process
of institutional socialization, the EU conditionality
policies, or the acquis communautaire, create rational
choice or identity-based frameworks for the countries
to adopt the relevant institutions.
There is a fundamental difference between organi-
zational and regime mimicries. Because of the sector-
specific nature of the former, duplication of the exter-
nally imposed designs without essential touch with
the domestic political, economic, and cultural grounds
leads to their ultimate failure due to the low level of
their holistic socialization. The functional spillovers

107
within and across organizational and functional areas
are possible, of course, and they may succeed up to
a certain point, as the neofunctionalist logic goes.221
But unless they include “specific socialization mecha-
nisms (strategic calculation, role playing, normative
suasion),”222 their area of application will be limited to
the precise organizations and, even narrowly, to units
within them.
The process of regime mimicry is a dangerous
path: a developing country could be dragged into the
vortex of mimicked settings and, furthermore, into
state failure. According to Philipp Krause, a:

[p]art of the reason fragile states are hopelessly stuck

is precisely because they try to mimic the formal insti-
tutions of success, rather than figuring out the func-
tions of statehood on their own.223

In order for the mimicry to be successful, it should

fully and completely transcend the societal fibers and
become an inherent part of the political cultures of
the mimicking nations. Regime mimicry can, indeed,
turn into full-scale cognitive socialization, and this is
where its greatest paradox lies: the fuller the mimicry,
the higher the chances for it to turn into full normative
socialization that would eventually end the mimicry.
Full mimicry exacerbates all three types of institu-
tional learning models, as defined by Schimmelfennig
and Sedelmeier, the types of spillovers and socializa-
tion patterns, and leads to the proper development
of the normative “lifecycle” of democratization, in-
cluding norm emergence, norm cascading, and norm
internalization. The success of the regime mimicry is
largely based on the ability of the countries to open
up for the institutional change and not only to accept

108
the proposed structured but, most importantly, to try
to adjust them to their own realities. This is the cru-
cial point in effective institutional change: increased
mimicry accepted by the political elites would lead
to the mutually interchanging process of adaptation
of the mimicry to the societal “fits” and even deeper
societal transformations of those “fits” for the nations
in question.
In the matter of democratic transformations fol-
lowing either of the two logics, the societies with the
flexible political cultures adopt the proposed frame-
works either because others do so and they want to re-
semble them, or they expect certain benefits from the
process of change. The only difference is in durability
of the change. In both cases, the adoption starts via
mimicry since the host societies have no or limited pri-
or experience of the proposed institutions—as was the
case with Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus. At this stage,
all three intervening variables will step in: the specific
political culture, the force of external persuasion, and
the economic condition of the target countries being
under the influence of the specific logics guiding the
agents of change.
The ideal condition for a full mimicry is the simul-
taneous existence of all three variables. For a country
to start copying the institutional designs, there should
be high enough external pressure on the parts of exter-
nal and internal agents of change. In other words, the:

[i]nternational organizations, local policy makers, and

private consultants [should] combine to enforce the
presumption that the most advanced countries have
already discovered the one best institutional blueprint
for development and that its applicability transcends
national cultures and circumstances.224

109
 The political cultures of the recipient societ-
ies should be highly conducive to change. Finally,
countries must be economically more or less stabile
to sustain the institutional change, which, as a trans-
formation process, is always costly. These variables
should be under the influence of both logics—appro-
priateness and consequentiality. This means that the
societies should be both willing to identify themselves
with the democratic institutions and be individu-
ally interested in receiving tangible benefits from the
regime mimicry.
Presence of these three factors will lead to full and
successful regime mimicry. New norms would emerge
that would further develop into stable behavioral pat-
terns. Further along in the mimicry, the norms would
start cascading—they would transcend through larger
societal layers, allowing for the participation of the
increased number of institutional actors. Finally, the
essence of mimicry would gradually fade, and the
democratic normative internationalization will take
place. Here, the paradox of full mimicry means that
acceptance of new external designs will eventually
turn into the appearance of new contexts.
The mimicry will be partial and less successful if
either one, or all, of the three factors are absent. When
the external pressure is low, i.e., when the agents of
change approach the process negligently and half-
heartedly, institutional design transfer will stumble
upon the multiple external constraints, including the
agents’ own budgets and their allocations for the in-
stitutional support, their organizational management
constraints, and the election cycles, to name a few. If
the domestic political cultures of the host societies
are intractable, they will continue to reject the exter-
nally proposed institutional changes until this process

110
stalls. When economies of the mimicking countries
experience hardships, the regime mimicry might slow
down at the norm socialization since the countries
would not be able to support financially further re-
forms processes. Finally, when used separately by the
host societies, the two logics would lead to skewed vi-
sions on the proposed change. The logic of expected
consequences alone would signal the external actors
that the host societies are not interested in a cognitive
change and only have short-term mercantile expecta-
tions with the set-in-stone preferences. Similarly, the
logic of appropriateness would alarm external actors
who would assume that the “like identities” were too
early to develop and are based on too shallow institu-
tional grounds. It would indicate that without proper
material constraints and interests, the host societies
are internally too feeble and overly receptive to the
proposed transformations and may easily change
their preferences.
In sum, unenthusiastically proposed institutions,
coupled with the rigidity of the recipient countries’
political cultures without proper financial backing,
together with the bifurcate approach to the behavioral
logics, create only partial mimicry. This mimicry would
allow for the first stage in the norm “lifecycle”—norm
emergence—and would inhibit subsequent stages of
institutional socialization through norm cascading
and internationalization. The changes would remain
a facade because they face the rigid political cultures
and the unwillingness of the regime itself to permit
institutional change. The normative lifecycle would
stumble upon the roadblocks created by the ruling
regime, which prevents it from full development. Par-
tial regime mimicry would signify an even lesser de-
gree of democratization since the created institutional

111
change will be considerably less durable and will not
even partially serve their purpose but will exist as a
mere mockery.
The way to overcome the problem of full or par-
tial mimicry, i.e., to fill the form with the content,
lies through a long-lasting and fundamental cultural
change. Norm internalization will only happen under
full-scale cultural transformations, which should tran-
scend all the societal layers and sediment deep in the
core of the individual identity of the nations. A good
example of a successful internalization—and in quite
a short period of time—is the transformation of Ger-
many from supporting the Nazi regime into a demo-
cratic and egalitarian society shortly after World War
II. For this process, two aspects are necessary. First,
the external support in the form of knowledge trans-
fers and economic assistance of the democratically de-
veloped nations to the newly democratizing societies
will install and help sustain the institutional change
through the norm emergence to the norm cascading.
Second, the indomitable will of the nations and their
governments, as the “norm entrepreneurs,” is needed
not only to accept the institutional changes and live
through them without altering their political direc-
tion, but also to make the change an inherent part of
their future identity. If both of these variables are pres-
ent, the process of regime mimicry will move beyond
democratic norm cascading to their internalization by
creating and sustaining the identity imprints.
Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus are at various stages
of democratization and engage in diverse types of re-
gime mimicries. The early years of their independence
were quite turbulent, institutionally speaking. The
three countries were plunged into the unknown and,
therefore, by default an unsafe regional and interna-

112
tional environment. No longer was the responsibility
for decisionmaking and the behavior on the interna-
tional arena being kept in Moscow: Ukraine, Georgia,
and Belarus became individually in charge of their in-
dependent existence. The environment they appeared
in at that time was highly unpredictable for them
since they never fully existed as independent entities.
In a habitat full of uncertainty and unpredictability,
the three countries had chosen the institutional frame-
works of democracy based on a number of reasons,
which were different in each case.

Regime Mimicry in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, the process of democratic normative

lifecycle was stalled at the stage of norm cascading.
While local institutions have the designs and forms of
democratic governance, they are not backed up by ef-
fectively conducted reforms, which will contribute to
the normative spillovers in different areas. Some sec-
tors are more advanced in their mimicry than others.
The best example of this discrepancy, which is also
within the separate components of the same sectors,
is economic reforms. According to Marcin Święcicki:

After 2 decades of transition, Ukraine is still far behind

countries that joined the EU, including the three Baltic
States, in economic reforms. . . . The most advanced
areas in Ukraine’s transition to a market economy by
2010 were small-scale privatization, price liberaliza-
tion, and trade and the foreign exchange system. The
least advanced were governance and enterprise re-
structuring, competition policy, and infrastructure.225

113
 The same pessimistic tendency is noted in the case
study, “Lessons from the Ukrainian Transition”:

[P]ositive developments in reform were not accompa-

nied by a level of structural reform sufficient to guar-
antee a return to real economic growth . . . or to elimi-
nate widespread distortions, non-payment and barter
transactions, and rent seeking, particularly in the en-
ergy sector and in energy-intensive industries. More-
over, the government tolerated, and even encouraged,
non-monetary transactions and even, to some extent,
non-payments.226

The start of the democratic institutionalization

process in Ukraine was similar to most of the post-
Soviet republics: it, too, was expecting some benefits
from joining the league of advanced European de-
mocracies. The external incentives model seemed to
be working for Ukraine for quite some time. Out of the
three models of isomorphism discussed previously,
the first two—mimetic—was more applicable in the
Ukrainian case. It has been receiving signals from the
European community of having palpable advantages
of behaving as democracies do, the most recent be-
ing the upcoming free trade agreement with the EU.
Domestic actors also supported the democratic insti-
tutionalization to a point where more decisive steps
should have been taken with regards to moving away
from the external incentives toward the social learn-
ing and lesson-drawing model. There the process was
interrupted by two factors: change of the government
in Ukraine and the subsequent adjustments of the geo-
political orientation of the country after the failure of
the Orange Revolution.
The general political course of integration with
the European structures was somewhat reversed after

114
the government change in 2010 with the addition of a
clearly pro-Russian direction. The democratic world
continues to assist Ukraine with institutional support,
but the effectiveness of the reforms is lowered by a
number of factors. First of all, it is the considerably
large size of the country when compared with Geor-
gia and Belarus that makes it difficult to effectively
affect the institutional settings. Next is the regional
divide, which diversified the popular responses to the
proposed change. Finally, it is the internal ambiguity
within the institutional actors as to how the country
should develop further and the fluctuation of the
domestic political environment.
This factor of geographic political preferences also
affects the choice of the two logics. On the one hand,
the government clearly sees the tangible economic and
political benefits of democratic direction, including in-
stitutional socialization. On the other hand, however,
the preferences are divided by the unique Ukrainian
identity split between the West and the East, which
prevents it from following both behavioral logics; it
is impossible to credibly evaluate the pros and cons
of either direction as well as to force the diverse parts
of the country to follow a single course. The external
incentives model that was working under the logic
of consequentiality is further burdened by the fact
of multiple rational preferences. The real question is
whether Ukraine will eventually manage to mold a
single political identity based on the mix of the two
logics. This would also define the general political
line: integration with the West/Europe or with the
East/Russia.
The regime mimicry here is partial, but it is still a
preferred way of interaction between the institutional
actors, on the one hand, and the international commu-

115
nity on the other. It is quite difficult to implement a
change of political culture in such a large country as
Ukraine. It would take much longer for the norm cas-
cading and internalization due to the high diversity
of the domestic political and cultural terrain. On the
other hand, the relative rigidity of the Ukrainian po-
litical culture significantly contributes to the internal
political stability of the country.

Regime Mimicry in Georgia.

