State building and European integration in Ukraine

Abstract

The article analyses the impact on statebuilding as an aspect of Ukraine's integration with the EU. The Euromaidan had a profound, yet hardly recognized, effect on EU-Ukraine relations, particularly in terms of the EU's subsequent support of domestic reforms in Ukraine. Following the Euromaidan, the EU supported Ukraine's aspirations to enter "economic integration and political association" by concluding an Association Agreement an agreement which exceeded the capacity of the Ukrainian state to implement it. To increase this capacity, the EU has supported reform of public administration and has provided far-reaching assistance on capacity building in the government. This article posits that since 2014 European integration has become tantamount with (re)building the state structures in Ukraine. Therefore, the significance of European integration for Ukraine goes beyond the implementation of the Association Agreement and extends to root-and-branch reform of Ukrainian state structures.

How the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement and its Consequences Necessitated Adaptation and Drove Innovation in the EU

“…The EU-Ukraine agreement and its consequences added state building and institution building to its key goals in Ukraine and started funding reforms under these headings (Wolczuk, 2019).…”

“…The Ukrainian state's ability to govern and regulate and its administration's capacity to implement rules and policies were far from the levels required to operate the agreement (Wolczuk et al, 2017; Dimitrova et al, 2021). Ukraine's administration had been in need of reform due to decades of rent seeking by politically‐linked oligarchs (Fritz, 2007; Wolczuk et al ., 2017; De Groot et al, 2019; Wolczuk, 2019; Dimitrova et al, 2021). In 2014, Ukrainian statehood was further undermined by the economic crisis and the critical security situation.…”

“…However, it was evident for EU policy makers that there were multiple weaknesses in Ukraine's state and administrative capacity in 2014, affecting its ability to operate the agreement (De Groot et al, 2019). In terms of policy, the EU added state building and institution building to its key goals in Ukraine and started funding reforms under these headings (Wolczuk, 2019).…”

The role of international cooperation in the development of vocational education in Ukraine

“…Since Ukraine gained its independence, there have been ongoing efforts to reform the country's VET system to better align with new economic realities and Ukraine's orientation towards Europe (Deissinger & Melnyk, 2019; Tūtlys et al., 2021; Zinser, 2015). The importance of these reforms was underscored by the country's push for integration with the European Union, which became increasingly urgent after the Euromaidan in 2014 (Wolczuk, 2019). The intensity and extent of these reforms, which began in 2014, highlights their significance to policymakers in Ukraine.…”

The microdynamics of spatial polarization: A model and an application to survey data from Ukraine

“…We test these predictions using data from a panel survey of Ukrainian citizens, which focuses on the dynamics of attitudes toward European Union (EU) integration between late 2012 and mid-2015. In the context of Ukraine (1), and of Eastern Europe more broadly (2), the issue of EU integration is not a simple or minor foreign policy question but instead is a central political cleavage that both reflects and shapes competing visions of the future and can even threaten the unity of the country. Using a two-wave panel survey, we show that the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013 to 2014, in which President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by protests following his decision to suspend talks with the EU on an Association Agreement for Ukraine, led to changes in the extent of attitudinal polarization toward EU integration in different parts of the country, resulting in large part from local dynamics in which citizens changed their attitudes on this "hot question" to conform more with the local majority opinion.…”