SCIENTIFIC REPORT AT THE MEETING OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE NAS OF UKRAINE

On August 23, 2024, Head of the Department of Political Institutions and Processes, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Galyna Zelenko, gave a scientific report “Institutional capacity of Ukraine in conditions of war” at the meeting of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

In her report, G. I. Zelenko presented the results of a three-year study of the Department of Political Institutions and Processes.

SIGMA and Worldwide Governance Indicators, Fragile State Index, etc. were used to analyze the institutional capacity of the state.

In her speech, G.I. Zelenko noted that indices of the state’s institutional capacity in Ukraine began to decline even before the great war in 2021. While the regression during the war is insignificant, that, in combination with social self-organization, explains why Ukraine survived the first years of the war.

Meeting of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

But for the most part, in her speech, G. I. Zelenko focused on the analysis of “traps of failure”. According to the researcher’s conclusion, they are established in Ukraine at the formal-institutional level, namely, teleological (tentative) constitutionalism involves the adoption of procedural laws that would make it possible to implement the norms of the constitution. However, in Ukraine, they were either not adopted, or were adopted with great delay (the Law on the Cabinet of Ministers, on the Impeachment of the President, on the Regulations of the VRU were adopted more than 10 years later, while there are no laws on the President of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine at all).

After all, Ukraine has an absolutely unbalanced system of public power, in particular, an underdeveloped mechanism of checks and balances. And if there is a legal vacuum, it is filled with illegal practices.

Galyna Zelenko is speaking

In Ukraine, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the process of primary capital accumulation was largely completed thanks to the voucher privatization model. As a result, FPGs were formed in Ukraine and Ukraine received the “capture state” phenomenon. Further, the logic of the political process was subordinated to the preservation of the status quo of the FPG, which turned out to be the actual source of power in the state, and not the people, as is commonly believed. The impossibility of influencing the authorities in a conventional way (due to non-working tools of political participation) also caused the Maidans.

After all, now the main “traps of failure” are as follows:

– a completely broken government (problem of dual subordination) and a destructive vote of no confidence, which means that even if the government is given a two, it cannot be automatically dismissed;

– a half-accepted government (the government works without a program, which is absolute nonsense for European practice), which means that there is no document by which the parliament can evaluate the effectiveness of the government’s work;

– the absence of a regulated status of the parliamentary opposition and the unregulated activity of the parliamentary coalition, which causes parliamentary corruption and parliamentary groups “for sale”;

– the conditional effect of the imperative mandate, and hence the impossibility of punishing deputies for frank collaborationism, activities that pose a threat to national security. After all, there is no procedure for such cases.

– the absence of a rule on mandatory party affiliation of the minister, which erodes the political responsibility of the ruling coalition;

– the absence of a rule on the report of ministers to the parliament in the event of their dismissal, which eliminates the political responsibility of both the cabinet and the parliament;

– a destructive vote of no confidence in the government, when recognizing the government’s work as unsatisfactory does not mean its automatic resignation, and therefore government crises due to the long procedure of forming governments are programmed automatically;

– an absolutely ineffective institution of political parties – that is, in essence, there is no one to perform the function of mediation between society and the government.

As a result, the institution of political responsibility in general has completely failed. And therefore, with such a system of government organization, Ukraine will not be able to fully move towards the EU, because the system of government organization will come into conflict with the standards and practices of the EU; nor maintain the appropriate level of legitimacy and capacity of the authorities to wage war against the Russian Federation.