Ukraine: the Yanukovych regime has created three crises: a crisis of the regime, a crisis of the economy, and a crisis of presidential legitimacy.

Ukraine’s Multiple Crises

by Alexander J. Motyl

If current conditions in Ukraine look revolutionary to you, that’s because the Yanukovych regime has maneuvered the country and itself into a series of reinforcing crises. If the regime holds on to power, the crises will only deepen. If the opposition comes to power, with or without Regionnaire participation, it will face monumental tasks requiring almost superhuman wisdom and skill. In a word, whatever the denouement of the ongoing standoff between opposition and regime in Kyiv, Ukraine will be a mess for some time to come.

Crisis is a sexy word that means all things to all people, but, if used rigorously, it usually means a life-threatening condition, one in which, to pursue the medical analogy, the patient faces a 50-50 chance of recovery. It’s impossible to apply the word with equal precision to social reality, but the point is that we should use crisis only with reference to extremely serious conditions that appear to be unsustainable for more than the short term.

Seen in this light, the Yanukovych regime has created three crises: a crisis of the regime, a crisis of the economy, and a crisis of presidential legitimacy. Significantly, all three are the result of the system of centralized rule Yanukovych introduced, or what I have called sultanism.

As I have repeatedly argued in this blog, sultanism is intrinsically unstable:


Yanukovych quickly accumulated vast powers, thereby transforming the presidency into a near-dictatorial office, while subordinating the other two branches of government—the Parliament and the courts—to himself and his party…. Given the evisceration of the non-presidential branches of government and the emergence of the Regionnaires as the party of both power and theft, it was inevitable that Yanukovych would become the focus of increasingly personalized rule, while his closest confidantes would join him in plundering the country. The logical end point of this institutional development was reached in 2012: the triumph of Yanukovych and his “Family,” the reduction of the Rada and the courts to meaninglessness and buffoonery, and the transformation of the Party of Regions into nothing more than an instrument of rapine. Because sultanistic regimes are invariably corrupt and conservative, there is no reason to think that the avaricious mediocrities who man the Yanukovych system will be able or willing to sacrifice their well-being to vague notions of reform, especially if reform undermines their power and privilege…. [S]uch a deeply dysfunctional regime is a leading candidate for stagnation and decay.

.................

Read more: /worldaffairsjournal.org