In the case of Georgia, the mimicry is complex and

omnipresent since it transcends all societal layers and
is present in most societal functions. Externally avail-
able institutional designs were proposed to Georgia
by international organizations (such as the EU, NATO,
World Bank, etc.) in the form of various institutional
incentives and reforms (educational, military, health-
care, to name a few) via financial support and knowl-
edge transfers. While these reforms started during
Shevardnadze’s time, they accelerated with Saakash-
vili’s ascent to power and his rigorous implementa-
tion of them.
From the point of view of the stimuli behind the
regime mimicry, Georgia chose a combination of iso-
morphism—coercive, mimetic, and normative. It took
the path towards democratization by combining the
external incentives model (membership in interna-
tional and regional organizations, grants, and credits)
with the social learning (cultural change) and lesson-
drawing (internal development) models. In doing so,
Georgia was guided by the symbiosis of the two logics.
The logic of consequentiality brought in the rational
choice reasoning of expected rewards associated with
acceptance of the institutional designs (such as further

116
integration into the European structures including its
possible membership in NATO) and punishments fol-
lowing possible defection from the accepted norma-
tive behavioral patterns. The logic of appropriateness,
on its part, fostered real cultural change via a mental-
ity transformation from that of a corrupt post-Soviet
republic into an advanced democratic nation.
Anti-corruption activity, judiciary reform, revision
of taxation—these are a few examples of institutional
norm emergence. The process of norm cascading start-
ed with the gradual transformation of Georgian soci-
ety where the spillovers went beyond their functional
areas and started affecting an increasing number of
institutions. For instance, corruption, a typical Soviet-
type Georgian institution, was eradicated not only in
law enforcement or judiciary but also in education,
health, urban planning, etc. According to Alexander
Kupatadze:

[C]orruption has been substantially reduced in sec-

tors where citizens interact with the state more fre-
quently, including registering property, acquiring
passports and licenses, and the police and the tax
administration,227

in other words, everywhere where socialization be-

tween the electorate and the regime was the highest.
The process of full norm internalization, however,
has not taken place yet. One reason is that the political
culture requires a much longer period for cementing
the change than the two election cycles after the Rose
Revolution. The biggest change in the political culture
of the Georgian elite was the nonacceptance of elec-
tion fraud, which is widely spread in most post-Soviet
societies. Jim Nichol called the 2012 parliamentary
elections in Georgia “the first in the South Cauca-

117
sus resulting in competitive and peaceful transfer of
power,”228 a totally different picture from all previous
elections elsewhere in the Caucasus precipitated with
various intricate forms of election fraud. For the norm
internalization to have a long-lasting effect, the trans-
formations should affect the deeper fibers of society to
a point of no return to previously existing norms.
Another factor decelerating norm internalization
is emergence of the backward trends with Ivanish-
vili’s government, which engaged in political rever-
sals, including the random amnesty of some 9,000
prisoners sentenced during Saakashvili’s governance
almost immediately after the elections229—politically
motivated detentions and lawsuits against the former
officials (such as former Minister of Interior Vano
Merabishvili) and those associated with Saakashvili’s
governance. These developments impede a full nor-
mative lifecycle from completion and prevent the re-
gime mimicry from turning into the real democratic
institutionalization.
The norm diffusion became possible due to Geor-
gia’s political culture, which is actively systaltic and
constantly prone to change, both domestically gen-
erated or externally imposed. It is fluid and highly
susceptible to adoption or “mimicking,” at various
time junctions, the externally presented institutional
arrangements of the governance regimes by the politi-
cal elites. The pace of a normative “lifecycle” is quite
high in Georgia. However, in order to bring the partial
mimicry into full and transform it into complete norm
internalization, two factors are necessary: unweather-
ing external support and the iron will of the domestic
institutional actors. Georgia does possess the first set
of requirements for democratic norm internalization.
The future of the domestic politics, more specifically,

118
the October 2013 presidential elections and, especial-
ly, their aftermath, will show how committed those
actors are to retain democratic designs.
An unexpected but serious problem with regime
mimicry can come from the side of external agents—
the institutions that are mimicked—which treat their
mimicking counterparts the way a fully functioning
institution should. They assume, in a way, that if the
institutions are created or adopt democratic practices,
they are democratic by definition. They put unbear-
able weight of democratic responsibility on the mim-
icking countries, which appear not to be ready for
such a momentous burden. In doing so, they fail (or
do not want) to assume that the recipient countries
are simply mimicking them, and the change has only
been a facade. The closing speech of NATO Secretary
General Rasmussen following the meetings of NATO
Defense Ministers on June 5, 2013, is notable with this
regard. When asked about the recent politically moti-
vated persecution of the political opponents in Geor-
gia by a Georgian journalist, he replied:

We are following these developments with great con-

cern. . . . I made clear, and Ministers made clear, that
we take it for granted that the Georgian authorities
will fully respect the fundamental principles of rule of
law and will guarantee due process.230

Such a conniving attitude, in a sense, assumes that

mimicking countries have fully passed all the stages
of democratic norm institutionalization and views
them as properly functioning entities fully performing
according to the standards of the copied institutions,
which is not always the case.

119
Regime Mimicry in Belarus.

In Belarus, regime mimicry is in its embryonic

form—quite far from even norm emergence. The type
of isomorphism that stands closest to the Belarusian
model is mimetic. Under the conditions of inherent
uncertainty on the international arena, which were ex-
acerbated by the relatively “young” independent exis-
tence of Belarus, its governance has chosen democratic
design as a formative model to follow without proper
institutional socialization. The continuous autocratic
reign of Lukashenka is cutting down any aspirations
for coercive isomorphism: the regime is intractable to
either internally initiated or rational stimuli or pres-
sure imposed from outside. The external incentive
model stopped working a long time ago when the ad-
vanced democracies were dissuaded in their attempts
to bring Belarus into the host of Europe, where it be-
longs, normatively and geographically speaking.
As early as in 1997, the EU froze its Partner-
ship and Cooperation Agreement with Belarus in
response to:

the political situation in the country—most recently

the violations of electoral standards in Belarus’ presi-
dential elections (2010) and the ensuing crackdown
on civil society, political opposition, and independent
media.231

This is because the autocratic governance coercive-

ly impedes the external incentives from being proper-
ly diffused among institutional actors who had never
had a chance to enact the social learning, let alone the
lesson-drawing models. None of the two logics were
at work here: the benefits for acting democratically are
not clearly visible or available for the domestic actors

120
to start behaving appropriately. Belarusian autoc-
racy manages to block successfully both the external
support in the form of transfers of democratization
designs and the institutional actors from expressing
their free will for change.
There are, of course, some signs of institutional de-
signs of the democratic governance in Belarus, such
as dispersed civil society and quite nominal human
rights protection mechanisms. However, neither of
them is fully efficient. Even worse so, they are spo-
radic, nonsystemic, and subject to strict internal over-
sight. Belarus has accepted democratic institutions
mostly by their form, while utterly disregarding their
contexts. For example, according to its constitutions,
Belarus is “a unitary, democratic, social state based
on the rule of law” where “[t]he individual, his rights,
freedoms and guarantees to secure them are the su-
preme value and goal of the society and the State” and
its people are “the sole source of state power and the
bearer of sovereignty in the Republic of Belarus.”232 In
reality, however, Lukashenka is the alpha and omega
of domestic authority in the country, allowing for no
contextual or substantial transfer of the institutional
meaning.
At the same time, Belarus, too, imitates the exter-
nally proposed institutional frameworks, but there
is an important difference between the two types of
mimicry. In Georgia and to a certain degree in Ukraine,
this process is deliberate and rational. These countries
experience the influence of external constraints and
opportunities by accepting certain institutional frame-
works. Here the difference is that the autocratic gov-
ernance blurs Belarus’ vision of tangible benefits from
full democratic institutionalization. The authoritarian
political culture shows a significantly higher degree of

121
rigidity than in Georgia and Ukraine. It has no strictly
defined regional identity but fully depends on the will
of Lukashenka, who tries to balance at the brink of dif-
ferent extremes for the personal benefits and those of
his close cycle.
With all the difficulty of dealing with Europe and
the recent worsening of the relations with Russia over
the possession of and control over “Belaruskali.” One
of the Belarusian industrial giants producing signifi-
cant amounts of world’s potassium.233 Belarus is turn-
ing for political and economic help elsewhere. The
recent economic rapprochement with China (with the
amount of U.S.$5.5 billion and another U.S.$30 billion
in the future) marked another round in the political
games of Lukashenka with the rest of the world. By
calling China “the global empire,” “the leading power
of the world,” and “the world’s center,”234 Lukashen-
ka is sending clear political messages both to the West
and Russia of keeping his options open and actively
looking for a patron. This step signifies the political
immaturity of Lukashenka’s regime, which negatively
affects the process of international mimicry: the level
of international involvement in Belarus in the form
of institutional or fiscal support is extremely small
and equally nonsystemic. Overall, the resistance to
political evolution reflects the increased institutional
path-dependency in Belarus in withstanding the en-
vironmental changes and preventing conscious in-
stitutional socialization. The pace of normative “life-
cycles” there is lethargic and subject to the limitations
of the Belarusian respective political culture, which
makes its societies immune to multiple short-term
regime changes.

122
“INPUTS” VERSUS “OUTPUTS”

In most of the advanced democracies, there is a

dual connection between democratic governance and
political stability. Democratic institutions with their
norms, rules, and practices put in place centuries
ago as a result of human evolution create the neces-
sary conditions for both internal and external political
stability. Democratic governance builds up the en-
vironment for equal political participation and fair
treatment for all the citizens. A social contract existing
in the democracies is based on the notion of positive
trust existing between the government and its citizens.
The citizens trust the government in its observance of
the terms of the social contract by offering physical
and property protection, as well as observing the hu-
man rights and fundamental principles. This is done
by creating and respecting the checks-and-balances in
the government, as well as keeping the government
accountable via holding regular free and fair elections.
The government, for its part, trusts the citizens in their
fulfillment of the terms of the social contract by re-
specting its decisions and not revolting against them.
Advanced democratic governance regimes also
contribute to the external stability of their countries by
decreasing the possibility and effectiveness of foreign
interference in their domestic affairs. The positive
trust presents itself by the increased public cohesion
in face of the threat coming from outside as well as
preventing their governments from starting arbitrary
wars. Under the constraints established by demo-
cratic designs, the ruling government would have to
go through lengthy procedures of authorizing use of
force abroad. In addition, democratic governments
must comply with the global and regional governance

123
regimes, having established the world order that (at
least nominally) respects the principles of state sov-
ereignty, nonintervention into the domestic affairs of
other states, and the supremacy of the human rights
protection system.
The situation is radically different in autocracies.
There, the internal political stability is based on the
negative trust instilled by the fear of the citizens that
they would definitely be worse off if they show dis-
agreement with the ruling regimes. The governments
consider any public activity of its citizens as suspi-
cious by definition, and the former fear that any ac-
tions will necessarily have punitive backlashes on the
part of their governments. Thus, the stability of autoc-
racies is measured by their ability to coerce effectively
their own citizens into compliance with the existing
institutional arrangements. This usually makes politi-
cal culture apathetic and discourages political experi-
ments. Internal durability of the autocratic regimes
also depends on individual leadership, where the
autocrats via their close cycles of family and affiliates
represent the sole source of legitimacy and stability
for the countries and their citizens. The change of au-
tocratic leadership usually leads to at least short-term
political disturbance, depending on the specific inter-
play of domestic power groups.
From the point of view of external political stabil-
ity, the autocratic governance is much less stable than
its democratic counterpart. Autocratic leaders tend
to show more contrariness in defining their foreign
policy priorities by the virtue of having much fewer
constraints due to the absence or ineffective checks-
and-balances systems. The reason is that the constitu-
encies have far fewer possibilities to participate in the
domestic and foreign lives of their countries under the

124
pressure of their autocratic governance and to block
the undesired actions of their governments.
The process of governance is a two-way reciprocal
dialogue between the ruling regime and institutional
actors. In order to be effective, democratic governance
should provide for the protection of the rights of their
citizens and also ensure their free and uninterrupted
participation in the political life of their country. The
second part of the effective governance is contained
in the efforts the citizenry makes to contribute to this
process. Bo Rothstein and Jan Teorell call these two
components of democracy as “inputs” and “outputs.”
According to them:

A state regulates relations to its citizens on two dimen-

sions. One is the ‘input’ side, which relates to access to
public authority. The other is the ‘output’ side and re-
fers to the way in which that authority is exercised.235

On the more contextual level, the outputs and in-

puts are closely connected with the notion of the so-
cial contract where outputs are about the benefits the
citizens will get from the government in case of their
compliance as well as the punishments they would
receive in case of defection from their governments’
rule, and inputs are enshrined in the process of par-
ticipation of the citizenry in governance processes.
Effective interplay between outputs and inputs
has direct consequences for the overall sustainability
of the governance regimes discussed by Lipset. In his
equation, outputs are tantamount to regime effective-
ness, and inputs are related to the notion of govern-
ments’ legitimacy. Democracies exercise political
equality on the combined inputs and outputs sides of
their social contracts. Equal democratic participation

125
of the citizens in the form of the inputs provides for
the basis of norms, rules, and practices of democratic
institutionalization. Impartial outputs cement the
equality between the citizens as exercised by the dem-
ocratically elected authorities. The inputs, in a sense,
are the bases of the fulfillment of the “social contracts”
since they represent the media of participation of the
institutional actors in the lives of their countries.
In autocracies, the linkages between inputs and
outputs are distorted by authoritarian resilience. On
the one hand, autocracies do not allow for outputs to
be available to all layers of society. Unlike democratic
equality, autocracies provide higher outputs for close
cycles of governance and discriminate against all the
rest and much lower outputs for the rest of the popu-
lation. Correspondingly, the effectiveness and legiti-
macy of authoritarian regimes are based on inputs
from those cycles alone, which mostly have to do with
the individual loyalty to the regimes and their lead-
ers. Under autocratic governance, institutional actors
do not produce or are restricted from full provision of
the inputs, whereas outputs are skewed in favor of the
ruling elites.
Autocracies may remain stable for some time by
providing lone outputs, which will satisfy the main
human requirements for the institutional actors, as
stated by Abraham Maslow.236 At the same time, they
would have to compensate for the inputs by mimick-
ing the democratic institutional forms without creat-
ing viable conditions for full and equal participation
of the actors in the political processes. In situations
with high outputs but low inputs, there is a risk of the
governance to turn into some form of authoritarian
regime. Not fearing popular discontent, governments
may provide for the basic or even higher needs of

126
their societies, while keeping their political participa-
tion to a minimum. On the contrary, low outputs com-
bined with high inputs, which is a perfect precondi-
tion for state failure, would increase the proclivity of
popular uprisings. Not satisfied with the current eco-
nomic conditions, the public may consolidate against
their governments.
The future of the democratization/political stabil-
ity/economic development nexus in Ukraine, Geor-
gia, and Belarus can be explored by relating it to the
inputs versus outputs discourse on democratization
from the point of view of the characteristics of their
regime mimicries. Ideally, the levels of outputs should
be equal to those of inputs. The reason why the re-
gime mimicry is more advanced in Georgia, partial in
Ukraine, and rudimentary in Belarus is because de-
mocracy is only possible where there are both inputs
and outputs; without either of these components, it
will only be partial and unviable.

