The Socio-Economic Origins Of Conflict

On November 21th,2013,the ordinary Ukrainians massively occupied Independence Square(Maidan Nezalezhnosti)in Kyiv to protest against the rejection of an association agreement with the European Union by president Viktor Yanukovych that sparked civil unrest and the wave of demonstrations.The refusal of the Ukraine-European Union association agreement coincided with the decision of the government to accept loans from Russia and,thus,move away from the EU space.The perception of rampant corruption and people's dissatisfaction with the failure of the government to manage the geopolitical balance,abuse of freedom and human rights,and declining living standards in Ukraine fueled the protests against the antiEU position of the Yanukovych regime.The brutal actions of the law enforcement against the protesters led to even more people's participation in the demonstrations that named the Maidan Revolution.The brutality by government forces initiated the mechanisms of the protests that led to performances of violent actions by protesters.Since the beginning of 2014,the goals of the protests changed from a narrow scope of opposing to the refection of the EU deal to calling the resignation of Yanukovych and removal of the whole government as a sign of no-confidence toward the authorities in the Ukrainian society.The protesters also changed their tactics from passive demonstrations against the authorities to the occupation of the official buildings across the country.Several government buildings at the local level were occupied by the protesters in the Western and Eastern regions of Ukraine.However,due to the significant social support and failure of the authorities to prevent these actions,protesters could successfully take the official buildings in the Western regions rather than in the Eastern part.The sudden rise of protests and determined efforts by the protesters to take over certain significant places under control significantly changed the balance of power between them and the government.However,the critical turning point of the process happened when the opposition became a dominant group in the Ukrainian parliament.The advance of the opposition in the Verkhovna Rada(Ukraine's parliament)strengthened the political power of the protesters and significantly contributed to their legitimacy at the domestic and international levels.However,this advancement of the opposition in the legislative body led to new confrontations with the Yanukovych's regime as the police riots directed against the parliament and the opposition supporters.Shortly the Maidan protests came to an end with the Yanukovych's compromise to the opposition over the restoration of the 2004 constitution and the flee of the president after the legal initiation process of impeachment against him.With the removal of Yanukovych from the state,the Maidan event seemed to reach its goal.However,soon it came apparent that the impacts of the government change in Kyiv crossed the boundaries of national politics.The repeal of the 2012 law on language that granted a constitutional right for the Russian language to be used at a regional level along with the Ukrainian language sparked a conflict based on ethnicdivision between Russian-dominated eastern regions and the Maidan government.Moreover,the extreme pro-European policy of the Maidan government and antiRussian rhetoric posed a severe threat to the economic interests of the eastern region had a sizeable export-led economy oriented to the Russian market.Shortly after the Maidan Revolution,the political conflict between the Donbas region-a common name for eastern and southern areas with the Russian speaking population-and the central government escalated to an armed conflict.The confrontations resulted in the declaration of separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk that opposed the new rule in Kyiv and called for autonomy.Besides that,the takeover of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia crucially affected the political process in Ukraine and transformed the Maidan process from popular protests to civil war and interstate conflict.These changes in Ukraine's reality led to the negligence of the Maidan event and the misunderstanding of its origins.Aftermath political development in Ukraine obscured the factors that underpinned the united protests against the government.First,the escalation of armed conflicts with the breakaway regions of Ukraine started to dominate the agenda about political change and presented it as a mere geopolitical game.On the other hand,the Maidan event became primarily seen as Ukrainians' drive for democracy and freedom,which also neglected the origins of such spontaneous countrywide collective action.The mechanisms that worked during the protests and aftermath played a significant role in the development path of the Maidan Revolution and its outcome.However,the viewed causes of those protest activities could not explain the origins of the event on a long-run perspective.On the contrary,the Maidan event came to seen as a spontaneous event that occurred suddenly primarily influenced external factors rather than endogenous factors determining the development path of Ukrainian society.This dissertation,as opposed to the geopolitical interpretation of Ukraine's protests and the reductionism of the Maidan event to mere to the Ukraine-the EU association agreement,argues that the Maidan protests activities are the consequences of the long-run development of the Ukrainian society in a particular path.Instead of seeing the Maidan Revolution as a short-term outcome of political processes during the Yanukovych regime,it is essential to focus on the long-run development of Ukraine during the transition period,dating back to 2000.Also,the origins of the event became to be seen less influenced by the mobilization mechanisms and political opportunities,more