Mixed values and societal constraints: why the request for a "strong hand" will not lead to authoritarianism in Ukraine

Abstract

Given the global rise of illiberalism and Ukraine’s own post-revolutionary turbulence, what are the risks that the war-torn society descends to authoritarianism? In contrast to numerous alerts, I argue that none of the modern forms of authoritarianism is likely in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. There are at least three groups of structural, institutional, and agency based factors that make the emergence of the authoritarian regime in Ukraine highly improbable. These are: poor leadership legitimacy, poor economy performance, regional polarization, weak state repressive capacity, the relative weakness of the ‘party of power’, fragmented elite structure, the growing linkage with the West, semi-presidentialism, institutionalized hybridity (the legacy of being hybrid regime), lack of charismatic leadership, mixed public attitudes and gravity of three (1990, 2004, 2014) waves of anti-authoritarian protest. Theoretically, this article draws on the congruence theory, which posits that the regime is stable in so far as its authority pattern meets people’s authority beliefs. The empirical data from the latest wave of World Values Survey demonstrate that Ukrainians share mixed authority beliefs, as exemplified in liberal and authoritarian notions of democracy. The score of liberal notion of democracy for Ukraine is twice higher than that of authoritarian notion (0.82 to 0.41) and is supported by the growing score of emancipative values. ‘The authoritarian congruence’, therefore is hardly achievable in the post-Euromaidan Ukraine, while any attempt to impose authoritarian rule from above would face the cumulative resistance effect produced by these three groups of factors.