Ukraine.

The duality of its political culture had affected neg-

atively the prospects for internal and external politi-
cal stability. Internally, the current government is in
charge of the political processes and due to the over-
whelming popular apathy, faces a low threat from
the increased political activity of the opposition. The
Orange Revolution–type euphoria has long ago sunk
into oblivion. Only serious internal economic and/or
political shocks can pose any significant threats to the
ruling regime. The partial regime mimicry allows the
current government to provide for the basic needs of
its population in the form of outputs: jobs available
to most of the population with the unemployment

127
level as low as 1.6 percent of the total population;237
and relatively decent healthcare, education, and com-
munal services. These outputs are offered to the wider
societal layers, although to a much more limited scale
than in Belarus. There is still inflation that has to be
dealt with, making it difficult for the government to
sustain decent economic levels with current economic
policies. Further reforms are necessary with regard
to economic revival. This is very difficult to under-
take without substantial external support. Ukraine
has to make a serious decision quite soon about its
foreign policy direction.
The input side of democratic institutionalization is
also present but is limited due to the political apathy
of the institutional actors, which prevents them from
inflicting large-scale internal political change. Cur-
rent actions of the political opposition are sporadic
and nonsystemic, which is further aggravated by the
internal political rifts between the key opposition par-
ties. Vitali Kilichko’s recent announcement to run for
president may act as a significant wake-up call for the
Ukraine’s anemic political life from the point of view
of uniting the opposition and increasing the inputs
side of democratization. This move will most definite-
ly face the highly tenaciousness current governance.
Yet, the chronic apathy would prevent another revo-
lutionary scenario from happening.
From the point of view of external political stabil-
ity, popular political lethargy aggravates the limbo
of the Ukrainian political establishment to choose a
foreign policy course. As reflected in a Congressional
Research Service memo, the:

conflict between Ukraine’s political forces has led its

foreign policy to appear incoherent, as the contend-

128
 ing forces pulled it in pro-Western or pro-Russia
directions. . . . Ukrainian leaders gave lip service to
joining NATO and the European Union, but did lit-
tle to meet the standards set by these organizations.
Ukrainian leaders also promised closer ties with
Russia in exchange for Russian energy at subsidized
prices, but balked at implementing agreements with
Russia that would seriously compromise Ukraine’s
sovereignty. . . .238

In practical terms, it translates into Yanukovych’s

dropping NATO’s membership action plan (MAP)
aspirations of Yushchenko without any significantly
important steps towards economic, political, and cul-
tural integration with Russia or with the EU.

Georgia.

Internal political stability in Georgia may be shak-

en by possible future abrupt and largely unexpected
governmental changes and the resulting “tilting” of
the main political axis towards rapprochement with
Russia. Many of the recent moves made by Ivanish-
vili’s new government, including statements blaming
Saakashvili for starting the war with Russia,239 the de-
clared participation in the 2014 Olympic Games, re-
sumption of wine exports to Russia, and the release
of prisoners, while not openly anti-Western, show the
“gaps” in the volatile domestic political culture.
The signs of “thawing” of relations with Russia are
directed mostly at gaining popular support at home
by reviving the economic and cultural nostalgia of
older generations of Georgians with Russia. The new
government is making some steps to reestablish the
political, economic, and cultural relations with Rus-
sia,240 which is not well-received by a considerable

129
part of the Georgian population. Quite recently, Ivan-
ishvili promised to follow another geopolitical course:
towards integration with NATO, while blaming Geor-
gian society in a “low level of political culture.”241 This
move seems quite out of touch with the real geopo-
litical situation. Ever since Putin’s second presidential
term, anti-NATO rhetoric firmly entered the internal
political discourse in Russia. NATO retains the high-
est threat level for Russian statehood, as viewed both
by its military and politicians. Russia would, thus,
do everything in its power not to border NATO with
Georgia being its member.
The deployment of NATO radar installations in
Eastern Europe is one of the highest irritants for Russia.
According to Commander of the Moscow Antimissile
Defense Major General Vladimir Lyaporov, “the only
guarantee for . . . [Russia] is the complete halt by the
U.S. of deploying its missile defense systems in Eu-
rope.”242 One of the most outspoken critics of NATO,
Dmitri Rogozin, former Russian representative to the
Alliance, echoed the military’s view in saying:

We will, of course, build the system that would over-

come and suppress any anti-missile defense. If anyone
thinks that we can be surrounded by a missile fence,
let them recall: under Peter [the Great] we ‘cut through
the window’ to Europe, and now we will crush the
whole wall, if someone tries to isolate us or tries to
bring us to our knees.243

From this perspective, not only the two currently

proposed directions (Russia versus NATO) cannot be
pursued simultaneously, but they are quite oxymo-
ronic by definition.
In addition, some of the most important pre-
election promises of the Georgian Dream—economic

130
revival and improvement of the social climate in the
country—have not yet been put into life. According
to the recent NDI public opinion poll, most of the
respondents do not see significant changes in the
situation in Georgia after Ivanishvili’s election. The
promised increase of the output side of governance,
including low prices for gasoline, decreased unem-
ployment (from the registered towering 15 percent in
2012),244 consumer products, and communal services,
has been thwarted, which explains the growing disil-
lusionment of Georgian society with the performance
of their current government. With the hectic and non-
systemic movements in domestic politics, the number
of those becoming dissuaded with current govern-
ment is slowly growing. All these make the October
2013 presidential elections another test for the domes-
tic political stability via the democratic inputs. The in-
congruence between the high inputs and low outputs
may endanger an already volatile domestic political
environment, especially in light of the elections.
The reality is: Saakashvili’s two presidential terms
are over; his nominee, Vano Merabishvili, ex-Prime
Minister and ex-Minister of Interior, is detained by
the new government with charges of corruption and
abuse of power. This, however, does not mean that
Saakashvili’s party is beheaded. David Bakradze, a
young pro-Western politician and the former Chair
of Parliament, has been nominated as a presidential
candidate from the United National Movement. The
candidate of the Georgian Dream, Giorgi Margvelash-
vili, is relatively well known to the Georgian political
establishments as a person involved in the democratic
processes while working at the NDI and the Georgian
Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA’96), the first Ameri-
can-type higher educational institution in Georgia.245

131
Had the presidential elections been held immediately
after the successful parliamentary début of the Geor-
gian Dream, their results might have depended largely
on public euphoria. Now the situation has somewhat
changed: the inability of the new government to bring
quick and visible economic outputs for their popula-
tion has shaken the political scale towards increased
political uncertainty and, as a result, the high propen-
sity for the intensification of negative inputs in differ-
ent forms of popular protests.
External threats to political stability, on the other
hand, ceased after the war with Russia in 2008. With
the acknowledgement of the independence of Abkha-
zia and South Ossetia by Russia, their de facto territo-
rial loss for Georgia turned into the de jure separation
of these territories. This also means a paradoxically
stabilizing development from the point of view of the
absence of the external threat. For more than 2 de-
cades, Georgia has been living under constant fear of a
Russian invasion, which was reaffirmed by numerous
sporadic bombings of its northern districts bordering
Chechnya. This factor significantly affected internal
political processes and economic development. Now
that the frozen conflicts in the secessionist regions have
been somewhat resolved, the threat of resumption of
hostilities is quite low. This stance is corroborated by a
recent survey by NDI, in which only 26 percent of re-
spondents consider Russia a threat, while another 42
percent believe that this threat is exaggerated, and 23
percent more thinks that Russia is no longer a threat
to Georgia.246

132
Belarus.

The outputs-inputs imbalance of democratic gov-

ernance is important in analyzing the longevity of the
current governance regime in Belarus. By covering
mostly the outputs satisfying limited and elementary
demands of its population, Lukashenka’s authoritar-
ian social contract managed to survive throughout the
first decades of post-Soviet existence. These outputs
in the form of relatively high economic benefits, very
low unemployment (0.6 percent of the total popula-
tion),247 decent education, healthcare, communal ser-
vices, etc., are on an acceptable level for the public,
which increases the legitimacy of the authoritarian
regime among the majority of institutional actors.
One such visible output mentioned by the Global Peace
Index 2013 of the Institute of Economics and Peace is
the low level of criminality, which satisfies the basic
safety/security strata of the Maslow pyramid. The in-
puts side of the state-citizenry interaction is restricted
to sporadic expressions of popular unrest, which are
quickly put down by the punitive state apparatus. The
regime is highly effective in precluding any form and
content of the public participation not agreed upon
with Lukashenka’s close circles.
Widely acceptable outputs and almost absolute ab-
sence of political inputs on the part of the institutional
actors created a special type of social contract in Be-
larus based on the policy of intimidation and popular
content. This, in turn, breeds apathy and indifference
to the political situation inside the country. In Silitski’s
words, Belarus “secures civil peace and political sta-
bility, which justifies limitations on some civil free-
doms.”248 The social contract in Belarus is thus based

133
on fear and en masse intimidations, coupled with
high autocratic resilience, which jointly represent the
very mechanisms preventing the democratic norms
from full emergence, let alone their cascading and
socialization. The regime mimicry is embryonic in
Belarus, which is evident in the forms and names of
governance tools (president, parliament, the system of
courts, constitution, etc.) that do not fully fulfill their
designated purpose.
From the point of view of internal and external po-
litical stability, Belarus is also the most politically con-
solidated and homogenous if compared with Georgia
and Ukraine. It is not divided either by ethnic, ideo-
logical, or geographic lines: the country is unvaried
concerning its ethnic composition and rock solid with
its geopolitical preferences. Years of balancing be-
tween Europe and Russia created a very pragmatic
foreign policy directed to serve the sole task of pro-
longation of the durability of Lukashenka’s regime.
Unlike Ukraine, there is no internal right between the
geographic political orientation of the country. Unlike
Georgia, there are not threats to the territorial integ-
rity of Belarus internally or from outside. This fact
also contributes to the political stability of Belarus by
limiting the external threats to Lukashenka’s regime.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS
FOR THE UNITED STATES

Ultimately, it is the political cultures of Ukraine,

Georgia, and Belarus that define the durability of their
political regimes and variations in their democratic in-
stitutionalization. The U.S. policy towards these coun-
tries should be based on the acknowledgment of the
phenomenon of diverse political cultures as having

134
decisive influence over the political processes in these
countries. Out of the three countries, Georgia is the
closest ally of the United States, politically and mili-
tarily speaking. It has been a recipient of significant
economic and military aid from the United States, in-
cluding the training and equipment of its elite military
units. Ukraine, too, has been cooperating militarily
with the United States, but mostly via the internation-
al channels of NATO. Together, Georgia and Ukraine
have been active participants of joint international
military peacekeeping efforts, such as the U.S.-led co-
alitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Belarus, on the other
hand, follows the general “outlier” trajectory by being
the least cooperating state with the U.S. military struc-
tures. Its involvement with the “former adversaries” is
limited to its participation in the NATO PfP exercise.

Ukraine.