affected by the grievances of people accumulated during the period being studied.The Maidan event,unlike the Orange Revolution,occurred as a result of the spontaneous engagement of many people across the country from different social groups and demographic categories.The political organizations that dominated the process during the Orange Revolution became a secondary factor that increased their role throughout the process.Grievances,on the other hand,played a crucial role in underpinning the onset of protest activities as it is grown as a result of frustration framed by people's value capabilities and value expectations for their living standards.This research work tries to study the Maidan event from the grievances approach;therefore,it establishes a theoretical framework that attempts to analyze this social conflict as a consequence of the long-term development of various factors.For this study,the dissertation primarily reviews two theoretical approaches.First,for studying the grievance factor in Ukraine,the research work includes relative deprivation theory.Based on the relative deprivation arguments,the dissertation argues that social discontent caused by a discrepancy of people's value capabilities and value expectations gives a deep insight into the origins of the Maidan protests.Second,the research work reflects on the opportunity structures approach and examines the relationships between political opportunities and conflict.Notably,the dissertation argues that conflict has more probability of occurring in the states,which have mixed political elements of authoritarianism and democracy.This argument coincides with the concept of a curvilinear relationship between political opportunities and conflict.Based on theoretical discussions above,the dissertation comprises two empirical questions.The first question is as following;given the variation in socioeconomic development in recent history,what is the pattern of relative deprivation that led to social conflict in Ukraine in 2013/14? The second question is that What is the effect of relative socio-economic deprivation on the participation of Ukrainian people in anti-governmental protest activities in 2013-2014? The research work develops two empirical arguments to answer to these two questions.These arguments are explicit and based on the following assumptions.The Maidan event,as the specific social conflict occurred in Ukraine,indicates a progressive pattern of relative deprivation.The second assumption claims that the relative socio-economic deprivation had significant effects on the Ukrainian citizens' willingness to participate in the Maidan protests.Besides,the dissertation includes three other arguments.Two of these arguments are conceptual.The first one relates to the relevance of relative deprivation theory to conflict analysis,and the second argument is about the role of perception of deprivation as a relative rather than an absolute type of deprivation on the probability of conflict.The third argument asserts that despite Yanukovych's attempt to build an authoritarian state,Ukraine remained to be a weak democracy that impacted the form of expression of grievances of people.The dissertation develops a qualitative methodology based on two;macro-data and micro-data models that provide the basis for rigorous study of the origins of the Maidan protests and discussions about the significance of relative deprivation theory and the effects of perception for the probability conflict.For the macro-data model,the research work employs a trend approach that examines the causal relationships between the socio-economic factors,political opportunities,and social conflict.The model obtains data from multiple databases such as the World Bank,the CEIC database,the Trading Economics database,and the Economic Intelligence Unit.The micro-data model further studies the relationships between socio-economic conditions,political opportunities,and social conflict by employing a statistical model of linear regression.The model uses the World Value Survey data for Ukraine to examine the causality between independent and dependent variables at the individual level and thus studies the effects of perception of deprivation on the probability of conflict.The study of the Maidan Revolution with relative deprivation theory with thirteen years' period at the macro-data level shows that Ukraine compared to Central Europe and other CIS countries had a specific socio-economic development path.The trends of independent variables as the reflection of socio-economic conditions indicate a progressive relative deprivation pattern.Unlike the Central European countries,Ukraine had a prolonged and devastating economic downfall during the 1990 s.The economy of Ukraine could only reverse this course in the late 1990 s and early 2000 s.The consolidation of political power and consensus among oligarchic groups who owned the strategic economic sectors allowed the authorities to focus on economic growth.The export-led economic model under President Kuchma that concentrated on heavy industries such as iron,steel,machinery could boost the economy and improve the socio-economic conditions that had disastrous fell in the 1990 s.The upward trend of the socio-economic conditions in Ukraine continued through most of the first decade of the 2000 s.The improvement became noticeable not only in general economic indicators but also in sectors that directly affect people's living standards.Employment opportunities and people's income showed a growing tendency during the overall economic growth period.People's increasing value expectations accompanied this upturn trend of socio-economic value capabilities.The trend of value capabilities continued to develop on an upward scale during the first half of the orange government.However,the financialization of the economy during the Yushchenko government and easy access to cheap foreign