Examining rival theories of demographic influences on political support: The power of regional, ethnic, and linguistic divisions in Ukraine

Abstract

What effects do regional, linguistic, and ethnic divisions have on support for the government and political system? What is the effect of each when the others are controlled for? Are apparent differences in support across regions simply compositional effects of ethno-linguistic patterns in those regions? This article provides answers to these questions, through the analysis of late 1998 mass survey data from Ukraine. The results indicate that region of residence strongly shapes support for the government and regime. Ethnicity and language, on the other hand, have weaker effects than scholars would expect, once region is controlled for. Thus, regional differences are not simply reflecting ethno-linguistic patterns in Ukraine, as scholars have often implied. These findings shed light on rival theoretical approaches to understanding regional, ethnic and linguistic sources of identity. They also highlight the necessity for scholars who have emphasized ethnic and linguistic cleavages in other countries to consider controlling for region of residence before jumping to conclusions about effects on political attitudes. Finally, the findings have narrower, but important, implications for the study of Ukraine and for its stability.

The EU and Russia's conflicting regime preferences in Ukraine: assessing regime promotion strategies in the scope of the Ukraine crisis

“…The failure of the multiple and simulataneous transitions (economic, political, and social) undertaken since independence has resulted in the entrenchment of a kleptocratic elite (called oligarchs) which use Ukrainian foreign policy for their own ends (Puglisi 2008). Furthermore, internal ethno-linguistic divisions between Ukrainians in the west and Russians in the east, although not as feverent as Yugoslavia was in the 1990s, nevertheless, has made Ukraine more vulnerable to outside influence (Barrington 2002). Accordingly, since independence, Ukraine has tended to balance its orientation between Brussels and Moscow, pursuing what former President Leonid Kuchma coined a "multi-vector" foreign policy which aimed to maintain strong relations with both, in order to secure the most advantageous outcome for Ukraine (Nordberg 1998).…”

Ukraine: On the border between old and new in uncertain times

“…Focus group respondents from all regions thought that the western region of the country followed a more traditional, religious, and nationalistic family orientation, while they perceived that the eastern part of the country remained under the influence of Soviet ideology. Political attitudes, public opinion, and electoral behavior are consistently found to be associated with regional differences (Kubicek 2000, Birch 2000, Barrington 2002, Arel 1995). The regions also followed different economic trajectories.…”

Political Consequences

“…15 Russians comprise the majority of the region's population, nearly half of the Ukrainians there speak Russian as their first language (Solchanyk, 1994), and it was last area to formally join Ukraine (by act of the Soviet government, it was transferred from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic [RSFSR] in 1954). By any standard, it is the least Ukrainian part of the country (see Barrington, 2002;Shaw, 1994).…”

“…16 These oblasts were separated from both the central and western regions in the eight-region framework in part to gauge the extent to which there is a certain degree of regional "blurring" (Barrington, 2002) as one moves from the center of the country to the far west. But there are also solid historical, economic and demographic reasons for treating them as a distinct region.…”

“…The other set of three models estimates the effects of particular independent variables on support for the government itself rather than the political system. In both sets of models, the demographic variables examined are the same as those for the stereotypes equations (for a discussion of the inclusion of these variables in estimations of models of support for government and regime, see Barrington, 2002). The results of the estimations of the models of support for the regime are presented in Table 3.…”