The situation in Ukraine deserves close attention

from the United States. Ukraine as a stable country,
both politically and economically, is in direct U.S. in-
terests, with its considerable stakes in general Euro-
pean political stability and global peace. Ukraine is an
important hub on the way between the East and West
in terms of cultural, economic, and political interac-
tions. According to Mark Kramer, having Ukraine as a
democracy would be:

a firm barrier against any attempt to restore the So-

viet Union. . . . On the other hand, the United States
has sought to diminish and forestall tensions between
Ukraine and Russia and to ensure that the two large,
neighboring states live peacefully together.249

135
Traditionally, the United States has been keenly in-
terested in keeping the stability in Ukraine from sev-
eral perspectives: ensuring the regional nuclear non-
proliferation, safeguarding human rights and civil
society development, and supporting its economic
independence.
Early U.S. concerns in Ukraine were framed
by post–Cold War nuclear nonproliferation initia-
tives. Ukraine was one of the few Soviet republics
left with a nuclear arsenal after its dissolution. As
Dubovyk states:

If there was one absolute priority for the United States

during the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was to stabi-
lize the situation of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear
weapons.250

Soon after Ukraine’s independence, the U.S. ad-

ministration focused on improving cooperation
in such fields as nuclear nonproliferation and safe
nuclear energy. So far, the United States contributed
the cumulative sum of more than U.S.$360 million
to decontamination of the Chornobyl nuclear di-
saster.251 Within the framework of the 1993 “Nunn-
Lugar” Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, the
United States:

provide[s] equipment, services and technical advice to

assist Ukraine in preventing proliferation and in se-
curing and dismantling weapons of mass destruction,
related materials, and production facilities inherited
from the former Soviet Union.252

More recently, while congratulating Yanukovych

with his presidency, President Barack Obama reiter-
ated the 2008 United States-Ukraine Charter on Strate-

136
gic Partnership, while noting the main themes of U.S.
policy toward Ukraine:

[e]xpanding democracy and prosperity, protecting se-

curity and territorial integrity, strengthening the rule
of law, promoting non-proliferation, and supporting
reform in Ukraine’s economic and energy sectors.253

The United States is particularly vigilant and

“deeply disappointed” with the human rights situa-
tion in Ukraine, in particularly, the “politically moti-
vated prosecution” of the prominent opposition fig-
ures, such as Tymoshenko.254 U.S. Congress H. Res.
730 (2012) calls for tougher reaction on the part of the
U.S. Government, including denial to issue visas to
Ukrainian officials:

involved in serious human rights abuses, anti-dem-

ocratic actions, or corruption that undermines or in-
jures democratic institutions in Ukraine, including of-
ficials responsible for and participating in the selective
prosecution and persecution of political opponents.255

The United States is also concerned with the gen-

eral condition of civil society, including its inputs in
the democratic process, among others, via their elec-
tion participation. In the Department of State state-
ment after the October 2012 elections, the U.S. Gov-
ernment called the election a “step backward” from
the previous progress and regretfully noted “the use
of government resources to favor ruling party candi-
dates, interference with media access, and harassment
of opposition candidates.”256
Economic well-being of Ukraine, including its en-
ergy independence from Russia, is also on the U.S.
agenda. Ukraine is a member of the Partnership and

137
Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with the EU and the
Ukraine-EU Action Plan within the European Neigh-
borhood policy. It is the major area connecting Russian
gas with European markets, and its internal and exter-
nal political stability depends largely on the energy
security of Europe. According to Gunther Oettinger,
the EU Commissioner for Energy, Ukraine has the po-
tential to become “the Eastern European gas hub” with
its “significant gas resources, both conventional and
unconventional, together with the vast networks of
gas pipelines already in place and important gas stor-
age capacities.”257 Economically, too, a strong Ukraine
is a guarantee for the retention of democratic values.
The current trade blackmail by Russia as a response to
the mere fact that “the most pro-Russian of all possible
Ukrainian leaderships no longer wants to be friends
with Moscow by the Russian rules and wants to sneak
away to Europe”258 shows the possible worsening of
the domestic economic climate. This may add up to
the economic hardships of the population and, as a
result, bring it closer to the brink of political protests.
Any dependence of Ukraine on Russia concerning the
gas supplies as well as economic development will
negatively affect the domestic economic settings in
Europe and, ultimately, its energy security.
The U.S. Government should continue its efforts
to support civil society, economic development, and
the ongoing rule of law initiatives, such as the democ-
ratization grants, various sector-specific economic as-
sistance programs, and the media development fund
grants. All these programs will further contribute to
the strengthening of the input sides of democratic in-
stitutionalization. Existence of relative internal and
external political stability allows for long-term pro-
grams currently being supported. The United States

138
should also closely work with the Ukrainian govern-
ment in the matter of deepening the integration of the
country in the international structures, such as the EU
and NATO.
The Ukrainian-U.S. military relations, according to
Leonid Polyakov, are directed at:

help[ing] in building a stable, prosperous democracy

that can become a viable economic and security part-
ner to the West . . . within the bilateral military-to-
military contacts programs, within NATO partnership
events, and through the practical accomplishment of
peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.259

Ukraine is involved in military cooperation with the

American, in particular, and Western, in general, mili-
tary structures primarily through the channels of in-
ternational organizations (mostly NATO).
Ukraine is an active participant in international
military exercises and international peacekeeping ef-
forts. Ukrainian contribution to the “Coalition of the
Willing” in Iraq included the cumulative 7,000 sol-
diers, with the peak deployment of 1,630.260 Its mem-
bership in the ISAF in Afghanistan is limited to 22
soldiers. Overall, according to the Ministry of Defense
of Ukraine, the country is involved in 11 peacekeeping
missions and other international operations with the
current total of 476 servicemen.261 Ukraine also is quite
active in joint military exercises with regional and in-
ternational partners, such as “Peace Shield,” “Rapid
Trident,” “Sea Breeze” (with NATO and Partners for
Peace countries), “Cossack Steppe” (Ukraine-United
Kingdom [UK]-Poland), “Maple Arch” (Ukraine-Can-
ada-Poland-Lithuania), “Blackseafor,” “Light Ava-
lon” (Ukraine-Hungary-Romania-Slovak), “Rescuer/
Medcuer,” and “Jackal Stone 2011,”262 to name a few.

139
 Contributing involvement of Ukraine in interna-
tional peacekeeping efforts is based on its coopera-
tion framework with NATO, regulated by the NATO-
Ukraine Special Partnership Charter (1997), the engine
of which is the NATO-Ukraine Commission. The Com-
mission is tasked with fostering military cooperation
and consultations between the Alliance countries and
Ukraine within international military peacekeeping
engagement. Its main purpose is to promote technical
cooperation with Ukraine in the field of armaments;
foster civil emergency planning; and encourage public
information sharing and scientific cooperation. Subse-
quently, the Commission established sector-specific
instruments as the Joint Working Group on Defense
Reform (JWGDR) responsible for military-to-military
cooperation (1998), NATO-Ukraine Working Group
on Civil and Democratic Control of the Intelligence
Sector and Partnership Network for Civil Society
Expertise Development (2006).
Ukraine was the first among the former Soviet
republics to join the PfP endeavor in 1994. In the af-
termath of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine started
expressing increasing desire for close integration with
the Alliance, which manifested in the Intensified Dia-
logue with NATO (2005) and the general agreement of
the Alliance members expressed at the NATO Bucha-
rest Summit (2008) to accept Ukraine as its member in
the future. The direction towards NATO membership
was abandoned with the change of the government
in 2010: according to Steven Woehrel, “Yanukovych
has made clear that his country is not seeking NATO
membership, but is continuing to cooperate with
NATO, including the holding of joint military exer-
cises”263—two steps back and one step forward.

140
 The military side of the bilateral U.S. cooperation
with Ukraine, according to Polyakov, is based on the
following set of its core interests:

U.S. willingness to support the preservation of

Ukraine’s independence as a key to regional security
and Ukrainian willingness to cooperate with the Unit-
ed States in fighting terrorism and preserving interna-
tional peace.264

These interests are further formulated in a number

of bilateral documents defining their cooperation
frameworks, among which the most important were
concluded on international assistance programs
and projects in military sphere (1999); on exchange
of research and development information in the
sphere of military technical cooperation (2000); and
on transfer of military equipment and rendering of
services (2004).
The framework cooperation principles are pre-
sented by the U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Part-
nership. Section II focuses on bilateral military coop-
eration aimed, first and foremost, at bringing Ukraine
closer to NATO through enacting a:

structured plan to increase interoperability and coor-

dination of capabilities between NATO and Ukraine,
including via enhanced training and equipment for
Ukrainian armed forces.265

The U.S. European Command (EUCOM), through

the Office of Defense Cooperation, provides “military
equipment and training to support the modernization
of Ukraine’s military.”266 These activities include, but
are not limited to, Joint Contact Team Program-Ukraine
(JCTP)
(deployment of the U.S. troops to share their

141
experience with their Ukrainian colleagues); Interna-
tional Military Education and Training (IMET)
(train-
ing of the Ukrainian military and affiliated civilian
personnel in the U.S. to foster closer partnership with
NATO), and Foreign Military Sales and Financing
(economic assistance to defense reforms).
The prospects of the military cooperation between
the United States and Ukraine will be, without a doubt,
influenced by the third party, Russia. Seeing itself as
“one of the most influential and competitive centers of
the world” and having conceptually “negative opin-
ion on the NATO enlargement and approach of NATO
military infrastructure to the Russian borders,”267 Rus-
sia is vitally interested in diminishing military co-
operation of the former Soviet republics—especially
bordering it—with NATO, in general, and the United
States, in particular. Ukraine is the last outpost of Rus-
sia in the Western direction, the last “buffer” between
NATO and Russia, and is, therefore, treated by the
latter with particular attention. Recently, for example,
Russia accused Ukraine of supplying arms to Georgia
prior to war in 2008.268 The deal, which was viewed
by the Russian political and military establishment as
having been fostered by the United States and which,
therefore, was received with extreme discontent. Al-
though some renowned experts on Soviet Union, in-
cluding Brzezinski, consider that “[t]oday’s Russia is
in no position to assert a violent restoration of its old
empire. It is too weak, too backward and too poor,”269
it would still try to do its best to influence foreign pol-
icy courses of those former Soviet republics who are
weaker, poorer, and more backward that itself.
If Russia manages successfully to coerce Ukraine
to move away from its association with the EU and
closer to its Customs Union, this would mark a turn-

142
ing point in the future political orientation of Ukraine,
as the largest Eastern European country. This would
inevitably affect its military cooperation with the Al-
liance and its member-states, including the United
States. Therefore, the United States should intensify
its military cooperation and partnership with Ukraine
to keep it true to its choice of democratization and from
reverting the course towards the military reforms and
overall military progress.

Georgia.

The future of the political stability in Georgia de-

pends on the sustainability of the initial institutional
transformations: the will of the domestic polity and
the durability of the political culture to internal and
external shocks. Currently, in Jack Goldstone’s terms,
in Georgia the:

popularly elected government . . . is seen to be pursu-

ing just policies [that] can survive for some years even
if it has difficulty delivering on its programs, while it
struggles to strengthen its capacities to govern.270

The regime mimicry has not yet gone through the

final stage of the normative process and is now threat-
ened by the fluid political identity that may adversely
affect the previously made democratic progress. Re-
versal of the political courses in Georgia is fraught
with irreversible consequences.
The United States is vitally interested in keeping
Georgia politically stable. During Saakashvili’s gover-
nance, to a certain degree, the United States acted as
a role model for Georgia and the major financial and
moral supporter for its institutional reforms. It has

143
been a consistent lobby of the Georgian political course
towards democratization for the past 2 decades. It has
been supporting its democratization efforts by pro-
viding economic, educational, political, and cultural
assistance. Some programs, such as the USAID-fund-
ed “Georgia Community Mobilization Initiative” in
2000-05, were multi-million dollar efforts to transform
Georgian society by increasing its inputs in its daily
lives and keeping its elected leaders accountable for
their actions. Largely to its credit, Georgia was able to
keep the beacon of democracy turned on through its
October 2012 parliamentary elections.
Continuous U.S. support via active dialogue with
all domestic political forces is required to sustain the
democratic institutionalization process in Georgia.
The United States should further encourage democ-
ratization efforts of Georgia by holding constant dia-
logue with all the participants of the political process
to avoid possible short- and long-term destabilization.
The United States should continue fostering the re-
form processes, primarily in the field of institutional
and economic development and human rights pro-
tection. The current programs, such as the ongoing
democratization grants and other sector-specific pro-
grams (Democracy Commission grants, democracy
outreach, media partnership, economic developmen-
tal aid via USAID; the activities of the Millennium
Challenge Corporation directed to the poverty reduc-
tion and economic growth; education exchange pro-
grams; mass media support programs, etc.) should be
reinforced. Tackling different areas of the democratic
development process will strengthen regime mimicry
and move it towards norm internalization. In addi-
tion, this would contribute significantly to the in-
creased participation of the institutional actors in the