loans made the Ukrainian economy very fragile in front of fluctuations in the global financial market.Nevertheless,foreign loans and investment could boost the consumption market in Ukraine,which further improved the socio-economic conditions in the country.The positive trend in socio-economic circumstances in Ukraine primarily reversed in 2008-2009 with the influences of the global economic crisis.The collapse of the leading financial markets immediately closed the source of cheap foreign loans for the Ukrainian banks.Furthermore,the fall in the price of heavy industrial materials such as steel and iron impacted the export revenues of the country.The overall decline in the economy harmed the fragile socio-economic conditions of the population.Since the global crisis period,all indicators show downturn trends that reflect a similar pattern in socio-economic conditions.Regardless of the fall in the actual value capabilities,people's value expectations continued to grow in the postcrisis period.The personification of economic decline on the orange government and the election of Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential election who promised an immediate economic growth and integration to the EU could further raise the people's expectations about the socio-economic class of values that they can attain.However,the actual value capabilities of Ukrainians did not increase as it did during the first half of the decade.On the contrary,their value capabilities continued to develop on the downturn trend.In addition to the structural problems that exacerbated the people's socio-economic conditions,the consolidation of wealth,rampant corruption and abuse of power by the narrow circle of elites so-called the family during the Yanukovych government further worsened the situation.It widened the gap between people's actual value capabilities and their expectations.Besides the improving socio-economic conditions as a specific type of social comparison that focused on self within society,Ukrainians had another reference that influenced their value expectations.Since the victory of the Orange Revolution,Ukraine improved its relations with the EU and entered a new phase that targeted a long-term integration to the European zone.The inclusion of neighboring countries to the European Union that had very close relations with Ukraine influenced the perception of people about the EU.The close ties with the European Union resembled prosperity and higher living standards that people could not achieve in Ukraine at that time.This cross-society type of social comparison had a significant impact on Ukrainians' value expectations that they wanted to attain once they integrate into the European zone.Combined with the within-society type of social comparison,the integration to the EU had vital effects on the perception of deprivation among Ukrainian citizens.Regardless of the kind of these social comparisons,both came to mean high living standards and prosperity for the people who continued to perceive a growing gap between their expectations and capabilities for a specific class of values.This gap significantly contributed to the increasing feeling of frustration,which had a breaking point with the government's rejection of the association agreement.The refusal of the Ukraine-the EU association agreement became a trigger for the social conflict by clearly showing the source of frustration.Furthermore,the macro-data model gives the result for the relations between political opportunity and social conflict.According to the analysis of the democracy index data,despite the attempts to build authoritarianism in Ukraine by Kuchma and Yanukovych,the political system of the Ukrainian state remained as a mixed system with authoritarian and democratic elements.The examination of the trend of political opportunities in Ukraine throughout the studied period supports the argument on the curvilinear relationship between political opportunities and conflict.In other words,Ukraine presents an excellent example of the type of state which is prone to conflict because of its failure to suppress the opposition as an authoritarian state and lack of functioning democratic institutions that could guarantee influence on the government and achieve a desirable change by citizens.Ukraine shows similar results in comparison to Poland and Russia as the states with the same background of political and economic structures.Compared to those two states,Ukraine remains to be neither authoritarian nor full democracy.Therefore,unlike those states,Ukraine has more probability of experiencing conflict.The dissertation also presents the findings on the relations between socioeconomic conditions and social conflict at the individual level by using the micro-data model.Besides that,the research work analyzes the significance of perception of deprivation on the probability of conflict.According to the findings from the microdata analysis,there were significant relations between Ukrainians' perception of socio-economic deprivation and their willingness to join the anti-government protests.The data derived from the WVS also present the effects of value expectations that also show significant relationships.In other words,the more Ukrainians perceive their socio-economic deprivation,the more willing they are to involve in collective action against the source of frustration.Besides the findings on the significant effects of perception for the probability of conflict,the model also confirms the argument rejecting the dominant role of mobilization and opportunity structures in the emergence of conflict.Thus,grievances played a significant role in people's willingness to involve in the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine.Further,the model significantly supports the argument that a combined research of absolute and relative deprivation rather than one-sided analysis yields