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Introduction
Since 2004 many analysts inside and outside Ukraine have asked whether the “promise” of the Orange Revolution would be fulfilled or not. The fragmentation of the “Orange Coalition,” the return to power of Viktor Yanukovych, and the ongoing political instability in the country have led to considerable despair. The wary reunification of the Orange Coalition of parties led by Viktor Yushchenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko in late 2007 led to renewed hope that an agenda forged in 2004 would finally be pursued.
What was that agenda? There was never much agreement, as the fragmentation of parties and acrimony among politicians since 2004 reveals. Cynicism in Ukraine about the Orange Revolution is high. Many who didn’t support the overturning of the presidential election results (and we should recall that 46 percent of Ukrainians voted for Viktor Yanukovych even after his efforts to steal the election were exposed) view it as a coup, in which power was seized illegally. Many who did support the “revolution” blame the squandered opportunity to make Ukraine a “normal” country under either Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, their advisors, or some combination.
However, it is possible to see the Orange Revolution neither as a revolution nor as a failure. It is much more plausible to view the events of 2004 as a restoration – a restoration of a pluralist political system in place since 1991, which Leonid Kuchma was trying to overthrow in order to institute a hegemonic one-party system akin to that which many other states in the region have adopted. Viewed as a restoration, the events of 2004 appear from the perspective of 2008 as a tentative success. Ukraine remains, in stark contrast to Belarus, Russia, and much of the rest of the former Soviet Union, a highly competitive pluralist political entity. In Ukraine, a tendency for political power to consolidate is offset by social and economic pluralism. The key question for the future is whether that balance will continue to hold.
Depending on how one frames the discussion, the restoration of 2004 is either a remarkable achievement or an historic failure. For those who believed that the events of 2004 would put Ukraine on the short path to liberal democracy, rule of law, and membership in NATO; an historic opportunity – perhaps the last for some time to come – has been missed. For those who compare Ukraine with its neighbors to the north and east, 2004 was a success; it preserved the possibility of further, gradual liberalization, which may be all that was capable in Ukraine.
Three basic arguments about the “Orange Restoration” and subsequent events follow. First, seen in context, the attempt to steal the 2004 election was revolutionary; the norm for Ukraine was mostly fair elections. Second, attempts to establish the hegemony of a single political force in Ukraine since 2004 have continued to fail. Third, Ukraine’s regional divisions, a curse in some respects, create a barrier to any one political force dominating the country. The conclusion then addresses the prospects for a Ukraine that has a shaky political pluralism and few of the other attributes of liberal democracy. Overall, institutional and social forces are in tension in Ukraine. Institutionally, there is a strong tendency toward the concentration of power; Ukraine’s political institutions are weak, and those with power can use it to get more. Socially, however, there are strong trends toward pluralism; Ukraine’s regional, linguistic and ethnic diversity and the clan-based nature of its economic system obstruct efforts to concentrate power.
A “Revolutionary” Election
The events of 2004 were revolutionary in the sense that the political system being set up by Leonid Kuchma was overthrown. But that political system was still under construction. In fact, Ukraine had a brief but solid history of competitive elections going back to 1991, coupled with a young tradition of media freedom that Kuchma assaulted. In 1991, following the August declaration of independence prompted by the coup in Moscow, two votes were scheduled for December. One was a referendum on Ukraine’s independence. The other was an election for Ukraine’s first president, which Leonid Kravchuk, the sitting speaker of parliament, won easily over nationalist dissident Vyacheslav Chornovil and a host of others. While many, especially in western Ukraine and in émigré communities, lamented the victory of the converted apparatchik Kravchuk over the dissident Chornovil, the elections were widely regarded as fair if not perfect.
Elections for both president and parliament were held in the spring of 1994. The 1994 presidential elections set a precedent: elections were held not according to a constitutional schedule, but according to an ad-hoc deal in the midst of political and economic crisis. In the parliamentary elections, incumbents fared poorly; in the presidential election, the incumbent Kravchuk was narrowly defeated by Leonid Kuchma. The weakness of incumbents in 1994 indicated that the elections were not fixed. After another parliamentary election in 1998, some observers indicated that having had two democratic general elections, Ukraine could now be called a democracy according to the standards set by the political scientist Samuel Huntington.
By 1999, Leonid Kuchma had partially limited political competition, but the presidential election that year was regarded as generally free, if not entirely fair. Western-oriented reformers were hampered less by Kuchma’s efforts to constrain them than by their own unwillingness to collaborate. Indeed except for the election and protest period of 2004, Ukraine’s liberal opposition has always divided its forces. With reformist forces split, the second round was contested between Kuchma and the Communist Petro Symonenko, with pro-western Ukrainians (and Western governments) overwhelmingly supporting Kuchma. In sum, until the 2002 parliamentary elections, Ukraine had established a young tradition of fair voting.
With control of parliament up for grabs in 2002, Kuchma and his allies stepped up efforts to use their control of governmental machinery (so-called “administrative resources”) to control votes. All sorts of government benefits, from jobs to student stipends, were made conditional on voting “correctly,” and businessmen were threatened as well. Even so, the reformist Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine) bloc won the biggest share of seats. However, coalition maneuvering, assisted by coercion and bribery, allowed Kuchma’s forces to control parliament. Reformist forces were eroded by their members’ willingness to defect to the “party of power.” Even then, however, Kuchma’s power was limited. An attempt in early 2004 to shift power to the parliament and prime minister, akin to some of the proposals currently discussed in Russia, was narrowly rejected in parliament when some Party of Regions delegates defected.