144
“input” part of the democratization design. The U.S.
involvement will also positively influence internal po-
litical stability of Georgia by extending consultations
and advice on democracy and economic development.
Otherwise, the norm internalization will be stalled,
and the mimicry process will revert to partial with
unpredictable consequences. Under the worst-case
scenario, the resulting situation may lead to a reversal
of democratic gains.
Another priority direction for the U.S. interests
in Georgia is its continuous integration within the
Western political structures, including NATO. The
democratization part of the NATO basket will ensure
the steady implementation of reforms and preserva-
tion of the overall political orientation of the country.
The April 2008 Bucharest Summit for the first time
named Georgia (together with Ukraine) as an aspirant
country and noted that it “will become a member of
NATO,” although it did not specify when exactly this
would happen. The activities of the NATO-Georgia
Commission (NGC) include political consultations
and cooperation on assisting Georgia in its Euro-At-
lantic integration processes. Georgia is a participant
in the NATO Planning and Review Process (PARP) to
further assist its democratic transition and has the An-
nual National Program (ANP) to provide frameworks
for Georgia-NATO cooperation.
The U.S. actions in the matter of further integra-
tion of Georgia in NATO should continue with the
cautious understanding of the sensitive relations of
Georgia with Russia. The possible development closer
to Russia would endanger this carefully created and
nurtured cooperation with the North Alliance. The re-
cent statement of Ivanishvili on his intent to obtain a
NATO MAP for Georgia in 2014,271 which many view

145
as another stepping-stone on the path to the NATO
membership, seems to reinforce the general foreign
policy course of the country towards further democ-
ratization. However, in light of the moves of Georgia
toward the other Russian direction, this statement
seems less credible. Advocates for NATO membership
for Georgia should not forget the outspokenly nega-
tive stance of Russian leadership on this issue. Russia
has been a consistent antagonist to NATO, in general,
and to its enlargement, in particular. These feelings
exacerbated after Putin came to power in 2000. Prime
Minister Dmitri Medvedev recently stated that possi-
ble membership in NATO “will not bring anything to
Georgia as a sovereign and well-developing state but
will create a long-term and constant source of tension
between our countries.”272 Nevertheless, the United
States should continue to support the aspirations of
Georgia to join the progressive community of states
under the aegis of NATO.
Georgia has been an active participant of the inter-
national military peacekeeping efforts. The Georgian
contingent in the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq in-
cluded the cumulative 10,000 soldiers with the peak
deployment of 1,850.273 With its 1,561 troops, Georgia
is the largest per capita contributor to the ISAF in
Afghanistan and has suffered the highest casualties
among the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC)
nations.274 In addition, Georgia is deeply integrated
into the international military organizations: it is par-
ticipating in joint PfP endeavor within the frameworks
of NATO and is involved in other multilateral military
exercises in the region.
All this became possible as a result of the military
cooperation with the United States, which started
over a decade ago with the inception of the “Georgia

146
Train and Equip Program” (GTEP) in 2002-04. With
the total cost of U.S.$64 million and the participation
of 150 U.S. military experts,275 the GTEP was placed
to address the growing need of Georgia in securing
its borders from the repeated Russian provocations,
such as the numerous bombings of the Pankisi Gorge,
a mountainous part of Georgia bordering Chechnya.
The task of the GTEP was to train the Georgian sol-
diers in such areas as border security, anti-terrorism,
and crisis response, as well as to foster the reform in
the Georgian military sector. In addition to the train-
ing program, GTEP provided the country’s military
units with the most up-to-date military equipment, in-
cluding “uniform items, small arms and ammunition,
communications gear, training gear, medical gear,
fuel, and construction materiel.”276 Altogether, 2,000
Georgian soldiers from four light infantry battalions
and a mechanized company team were trained within
the frameworks of the GTEP mission.
After the GTEP, another significant military assis-
tance program is the Georgian Sustainment and Stabil-
ity Operations Program (GSSOP) with an additional
$159 million from 2005–08 to train three brigades of
2,000 soldiers and to provide the necessary military
equipment, such as anti-improvised explosive devices
(IEDs) and radios.277 Also, the U.S. military assisted in
reorganization and rehabilitation of the naval capa-
bilities of the Georgian defense. The Georgia Border
Security and Law Enforcement (GBLSE) and Export
Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) programs
(with U.S.$850,000 combined) provided assistance in
repairing the Georgian fleet and maritime radar sta-
tions.278 Finally, Georgia is included in the Internation-
al Military Education and Training (IMET) Program,
which provides training and education to the military

147
students. Overall, from 2006-11, U.S. $846,000 was
spent on increasing the skills and knowledge of the
Georgian military.279
Not surprisingly, such military cooperation be-
tween the United States and Georgia caused a harsh
negative reaction in the Russian political establish-
ment.280 Tony Karon described the Russian reaction
on the GTEP as “hopping mad.”281 The Russian fears
were that Georgia would use the U.S.-trained military
in operations in its breakaway regions of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia. Also, as a part of the common anti-
NATO paranoia in the Russian defense and policy
circles, the GTEP program was considered as another
step to a closer alignment of Georgia with the NATO.
The Russian factor has to be taken very seriously into
account in case of any future military assistance pro-
grams in Georgia. As the Russian government tradi-
tionally is highly suspicious of any American involve-
ment in the region, which it considers its “own lot”
and is not going to leave,282 it is highly imperative that:

the United States must move forward in a highly

transparent manner, in coordination with our Europe-
an and NATO allies, in order to dispel misinformation
and to lessen any risk of miscalculation.”283

With this negative Russian stance to the deepening

partnership with the United States, in particular, and
NATO, in general, the U.S. military should intensify
its cooperation with Georgia. To put it bluntly, Geor-
gia has run out of the territories that Russia can lay
its claims on. There are no other parts of Georgia, ex-
cept for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have been
tightly integrated with Russia legally (through com-
mon Russian citizenship) and morally (through their

148
external homelands), which can entice future Russian
military involvements. This fact, together with the
new seemingly more favorable Georgian government
creates the conditions conducive to political stability
in the mid- and possibly long-term. At the same time,
the United States should reiterate its support to the
territorial integrity in Georgia by mediating the non-
aggression pact between Georgia and Russia on the
international arena and during bilateral negotiations
with both parties concerned.
The U.S. military should continue cooperation with
Georgia within the frameworks of the U.S.-Georgia
Charter on Strategic Partnership, which stresses the
U.S. support to “the efforts of Georgia to provide for
its legitimate security and defense needs, including
development of appropriate and NATO-interoperable
military forces.”284 Whereas the pre-2008 war NATO
was hesitant to conduct real talks on the Georgian ac-
cession, the post-war NATO, with the U.S. impetus,
should reinstate the return to the integration pro-
cesses for Georgia. While NATO will remain as an
ongoing irritant for the general Russian polity, it is
highly unlikely that Russia will find another interven-
tion pretext in Georgia in case of the further NATO
enlargement efforts. This will also give a boost to
the external democratic institutionalization efforts in
Georgia and keep it true to the democratization re-
forms. At the same time, the United States and NATO
should make it very clear to the Georgian leadership
that they would not be willing to support the military
actions of Georgia directed towards the return of the
lost land: this would mean direct confrontation with
Russia should be avoided.

149
Belarus.

Belarus has been also within the focus of the in-

ternational community, but not because of its threat
to regional stability or due to the high level of inter-
nal violence. Belarus is the most politically stable,
internally and externally speaking, and economically
developed (per capita) out of the three countries in
the present analysis. Internally, Belarus represents
Goldstone’s case of the duality between effectiveness
and legitimacy:

States that have high levels of either effectiveness or le-

gitimacy, however, can survive for a number of years.
A harsh dictatorship can survive for some years on ef-
fectiveness alone, or even for decades if it maintains
high effectiveness and some degree of legitimacy.285

Belarus remains a political anomaly and a régime

démodé in the heart of Europe. It is the only country in
the geographic borders of Europe that is not a mem-
ber of the Council of Europe and, as a non-EU coun-
try, does not have the Partnership and Cooperation
Agreement with the EU.
The current situation with human rights and civil
society liberalization in Belarus is alarming. Lukash-
enka’s regime is characterized by high autocratic re-
silience, which makes any politically deviant behavior
punishable. Grzegorz Gromadzki et al. present quite
gloomy prospects:

In the future, we can expect to witness new repressions

by Europe’s last dictator and further deterioration of
the situation. . . . Lukashenka will do everything in his
power to oppress the political opposition, NGOs and
the media in order to ensure the extension of his rule.

150
 . . . [C]o-operation with Lukashenka’s regime is and
will be, for the foreseeable future, impossible.286

Under the present circumstances, the U.S. Govern-

ment should continue working with Belarusian civil
society both domestically and abroad287 to increase its
inputs in Belarusian political life.
The United States has had a very cautious but con-
sistent policy with regards to Belarus. It has been a
constant critic of the human rights violations and the
impeding of the civil society development in Belarus.
In 2004, the U.S. Congress adopted so-called “Belarus
Democracy Act” committing:

[t]o assist the people of the Republic of Belarus in re-

gaining their freedom and to enable them to join the
European community of democracies; to encourage
free and fair presidential, parliamentary, and local
elections in Belarus, conducted in a manner consistent
with internationally accepted standards and under the
supervision of internationally recognized observers;
To assist in restoring and strengthening institutions of
democratic governance in Belarus.288

The biggest achievement of the Act, according to

Stewart Parker, “was that the U.S. anti-Lukashenka
rhetoric was given the ‘legal base’ that legitimized
turning words into action.”289 Notwithstanding the
baseline for support to the Belarusian civil society,
U.S. assistance has been constantly decreasing, due to
the strong and repressive grip on the domestic politi-
cal life of the current regime.
Belarus is also the only country among the three
discussed here that has experienced foreign politi-
cal and economic punitive actions against it. In ad-
dition to supporting civil society development, the

151
U.S. Government, together with the EU, has been on
and off imposing sanctions on Belarus demanding
for the improvement of the domestic political situa-
tion, including the release of political prisoners and
lifting the repressions against Belarusian civil soci-
ety. The sanctions were applied in 2008 with a short
relief in 2009–10 and then reinstated in 2011 as a re-
sponse to the fraudulent elections. These sanctions
embraced economic and political pressure on Be-
larusian leadership and several state-owned compa-
nies, including visa restrictions for Lukashenka and
his close entourage.290 The 2004 Act was reinforced
by the 2012 Belarus Democracy and Human Rights
Act, which envisaged further political containment of
Lukashenka’s regime.
With their comprehensive nature, the effectiveness
of the sanctions imposed on Belarus is dubious. On
the one hand, they show the U.S. attitude towards the
regime. As the country vitally interested in promotion
of democratic governance as the governing principle
in the world, the United States cannot stay dormant
to the systematic human rights violations and oppres-
sions of the Belarusian citizens. On the other, these
sanctions have little, if no, real influence on the do-
mestic political or climate in Belarus, being back-up
in both these spheres by its patron, Russia. The move-
ment towards China is rather an attempt to gain short-
term economic benefits than a real long-term project.
Toughening of the sanctions would not bring the
desired effect here: Belarus is highly Russia-oriented
in its exports. Besides, the Belarusian companies, if
needed, can trade with the rest of the world through
the third-party subsidiaries in Russia, thus, bypassing
trade restrictions.