useful results for the study of relative deprivation.Overall,the findings that the dissertation present confirms the significant effects of socio-economic conditions as origins of the Maidan Revolution that developed in a progressive relative deprivation pattern.Moreover,the results coincide with Eisinger's theory of curvilinear relationships between political opportunities and conflict that shows the Ukrainian state as a mixed political system that is more prone to experience conflict than its authoritarian or democratic neighbors.On the conceptual level,the research work contributed to the elucidation of the misunderstanding of relative deprivation as it became under criticism for a primary focus on absolute deprivation,neglecting the perception of deprivation,which is a crucial factor for mobilization.People being deprived but not perceiving their deprivation have no willingness to attempt to change the situation.Ukraine showed an excellent example of the effects of perception caused by the self-within society and cross-society types of social comparison.Also,this research work attempted to emphasize the relevance of relative deprivation for conflict analysis in the literature by studying the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine.The structure of the dissertation consists of the following parts.The first chapter starts with the research background that reflects the problems related to the theory as well as selected case-study in the literature.Further,Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical basis of the research in this dissertation and also continues by providing information about the case study-the Maidan protest activities in Ukraine.This section discusses the practical problems concerning the chosen case study highlighting the shortcoming of contemporary studies on the topic and misinterpretation of the conflict in terms of causality.Thus,the section draws attention to the origins of the social strife and rejects the current explanation that primarily based on the conflict process.The chapter continues with the postulation of the research question and argument put forward as guidance for further research on the problem.The following section is devoted to the significance of the study at a theoretical level and empirical level.In the methodological part,the author builds the design of research on two-macro-data and micro-data models for investigating the causal relationships between relative deprivation and social conflict at the absolute deprivation level and relative deprivation level.The macro-data model is used to study the causal links between relative deprivation and the Maidan protests by considering the trends of socio-economic conditions and political opportunities throughout the thirteen years.The micro-data consists of two parts,which are modeled to investigate the effects of opportunity structure on the probability of social conflict within the relative deprivation conceptual framework.The next section,literature review,comprises the analysis of the references on the relative deprivation,political opportunities and resource mobilization theories,and empirical researches on conflict and relative deprivation.In Chapter 2,the author develops a research framework for studying the effects of relative socio-economic deprivation on the emergence of the Maidan protests,investigates a pattern of relative deprivation that occurred in Ukraine,and analyzes the societal factors facilitating the rise of social discontent among the Ukrainian citizens during the thirteen years.Chapter 3 reviews the historical development of socio-economic circumstances in Ukraine during the transition period since the collapse of the Soviet Union.Also,the chapter includes the study of the evaluation of social comparison as a factor evaluating the value expectations of people.This chapter establishes two types-self within society and cross-society-of social comparison that played a significant role in rising value expectations among Ukrainians.Also,the author presents the socio-economic form of relative deprivation as a decisive factor that underwent a substantial change during the period and thus caused unbearable frustration that motivated people for collective action.On the target problem of grievances,the chapter identifies the Ukraine government as the visible source of social dissatisfaction on two factors.The historical role of the Ukrainian state in guaranteeing a particular class of socioeconomic values and the monopoly of the government in the integration process to the EU zone.The chapter finishes with the analysis of the repressive power of the Ukrainian state during that period as the opportunity structure factor and argues for a curvilinear relationship between political opportunities and conflict in Ukraine.In the following chapter,the research work comprises the empirical analysis of the data based on the macro-and micro-data models.In the first section,the author presents macro-data,which analyzes the development of socio-economic trends based on the data derived from the various databases and examines the change of value expectations based on the progressive pattern of the relative deprivation model.In the next section,the research includes a discussion of the opportunity structure fact based on the democracy index throughout the thirteen years.Following,the author examines the arguments about the relationships between relative socio-economic deprivation and social conflict by statistical analysis based on two micro-data models that yield significant results on the effects of socio-economic conditions and people's perception of the probability of conflict.In the final part of the dissertation,the author presents the conclusion of the research that displays the summary of the research work and discusses the findings and future research.The remaining parts of the dissertation consist of reference.