The Causes and Mechanisms of the Ukrainian Crisis of 2014: A Structural–Demographic Approach

Abstract

This article tests the hypothesis that Ukraine experienced a state breakdown in 2014. The methodology employed to test this statement is based on achievements of structural-demographic theory, created by Jack Goldstone and developed by Peter Turchin. The reasons for a fiscal crisis, intra-elite conflict and mass mobilization (the three criteria for a state breakdown) are discussed. It is demonstrated that budget management in Ukraine was ineffective, and, coupled with an unbalanced political system, led to the fiscal crisis. The intraelite conflict was caused by Yanukovych's politics and by lack of resources as a consequence of elite overproduction, which led to fewer opportunities among the traditional elites. To demonstrate the mass discontent that was the main factor for the protests and rallies, evidence is presented that the population of Ukraine experienced immiseration in 2010-13. The final factor determining the future of the Ukrainian system was the delegitimization of power. This could happen only under the conditions of intra-elite conflict. All of these factors arose because of the high degree of capital concentration in the hands of the economic elite. The article concludes that we have every reason to say that a state breakdown occurred in Ukraine.

Editors’ Note: New Publication Policies at Cliodynamics

“…The goal of Cliodynamics remains the same, however: developing and drawing on the rich data of economic, political, social, archeological, cultural and demographic history to identify persistent patterns and relationships in the history of human societies, and to develop and test theories of social change (Turchin 2010;. One of the virtues of Cliodynamics as journal is that it welcomes contributions from a vast range of academic disciplines -we have published research from archeology, ecology, sociology, comparative history, and even such novel fields as econophysics, big history, and political demography (Spier 2011;Morris 2012;Thompson and Sakuwa 2013;Malkov 2014;Currie et al 2015;Zinkina et al 2016;Goldstone 2017;Feinman 2018;Roman and Palmer, 2019;Shevsky 2020;Hooper 2021). We will continue to seek and publish articles that deal with the full range of historical dynamics -patterns of change, long-term trends, critical events such as divergences and turning points, and typologies and analyses of sequences of historical events.…”

Mechanisms of State Disintegration. A Global Analysis

“…The examples of an 'unexpected' sharp increase in the fortune of those close to the president confirm this interpretation. However, the emerging of Yanukovych's 'Family' clan failed to re-subordinate the media, which became the main mechanism for mass mobilization (for more details, see Shevsky 2020).…”

Simulating rise and fall cycles of Vietnam empires

“…Turchin (2020) quantified the impact of demographics on political instability in the United States and western Europe, then predicted that social instability is on the rise, for all of these countries [19] . Shevsky (2020) confirmed the collapse of Ukraine in 2014 through the three criteria, which can be extended by the demographic structure theory, and he had explored the objective reasons for this collapse process [20] . Bennett (2016) used a spatially resolved agent-based modeling of agrarian empires, and found that this theory can explain the spread of large-scale agriculture, throughout the Old World since the Bronze Age [25] .…”

“…Greatly seizing both macro and micro-level mechanisms, the demographic structural theory is explanatory to clarify the sociological mechanisms of empires [5] . It is initially proposed by Goldstone (1991) and developed by Turchin (2003) [20] . The main viewpoint is that population growth and the productivity of land (gains) have joint effects on social institutions, such as persistent price inflations, increasing uprisings, wage protests, the lack of jobs, and ideological conflicts [14] in the society.…”