152
 There is also another fear “about Russian efforts
to strengthen its sphere of influence in the region.”
By “isolating Belarus, the EU and United States are
playing into Moscow’s hands, without achieving real
gains on democratization.”291 In such a specific po-
litical climate, a strategy that can bring the desired
results should be somewhat similar to the “congage-
ment”292 policies—a mix of containment and engage-
ment—as proposed by Zalmay Khalilzad in relation
to Pakistan. The positive trait—if such a word can be
applied to the current regime in Belarus—of Lukash-
enka, in comparison with the former communist rule,
is absence of ideology-laden rivalry with the West,
in general, and the United States, in particular. The
congagement strategy applied toward the Belarusian
government can lead to the desired policy outcome
since not tinted by ideological burden Lukashenka’s
regime can become more pliable if offered more
carrots than sticks.
Out of the three countries, Belarus is the least ex-
posed to international military cooperation and part-
nership. As an economy, politics and culture, its main
partner in the military field is Russia. As a Union State
composed of Russia and Belarus, it has to protect its
joint borders, which, in case of the latter, are directly
facing the NATO. The Group of Belarus and Russian
Forces is located in two strategic radars: the “Volga”
radar in Hantsavichy operating on the basis of the
Russian-Belarusian Military Agreement of 1995 and
Baranovichi radar with 1,200 soldiers built in 2003 to
substitute for the old Soviet radar in Skrunda (Latvia).
Both radars are capable of detecting ballistic mis-
siles in space at a distance of several thousand miles,
identifying and evaluating those targets with their
coordinates, and providing control over the western

153
direction in azimuth range of 120 degrees.293 Interest-
ing enough, Russia is exempt from compensating the
Belarus government for using those radars.
Currently, there are talks of Russia building the
third military base—an air force regiment—by 2015
to protect the joint borders of the common state. This
move, however, is received with low enthusiasm in
the Belarusian opposition political establishment. Ac-
cording to Natalia Makushina:

The Kremlin has long been using Lukashenka’s de-

sire to retain power at any cost with the purpose of
promoting its projects in the former Soviet Union. The
result of tactics ‘after me, the deluge’ of the Belaru-
sian leader . . . has already led to serious problems in
relations with the West. Chronic dependence on Rus-
sian preferences . . . is dangerous because it deprives
Belarus of the opportunity to make its own political
decisions, including in the military sphere.294

Indeed, the closer Belarus is to Russia, the farther

away it moves from the bilateral and multilateral co-
operation in the military sphere with the West.
Partnership with the NATO structures is limited
to participation of Belarus in the PfP exercise starting
from 1995. For this endeavor, Belarus has reserved a
peacekeeping battalion, a military police platoon, 15
officers in the multinational headquarters, military
transport aircraft Il-76MD, seven doctors, a mobile
hospital, and a multifunctional nuclear, biological,
and chemical (NBC) platoon.295 Belarus is absent in
any other participation in multidimensional and mul-
tilateral peacekeeping operation led by the Western
countries. The minimalist approach is based on the
nature of the political climate in the country where the
Euro-Atlantic structures is still viewed largely within

154
the confrontational context. There is no current co-
operation between the United States and Belarusian
military institutions. The point to keep in mind is that
any future interaction will be contingent upon Lu-
kashenka’s will. It will serve his personal preference
and will be presented domestically with the sole pur-
pose of increasing his own political stakes.
The Eastern direction of Belarusian military coop-
eration, on the other hand, has recently been rigor-
ously explored. In particular, Belarus is involved in
close military partnership with China in the sphere of
joint production of high-precision weapons; electronic
warfare; air defense systems, and multiwheeled chas-
sis and tractors for special installation. An example of
the partnership is the Belarusian-Chinese joint ven-
ture “Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant (MWTP)” with the
Belarusian share of 30 percent and the Chinese “Aero-
space Corporation “Sanjiang” holding the remain-
ing 70 percent.296 According to some experts, China,
under the NATO military embargo imposed after the
Tiananmen events of 1989, is keen to obtain the lat-
est military technologies, and Belarus turned to be a
ready supplier.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of the research expand on the null hy-

pothesis of the negative influence of democracy over
the political stability and economic development of
Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus. They also largely sub-
stantiate the thesis on the role autocratic resilience,
economic development, and third-party interest play
in mitigating or aggravating threats to internal and ex-
ternal stability. The results of the public opinion polls
and face-to-face interviews with the key stakeholders

155
show that in the countries with developing political
cultures, political stability and economic development
depend on the authoritarian resilience and economic
support from abroad (Belarus). In absence of these
conditions under increasing globalization, the coun-
tries had to mimic the existing democratic practices,
which under the influence of unsettled political cul-
tures reveal the breach between the outputs and in-
puts of the political process. They adopt democratic
practices without proper institutional socialization
(Georgia and Ukraine), which leads to high political
instability and low social and economic development.
In countries at the early stages of their indepen-
dence, the choice for democracy, paradoxically,
brought more political instability than for authoritar-
ian governance. The character of political interactions
in any country is determined by the procedure of
transfer of power (which is a form of public inputs in
the governance process). The wider population circles
are involved in the governance processes, the more
dynamic the power transience becomes. In democra-
cies, it is achieved by means of established effective
norms, rules, and standards, which jointly allow for
peaceful domestic political processes. To keep political
stability in these societies, democracies require highly
developed political cultures, which would permit the
expressions of free will within the democratically ac-
cepted frameworks of policymaking. At the same
time, democracy is one of the least punitive regimes—
generally speaking and with reference to the core of
democratic governance as extended to the large circles
of citizens. Popular discontent with policies is accom-
modated through mechanisms of political participa-
tion, rule of law, and democratic governance rather
than direct suppression of political deviance.

156
 In stark contrast to it is the autocratic rule, which
stifles most of the signs of deviation with its punitive
policies. The political process here is static, and with
the high costs of entry into the political lives of new
actors, even more so for those disassociated with the
ruling regimes. The process of power transfer hap-
pens either within the close circles of supporters of
the regime or only after the removal of the autocrat
from governance. As a result, all the autocracies need
to keep their domestic stability is the constant iron fist
of effective punishment for political deviation and the
good health of an autocrat. Appearance of any dicta-
tor, like Lukashenka, inevitably leads to the test of po-
litical durability of the regime.
From the point of view of power transience and
the domestic political process, Georgia is the most
democratic and vibrant, followed by Ukraine. Po-
litical stability in Georgia depends on the ability of
the institutional actors to act within the democratic
frameworks. Power transience, by definition, is not a
negative process; it is a sign of a healthy domestic pol-
ity. It starts negatively affecting the political stability
if undertaken outside of the democratic frameworks
and disregards the rules of democratic institutional
design. Belarus, on its part, is the most politically
static but, nevertheless, is a very stable country. By
restricting public participation, the government keeps
the monopoly over political processes and force-
fully prevents the expressions of dissatisfaction with
its actions.
In more advanced democracies, democratic gover-
nance, on the contrary, contributes to the internal and
external political stability by operating democratic in-
stitutions effectively. Via open and free participation
of all layers of the society in the political processes,

157
democracies limit the chances for unexpected and,
mostly, forceful governmental changes and provide
for the political longevity of democratic institutions.
Construction of a democratic political system is a nec-
essary condition for the development of national insti-
tutions outside the political culture. When they are ab-
sent or weak, the system is stable, but there is no basis
for democracy. When they are present, they become
destabilizing factors, but they ensure the preservation
of a competitive political system.
In trying to accelerate the process of building
democratic institutions, a newly created country has
the only option available for it: to accept, or “mimic,”
the existing structures and agencies of the advanced
democracies and to try to adapt them to their own
political environs. In Georgia, due to its open and
widely tolerant political culture, the regime mimicry
is almost full; what is lacking is the final stage of the
democratic institutionalization: norm internalization.
The undetermined and ambiguous political culture in
Ukraine makes mimicry partial—well developed in
some spheres, while lacking in others. The dormant
and suppressed political culture of Belarus had halted
the mimicry in the embryonic stage, where there are
some institutions that resemble those in advanced de-
mocracies, but they utterly lack socialization among
the institutional actors.
In order to be successful and contribute to long-
lasting political stability, democracy should be “lived
through”; it should be the paramount of the political
evolutionary process. If offered from outside, the suc-
cess of the democratization process would depend
on the rigidity of political culture, internally, and the
interest of third parties, externally. The United States
has been assisting Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus on

158
their different paths to democratic governance. This
support, however diverse and multifaceted, is direct-
ed towards keeping these countries politically stable,
economically developed and socially self-sustainable.
While Georgia and, to a certain degree, Ukraine are
firmly committed to democratic development, Belarus
remains a clear outlier with its autocratic leadership.
However, there is hope that the society will eventually
wake up from the 2 decades of lethargy and take back
the powers that belong to them. Ultimately, it is up to
the people themselves to decide which governance re-
gime “fits” them better. All they have to do is to prove
to the generations to come that their initial decisions
to follow the democratic designs were not accidental,
but the carefully planned and experienced results of
historical choices they made.

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81. Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine. The Land

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90. Ibid., pp. 10–20.

91. Andrew Wilson, Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship,

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96. Wilson, Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship, p. 124.

97. J. W. R. Parsons, “National Integration in Soviet Georgia,”

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98. Anna Reid, Borderland. A Journey Through The History of

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99. Chaim Kaufman, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to

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100. According to Pavel Stephanovski, Stalin “hated the Geor-

gian intelligentsia as the class enemy” and ordered Beria to lead
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103. S. Kulchytsky, “Террор Голодомор Как Инструмент

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104. Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust,

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105. Lundell, “Autocratic Stability and Democratization.”

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107. Aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and

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108. Ibid., pp. 43–56.

109. Ibid., p. 75.

110. “Початок Економічних Реформ” (“Beginning of Eco-

nomic Reforms”), History of Ukraine, available from histua.com/
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111. Wilson, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, pp. 53–54.

112. Lucan A. Way, “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Kuchma’s

Failed Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 2,
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113. Aslund and McFaul, p. 39.

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115. Alexander Suzdalcev, quoted in Rustem Falyakhov, Jana

Milyukova, and Constantine Shiyan, “Украине Не Дают До-
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116. “U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants,” Washington, DC:

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117. Steven Woehrel, “Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Pol-

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118. “European Union provides €30 million for institution-

al reforms in Ukraine,” European Commission Press Release,
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119. Per Gahrton, Georgia: Pawn in the New Great Game, New
York: Pluto Press, 2010, p. 81.

120. Eduard Shevardandze’s speech at the 25th Congress of

the Georgian Communist Party, 1983, quoted in Bohdan Nahaylo
and Victor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities
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121. “Georgia-NATO: Friends Forever,” Newsagency

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122. Jonathan Wheatley, Georgia from National Awakening to

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123. Rob Parsons, “Unrest Rises in Georgia,” Sunday Herald,

November 14, 2003.

169
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125. Linkoln A. Mitchell, Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign

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126. Jim Nichol, Georgia [Republic]: Recent Developments and

U.S. Interests, Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service,
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127. R. Nalbandov, “Battle of Two Logics: Appropriateness

and Consequentiality in Russian Interventions in Georgia,” Cau-
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128. Several times, Lukashenka made the statement, “Belarus

is the same Russian but with a quality mark,” quoted in Roy Med-
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(Alexander Lukashenka: Contours of the Belarusian Model), Moscow,
Russia: BBPG: ЗАО “ББПГ,” 2010.

129. Andrew Savchenko, Belarus—A Perpetual Borderland,

Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Pub, 2009, p. 179.

130. Alexander Feduta, Lukashenka: Politicheskay Biografi-

ya, (Lukashenka: Political Bio), Moscow, Russia: Referendum,
2005, p. 205.

131. Steven Levistki and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authori-

tarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War, Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 204.

132. Juri Cavusau, “Belarus’ Civic Sector,” Pejda, ed., Hopes,

Illusions, Perspectives: Belarusian Society, Warsaw, Poland-Minsk,
Belarus: East European Democratic Centre, 2007, p. 9.

133. A. Gura, “Нам Есть Что Защищать” (“We Have Things

To Protect”), Belarusskaya Dumka, Vol. 5, pp. 31–42, available from
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170
 134. Brian Bennett. The Last Dictatorship in Europe: Belarus Un-
der Lukashenko, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 20.

135. Petr Kravchenko, quoted in Feduta, p. 65.

136. Foreign Operations Appropriated Assistance: Belarus, Wash-

ington, DC: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of European and
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137. Steven Woehrel, Belarus: Background and U.S. Policy

Concerns, Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service,
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138. “European Commission Confirms Strong Support to the

Belarusian Population,” European Commission, IP/10/330, Brus-
sels, Belgium: European Union, March 2011.

139. Gordon Fairclough, “Belarus Opposition Gets Aid,” The

Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2011.

140. Askold Krushnelnycky, An Orange Revolution: A Personal

Journey Through Ukrainian History, London, UK: Secker & War-
burg, 2006, p. 78.

141. Sociological Poll, Kyiv, Ukraine: Razumkov Center, avail-

able from www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/poll.php?poll_id=211.

142. Ibid.

143. Human Rights Watch Report 2013, p. 500.

144. Freedom in the World 2013, Washington, DC: Freedom

House, 2013, p. 7.

145. Sociology Poll, “If next elections to the Verkhovna Rada of

Ukraine were held today, which party or electoral bloc would you
vote for?” Kyiv, Ukraine: Razumkov Center, April 12–16, 2013.

146. “Klichko: There Should Be a Single Candidate from the

Opposition,” GazetaRU, August 8, 2013, available from www.
gazeta.ru/politics/news/2013/08/20/n_3125301.shtml.

171
 147. Victoria Sumar, “’Stage ‘Start’ Or ‘There Are Only Three
of Them Left’, Etap “Start” abo “Ikh Lishilos Troe,” Ukrains-
kaya Pravda, July 4, 2013, available from www.pravda.com.ua/
articles/2013/07/4/6993401/.

148. The Razumkov Center, “The Middle Class as the Pre-

requisite for Ukraine’s Democratic Future,” National Security and
Defense, No. 7, 2008, p. 2.

149. Ibid., p. 4.

150. “Torgovo-Ekonomicheskoe Sotrudnichestvo Ukraini I

Rossiii” (“Trade-Economic Cooperation Between Ukraine and
Russia”), Embassy of Ukraine in the Russian Federation, 2012,
available from russia.mfa.gov.ua/ru/ukraine-ru/trade.

151. Boris Heifetz, “Rossiya-Ukraina. Neformalnaya Inte-

graciya” (“Russia-Ukraine. An Informal Integration”), Mirovaya
Ekonomika, Pryamie Investicii (World Economy, Direct Investments),
No. 2, 2013, p. 28.

152. “Rossiyane Kupyat Tri Nikolaevskix Sudostroitelnix Za-

voda I Zaru-Mashproekt” (“The Russians Will Buy Three Ship-
yards in Nikolayev in Addition to Zarya-Mashproekt”), NikVesi,
July 12, 2013, available from www.nikvesti.com/news/11829.

153. “Sociological Poll: Is Ukraine a European country?” Kyiv,

Ukraine: The Razumkov Center, available from www.razumkov.
org.ua/eng/poll.php?poll_id=673.

154. Sociological Poll, “Do you consider yourself to be Euro-

pean, to belong to the culture and the history of European com-
munity?” (regional distribution, age distribution) Kyiv, Ukraine:
The Razumkov Center, available from www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/
poll.php?poll_id=672.

155. “Azarov Prodoljit Balansirovat Mejdu ES I Tamojennim

Soyuzom” (“Azarov Continues to Balance Between the EU and
the Customs Union”), DeloUA, September 18, 2013.

172
 156. Rustem Falyakhov, Jana Milyukova, and Constantine
Shiyan, “Ukraine Ne Daut Dobro,” GazetaRU, August 14, 2013,
available from www.gazeta.ru/business/2013/08/14/5566285.shtml.

157. Mykola Sungurovskiy, “Ukraine-NATO: Expectations

and Results,” National Security And Defense, No. 9, 2006, p. 5.

158. Sociological Poll, “Do you support NATO’s Enlargement

to the East?” Kyiv, Ukraine: The Razumkov Center, available
from www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/poll.php?poll_id=751.

159. Sociological Poll, “How should Ukraine act towards

NATO?” Kyiv, Ukraine: The Razumkov Center, available from
www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/poll.php?poll_id=726.

160. Sociological Poll “How would you vote if the referendum

on Ukraine`s NATO accession was held the following Sunday?”
2002-2009, July 20-28, 2009, Kyiv, Ukraine: The Razumkov Center,
available from www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/poll.php?poll_id=46.

161. Pavel Haydutskii, “Украина и Таможенный Союз:

Проблемы Интеграции” (“Ukraine and the Customs Union:
Problems of Integration”), March 26, 2013, available from zn.ua/col-
umnists/ukraina-i-tamozhennyy-soyuz-problemy-integracii-119431_.
html.

162. Mykola Riabchuk, “What’s Left of Orange Ukraine?” Eu-

rozine, March 2013, available from www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-
03-04-riabchuk-en.html.

163. Human Rights Watch Report 2013, p. 441.

164. Freedom in the World 2013, p. 2.

165. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, “What Are Institutions,” Journal of

Economic Issues, Vol. XL, No. 1, 2006, p. 2.

166. Douglass C. North, “Institutions,” The Journal of Economic

Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1991, p. 97.

173
 167. Luis Navarro and Ian T. Woodward, Public Attitudes
in Georgia, “Results of a February 2012 Survey,” National Demo-
cratic Institute, Tbilisi, Georgia.

168. Lundell, “Autocratic Stability and Democratization.”

169. Navarro and Woodward.

170. Nations in Transit 2012, Georgia Report, Washington, DC:

Freedom House, 2012.

171. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “NATO and Georgia—On the

Right Path,” Keynote speech at the National Library of Georgia,
Tbilisi, Georgia, June 27, 2013.

172. “EU, Georgia Making ‘Good Progress’ in Association

Agreement, Visa Liberalization Talks,” CivilGe, September 3,
2012, available from www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=25175.

173. Balazs Jarabik and Alastair Rabagliati, “Assessing De-

mocracy Assistance: Belarus,” FRIDE, May 2010, p. 2

174. World Report 2013, Human Rights Watch Report 2013,

p. 408.

175. Wilson, Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship, p. 191.

176. “Belarusians Wear Jeans in Silent Protest,” ABC News,

January 13, 2006, available from abcnews.go.com/International/
story?id=1502762#.UeDUjRbV1uI.

177. “Belarus Opposition Leader Jailed,” BBC News, July 14,

2006, available from news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5178714.stm.

178. “Belarus: 7 Presidential Candidates Face 15 Years,” Kyiv-

Post, December 22, 2010, available from www.kyivpost.com/content/
russia-and-former-soviet-union/belarus-7-presidential-candidates-face-
15-years-93334.html.

179. Michael Schwirtz, “Clashes in Belarus Show Resilience

of Both Sides,” The New York Times, December 21, 2010, avail-
able from www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/world/europe/22belarus.
html?_r=0.

174
 180. Jerome Taylor, “In Europe’s Last Dictatorship, All Oppo-
sition is Mercilessly Crushed,” The Independent, March 2010, avail-
able from www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/in-europes-last-
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181. “Belarus: Lukashenka vows to quell ‘revolution plot.’”

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182. Freedom in the World 2013, p. 2.

183. “Social Situation in Belarus in 2009,” Minsk, Belarus: Be-

larus Institute of Strategic Studies, 2010.

184. World Report 2013, Human Rights Watch Report 2013,

p. 405.

185. “Оппозиционный Авитаминоз” (“Oppositional Avi-

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186. “Какая Власть Нужна Белорусам” (“What Power The

Belarusians Need”), Brighton, UK: Independent Institute for
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187. “Сердце Царя—Лучшая Конституция?” (“King’s

Heart—Best Constitution?”), March 1, 2013, available from www.
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188. Intelligence Unit, Index of Democracy 2011,

The Economist, p. 21.

189. Steven Levistki and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authori-

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Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 186.

190. Feduta, p. 418.

175
 191. Interview with Tamara Vikkikova, former head of the
Belarusian National Bank and exiled in Great Britain, Komersant,
No. 158/П, 2288, March 9, 2001, available from www.kommersant.
ru/doc/281285?fp=.

192. Charter 97, “Сенсационный Фильм О Лукашенко на

НТВ, Полная Версия Видео” (“Sensational Movie on Lukash-
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ru/news/2010/7/4/30348/.

193. Newsland, “Белорусский ТВ канал обозвал Путина

“дураком” (“Belarusian TV Channel Called Putin ‘A fool’,”), Sep-
tember 3, 2010, available from newsland.com/news/detail/id/553972/.

194. “Содействие инвестициям” (“Facilitation of Invest-

ments”), Minsk, Belarus: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus,
available from www.mfa.gov.by/investments/.

195. “В 2012 году иностранные инвестиции в Беларуси

сократились на 25%” (“In 2012 Foreign Investments in Belarus
Decreased by 25%”), TelegrafBY.

196. “Поток Иностранных Инвестиций в Беларусь Замет-

но Уменьшился” (“Foreign Investments in Belarus Drastically
Decreased”), TUT.BY, February 2, 2013, available from news.tut.
by/economics/333001.html.

197. “Российские Инвестиции в Беларусь в 2009 Году

Увеличились в 2,8 Раза” (“Russian Investments in Belarus In
2009 Increased 2.8 times”), TUT.BY, March 18, 2010, available
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198. “По Объемам Накопленных Российских Инвестиций

Беларусь Опережает Австрию и Германию” (“By the Vol-
umes of the Russian Investments, Belarus is Far Ahead of Austria
and Germany”), Ejednevnik, November 23, 2011, available from
www.ej.by/news/economy/2011/11/23/po_ob_emam_nakoplennyh_
rossiyskih_investitsiy_belarus__operezhaet_avstriyu_i_
germaniyu____.html.

199. Margarita Balmaceda, Belarus: Oil, Gas, Transit Pipelines

and Russian Foreign Energy Policy, London, UK: GMB Publishing,
2006, p. 30.

176
 200. European Union—EEAS (European External Action
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201. “Yanukovich Podpisal Otkaz Ot NATO” (“Yanukov-

ich Signed Refusal To Join NATO”), 24UA July 15, 2013, avail-
able from ru.tsn.ua/ukrayina/yanukovich-podpisal-otkaz-ukrainy-ot-
nato.html.

202. “Karasev: Ukrainsko-Rossiiskie Otnosheniya Zavisli v

Neopredelennosti” (Karaves: The Ukrainian-Russian Relations
Are At A Limbo), Ukrinfo News Agency, July 18, 2013, available
from www.ukrinform.ua/rus/news/ukrainsko_rossiyskie_otnosheniya_
zavisli_v_neopredelennosti___karasev_1538605.

203. Ronald Grigor Suni, The Making of the Georgian Nation,

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994.

204. Jeffrey T. Checkel, “International Institutions and Social-

ization in Europe: Introduction and Framework,” International
Organization, Vol. 59, No. 4, International Institutions and Social-
ization in Europe, 2005, p. 805.

205. “Грузия Может Вступить В Евразийский Союз”

(“Georgia May Join the Eurasian Union”), PolitRUS, June 13, 2013,
available from www.politrus.com/2013/06/13/georgia-russia-9/.

206. The term borrowed from Andrew Wilson at the Kyiv Se-
curity Forum, Kyiv, Ukraine, April 2013.

207. Alexei Pikulik, “Prerequisites for Democracy, or Did Be-

larus Ever Have a Chance?” Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies,
October 22, 2012, available from www.belinstitute.eu/en/node/409.

208. The analysis is based on the public opinion poll, BISS

2010, “Social Situation in Belarus in 2009,” conducted by Minsk,
Balarus: The Research Center of the Institute for Privatization and
Management.

209. Vital Silitski, “From Social Contract to Social Dialogue:

Some Observations on the Nature and Dynamics of Social Con-
tracting in Modern Belarus,” Kiryl Haiduk, Elena Rakova, Vital
Silitski, eds., Social Contracts in Contemporary Belarus, Minsk, Be-
larus: Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, p. 158.

177
 210. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional
Dynamics of International Political Orders,” International Organi-
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211. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Rise of Competi-

tive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2, April
2002, p. 52.

212. Larry Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,” Jour-

nal of Democracy 13, No. 2, April 2002, p. 22.

213. A great example of this allowing a somewhat lackadaisi-

cal attitude to the signs of democratization in Georgia was the
cartoon series, “Dardubala” (translated as a “disaster”), produced
by an opposition channel and openly broadcast via public TV. In
this show, then President Shevardnadze was depicted in a satiri-
cally negative way, together with the known (and mostly corrupt)
local Georgian officials.

214. Philipp Krause, “Of Institutions and Butterflies: Is

Isomorphism in Developing Countries Necessarily a Bad Thing?”
Background Note, The Overseas Development Institute, April
2013, p. 1.

215. Thomas N. Sherratt, “The Evolution of Imperfect

Mimicry,” Behavioral Ecology, Vol. 13, No. 6, 2002, p. 821.

216. Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage

Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality
in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 28,
No. 2, 1983, p. 148.

217. Krause, p. 1.

218. Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews,

“Capability Traps? The Mechanisms of Persistent Implementa-
tion Failure,” Working paper 234, Washington, DC: Center for
Global Development, December 2010, p. 2.

219. DiMaggio and Powell, p. 150.

178
 220. Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier, eds., The
Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe, Ithaca, NY, and Lon-
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221. Ben Rosamond, “Neofunctionalism,” Theories of European

Integration, Houndsmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan,
2000, pp. 50-73.

222. Checkel, p. 815.

223. Krause, p. 2.

224. Peter Evans, “Development as Institutional Change: The

Pitfalls of Monocropping and the Potentials of Deliberation,”
Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 38, No. 4,
Winter 2004, p. 33.

225. Marcin Święcicki, “Ukrainian Economy and Economic

Reforms,” Taras Kuzio and Daniel Hamiton, Open Ukraine: Chang-
ing Course Towards a European Future, Washington, DC: Johns
Hopkins University Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2011, p. 65.

226. Lessons from the Ukrainian Transition: Reform Driving Forc-

es in a Captured State, Warsaw, Poland: Center for Social and Eco-
nomic Research, 2005, p. 1.

227. Alexander Kupatadze, “Ending Georgian Corruption

Needs Institutional Reform,” Oxford Analytica, January 2013.

228. Jim Nichol, “Georgia’s October 2012 Legislative Election:

Outcome and Implications,” Library of Congress, Washington, DC:
Congressional Research Service, October 15, 2012, p. 4.

229. “Georgian Parliament Adopts Sweeping Amnesty,” Ra-

dio Free Europe—Radio Liberty, December 22, 2012.

230. Closing Press Conference by NATO Secretary General

Anders Fogh Rasmussen following the meetings of NATO De-
fense Ministers, Brussels, Belgium, 2013, available from www.nato.
int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_101215.htm.

231. European Union—EEAS.

179
 232. Articles 1, 2, and 3 of the Constitution of Belarus, Minsk,
Belarus, 1996.

233. “Лукашенко: “Российские Негодяи” Обвалили Ка-

лийный Рынок” (“Lukashenka: ‘Russian Scoundrels’ Crushed
the Potassium Market”), Regnum, September 10, 2013, available
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234. “Минск Меняет Москву на Пекин” (“Minsk Dumps

Moscow For Beijing”), GazetaRU, July 17, 2013, available from
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235. Bo Rothstein and Jan Teorell, “What Is Quality of Gov-

ernment? A Theory of Impartial Government Institutions,” Gover-
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236. Abraham H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,”

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237. “Уровень Безработицы в Украине Снизился до 1.6%”

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238. Steven Woehrel, “Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S.

Policy,” May 24, 2013, Congressional Research Service, 7-5700,
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239. “Иванишвили Заявил о Неадекватных Действиях

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240. “The Hopes of Ivanishvili Regarding Russia,” The Mes-

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180
 241. “Иванишвили Еще Раз Подтвердил Намерение Уйти
из Политики до Нового Года”(“Ivanishvili Once More Con-
firmed His Desire To Leave Politics Before the New Year”), Geor-
gia Online News Agency, August 23, 2013, available from www.
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242. “Единственная Гарантия—Полный Отказ От ПРО”

(“Complete Halt to the Antimissile Defense: The Only Guar-
antee”), GazetaRU, May 2, 2012, available from www.gazeta.ru/
politics/2012/05/02_a_4569905.shtml.

243. “Рогозин про Системы ПРО: Выломает Всю Стену

Если Нас Кто-то Попытается Изолировать” (“Rogozin’s Take
on Antimissile Defense: We will Crush the Whole Wall if Iso-
lated”), GazetaRU, June 29, 2012, available from www.gazeta.ru/
politics/news/2012/06/29/n_2414157.shtml.

244. National Statistics Office of Georgia, “Employment

and Unemployment,” GeoStat, available from www.geostat.
ge/?action=page&p_id=146&lang=eng.

245. By an anecdotal coincidence, Bakradze is an alumnus of

the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA’96), whose rector
was Margvelashvili in 2000–06 and in 2010–12.

246. “Участники Опроса Считают, Что Опасность Со Сто-

роны России Преувеличена” (“The Respondents Think That
the Threat from Russia Is Overestimated”), News Georgia, Russia-
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247. “Зарегистрированная безработица в Беларуси

сохраняется на уровне 0.6%” (“Registered Unemploy-
ment Level in Belarus Stays at a Level of 0.6%”), BeltaNews,
April 9, 2013, available from www.belta.by/ru/all_news/society/
Zaregistrirovannaja-bezrabotitsa-v-Belarusi-soxranjaetsja-na-urovne-
06_i_630389.html.

248. Vital Silitski, “From Social Contract to Social Dialogue:

Some Observations on the Nature and Dynamics of Social Con-
tracting in Modern Belarus,” Kiryl Haiduk, Elena Rakova, Vital
Silitski, eds., Social Contracts in Contemporary Belarus, Minsk, Be-
larus: Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, p. 160.

181
 249. Mark Kramer, “Ukraine, Russia, and U.S. Policy,”
PONARS Policy Memo 191, April 2001.

250. Volodymyr Dubovyk, “U.S.-Ukraine Relations: The Long

Road to Strategic Partnership,” PONARS Policy Memo No. 424,
December 2006, p. 2.

251. U.S. Participation in the Kyiv Summit and the Chor-

nobyl Pledging Conference: Fact Sheet, April 19, 2011, avail-
able from the State Department website, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/
ps/2011/04/161228.htm.

252. “Fact Sheet on Ukraine’s Non-Proliferation Efforts,” For-

eign Policy, March 4, 2010.

253. Press release from the White House website, February 11,
2010, available from www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/readout-
presidents-call-with-president-elect-yanukovych-ukraine.

254. Steven Woehrel, “Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Poli-

cy,” May 24, 2013, Congressional Research Service, 7-5700, RL33460,
Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, p. 6.

255. “Urging the Government of Ukraine to ensure free and

fair parliamentary elections on October 28, 2012, by adhering to
democratic standards, establishing a transparent electoral process
and releasing opposition leaders sentenced on politically moti-
vated grounds,” Washington, DC: U.S. Congress Resolution H.
RES. 730, July 13, 2012.

256. U.S Department of State Statement on Parliamentary

Elections in Ukraine, October 29, 2012, Washington, DC, available
from ukraine.usembassy.gov/statements/elections-ukraine-2012.html.

257. Interview with Gunther Oettinger, the EU Commis-

sioner for Energy, Kyiv, Ukraine, June 13-14, 2013, available
from ec.europa.eu/energy/international/bilateral_cooperation/ukraine_
en.htm.

258. Arkadiy Moshes, “Последний Довод” (“Last Rea-

son”) Daily Journal, August 22, 2013, available from www.
ej.ru/?a=note&id=13213.

182
 259. Leonid I. Polyakov, U.S.-Ukraine Military Relations and the
Value of Interoperability, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute,
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260. Steven A. Carney, “Allied Participation in Operation

‘Iraqi Freedom’,” Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military
History, 2011, p. 116.

261. Website of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, available

from www.mil.gov.ua/index.php?part=peacekeeping&lang=en.

262. “Armed Forces of Ukraine,” White Book 2011, Kyiv,

Ukraine: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, 2012, p. 34.

263. Steven Woehrel, “Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Poli-

cy,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC: Congressio-
nal Research Service, May 24, 2013, “Summary” section.

264. Polyakov, p. 65.

265. “United States-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partner-

ship,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of
European and Eurasian Affairs, available from www.state.gov/p/
eur/rls/or/142231.htm.

266. U.S. Embassy in Ukraine ukraine.usembassy.gov/odc.html.

267. Russian Federation Foreign Policy Concept, adopted on

February 12, 2013.

268. Andrey Mikhailov, “Is Ukraine ashamed of its infamous

military cooperation with Georgia?” Pravda.RU, October 2, 2012,
available from english.pravda.ru/world/ussr/02-10-2012/122326-
ukraine_georgia_military-0/.

269. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Russia, like Ukraine, will become

a real democracy,” Financial Times, December 10, 2013.

270. Goldstone, p. 286.

271. “Ivanishvili: We Will Get NATO MAP in 2014,” Eurasian-

et, May 2, 2013, available from www.eurasianet.org/node/66914.

183
 272. “Медведев: Вступление в НАТО Ничего Не Добавит
Грузии” (“Medvedev: Membership of Georgia In NATO Will
Bring No Benefits To Georgia”), GazetaRU, June 8, 2013, available
from www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2013/08/06/n_3093897.shtml .

273. “Allied Participation in Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’,”

p. 62.

274. “International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, Key Facts

and Figures,” October 1, 2013.

275. John Diedrich, “US faces tough training mission in the

Caucasus,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 30, 2002.

276. Jim Garamone, “U.S. Troops in Georgia to Begin Coun-

terterrorism Training,” American Forces Press Service, Washing-
ton, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, April 30, 2002, available
from www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=44111.

277. “Striking the Balance: U.S. Policy and Stability in Geor-

gia,” A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, Washing-
ton, DC: United States Senate, December 22, 2009, p. 5.

278. Ibid., p. 6.

279. “International Military Education and Training Account

Summary,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, June 23,
2010, available from www.state.gov/t/pm/ppa/sat/c14562.htm.

280. Irakli G. Areshidze, “Helping Georgia?” Perspective, Vol.

12, No. 4, March-April 2002, p. 3.

281. Tony Karon, “Why U.S. Arrival in Georgia Has Moscow

Hopping Mad,” The Time, February 27, 2002.

282. “Putin: Rossiya Nikogda Ne Sobiralas’ Uxodit’

Iz Zakavkaz’ya”(“Putin: Russia Is Never Going To Leave Trans-
caucasus”), GazetaRU, December 2, 2013, available from www.
gazeta.ru/politics/news/2013/12/02/n_5787465.shtml.

184
 283. “Striking the Balance: U.S. Policy and Stability in Geor-
gia,” A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, Washing-
ton, DC: United States Senate, December 22, 2009, p. 5.

284. “United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partner-

ship,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Eu-
ropean and Eurasian Affairs, January 9, 2009.

285. Jack A. Goldstone, “Pathways to State Failure,” Conflict

Management and Peace Science, Vol. 25, 2008, p. 286.

286. Grzegorz Gromadzki, Vitali Silitski, and Luboš Veselý,

“Effective Policy towards Belarus. A Challenge for the Enlarged
EU,” European Choice for Belarus, Warsaw, Poland: Stefan Batory
Foundation/Association for International Affairs, April 2005.

287. Many of the nonprofit civil society organizations have

moved to the neighboring countries, as the Belarusian Institute
for Strategic Studies.

288. U.S. Government Act, “To provide for the promotion

of democracy, human rights, and rule of law in the Republic of
Belarus and for the consolidation and strengthening of Belarus
sovereignty and independence,” Public Law 108-347, 108th
Cong., Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representatives, October
20, 2004, available from https://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/laws/108/
publ347.108.txt.

289. Stewart Parker, The Last Soviet Republic, 2nd Ed., ebook,
Great Britain,Commissar Books, 2011, p. 169.

290. Steven Woehrel, Belarus: Background and U.S. Policy Con-

cerns, Congressional Research Service 7-5700, RL32534,Washington,
DC: Congressional Research Service, February 12, 2013.

291. Ibid, p. 9.

292. Zalmay Khalilzad, “A Strategy of ‘Congagement’ to-

ward Pakistan,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2012,
pp. 107-119.

185
 293. “Voennie Bazi Rossii Na Nashei Zemle” (“Russian Mili-
tary Bases On Our Soil”), Svobodnie Novisti, available from old.sn-
plus.com/!_old-site_!/arhive/jan07/2/str/1-05.htm.

294. Natalia Makushina, “Comment: Why Belarus Needs

Third Russian Military Base,” Deutsche Welle, September 6, 2013,
available from www.dw.de/комментарий-зачем-беларуси-третья-
военная-база-россии/a-16868264.

295. Website of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of

Belarus, www.mil.by/ru/military_policy/rb_nato/.

296. “Military and Technical Cooperation between Belarus

and China,” Belarus Security Blog, October 18, 2013, available from
www.bsblog.info/military-and-technical-cooperation-between-belarus-
and-china/.

186
 ANNEX 1

QUESTIONNAIRE

Democratization and Instability in Ukraine,

Georgia, and Belarus

5 = very high/very good

4 = high/good
3 = middling or ambiguous
2 =low/bad
1 = very low/very bad

1. What is the country of your origin?

___ Georgia ___ Ukraine ___ Belarus

All the remaining questions are regarding your

country of origin, regardless of your current country
of residence and will use the following answer scale:

5 = very high/very good

4 = high/good
3 = middling or ambiguous
2 =low/bad
1 = very low/very bad

187
Please pick one answer to each question:

Citizenship, Law, and Rights

1. To what extent is the rule of law operative

throughout the country?
2. How independent are the courts and the judi-
ciary from the executive?
3. How much confidence do you have in the legal
system to deliver fair and effective justice?
4. How has the situation regarding democracy
and human rights improved in the last decade?
5. How effective and equal is the protection of the
freedoms of movement, expression, association and
assembly?
6. How would you evaluate the situation with the
freedom of speech?
7. How secure is the freedom for all to practice
their own religion, language or culture?
8. How free from harassment and intimidation are
individuals and groups working to improve human
rights?
9. How would you assess the situation with eco-
nomic freedom?
10. How satisfied are you with the economic devel-
opment of your country?

188
Representative and Accountable Government

Did the elections become more transparent in the

last decade?

___ Yes ___ No

11. How free are opposition or non-governing par-

ties to organize?
12. How much are you satisfied with the last elec-
tions held?
13. How much do you trust your government?
14. How comprehensive and effective is legisla-
tion giving citizens the right of access to government
information?
15. How publicly accountable are the police and
security services for their activities?
16. What is, in your opinion, the crime level in your
country?
17. Do businesses influence public policy?
___ Yes ___ No

18. How much confidence do you have that public

officials and public services are free from corruption?

189
Civil Society and Popular Participation

19. How independent are the media from govern-

ment?
20. How effective are the media and other indepen-
dent bodies in investigating government and power-
ful corporations?
21. How free are journalists from restrictive laws,
harassment and intimidation?
22. How independent are voluntary associations,
citizen groups, social movements etc., from the gov-
ernment?
23. How much, in your opinion, is the influence
of other countries on the domestic political affairs of
your country?
24. Would you anticipate any significant political
change in your country within the next 5 years?
___ Yes ___ No

25. If you were to choose between economic

stability and political freedom, which one would you
prefer?

___ Economic stability ___ Political freedom

190
 U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William E. Rapp

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

and
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Director
Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research
Dr. Steven K. Metz

Author
Dr. Robert Nalbandov

Editor for Production

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant
Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition
Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil