Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T22:25:52.414Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Analysis of current events: Identity mobilization in hybrid regimes: Language in Ukrainian politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Volha Charnysh
Volha Charnysh*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, Massachusetts, United States
*
∗Email: vcharnysh@fas.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In August, a new language law in Ukraine allowed cities and regions to elevate the status of any minority language spoken by at least 10% of their population to “official” alongside Ukrainian. I argue that the law fails to protect genuine linguistic minorities and is likely to further undermine linguistic diversity in certain Ukrainian regions. More important, the law prolongs the vicious circle between Ukraine's lack of democracy and its politicians’ reliance on identity cleavages to gather votes. I argue that the continuing exploitation of identity divides is increasing the popularity of extreme right parties and widening the gap in policy preferences between Ukrainian and Russian speakers. However, the current ethno-regional cleavages do not stand for irreconcilable identity attachments and their impact can be mitigated. The EU could contribute to this outcome by providing expert opinions on minority and language rights; demonstrating a commitment to Ukraine's territorial integrity and independence to de-securitize the minority rights discourse; and increasing individual-level contacts between the EU and Ukraine to promote a broader European identity.

Keywords

Ukrainian languageidentity mobilizationpost-Soviet party politicslanguage policyEU-Ukrainian relations
Type
Analysis of current events
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arel, Dominique. 1995. “Language politics in independent Ukraine: Towards one or two state languages?” Nationalities Papers 23 (3): 597–622.Google Scholar
Arel, Dominique. 2002. “Language categories in censuses: backward- or forward-looking?” In Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses, edited by Kertzer, David I. and Arel, Dominique, 92–120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barrington, Lowell W., and Herron, Erik S. 2004. “One Ukraine or Many? Regionalism in Ukraine and Its Political Consequences.” Nationalities Papers 32 (1): 53–86.Google Scholar
Barrington, Lowell W. 2002. “Examining Rival Theories of Demographic Influences on Political Support: The Power of Regional, Ethnic, and Linguistic Divisions in Ukraine.” European Journal of Political Research 41 (4): 455–491.Google Scholar
Baum, Matthew A., and Groeling, Tim. 2008. “New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse.” Political Communication 25: 345–365.Google Scholar
Birnir, Johanna Kristin. 2007. “Divergence in Diversity? The Dissimilar Effects of Cleavages on Electoral Politics in New Democracies.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 602–619.Google Scholar
Belikov, Vladimir, and Krysin, Leonid. 2001. Socio-linguistics. Moscow: Russian State University of Humanities.Google Scholar
Bilaniuk, Laada, and Melnyk, Svitlana. 2008. “A tense and shifting balance: Bilingualism and education in Ukraine.” The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 11 (3-4): 340–372.Google Scholar
Bremmer, Ian. 1994. “The Politics of Ethnicity: Russians in the New Ukraine.” Europe–Asia Studies 46 (2): 261–284.Google Scholar
Brusis, Martin. 2005. “Instrumental Use of European Union Conditionality: Regionalization in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.” East European Politics and Societies 19 (2): 291–316.Google Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2005. “Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability.” Perspectives on Politics 3 (2): 235–252.Google Scholar
Colton, Timothy J. 2011. “An Aligning Election and the Ukrainian Political Community.” East European Politics & Societies 25 (1): 4–27.Google Scholar
Darden, Keith. 2013. Resisting Occupation: Mass Schooling and the Creation of Durable National Loyalties. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Druviete, Ina. 1997. “Linguistic human rights in the Baltic States.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 127: 161–186.Google Scholar
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Houlette, M., Johnson, K. M., and McGlynn, E. A. 2000. “Reducing Intergroup Conflict: From Superordinate Goals to Decategorisation, Recategorization, and Mutual Differentiation.” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 4: 98–114.Google Scholar
Goodman, Bridget. 2009. “The Ecology of Language in Ukraine.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 24 (2): 19–39.Google Scholar
Ennis, David, and Weise, Gavin. 2011. “Review and Analysis of the Draft Law on the Election of People's Deputies of Ukraine”, September, International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), http://www.ifes.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Papers/2011/IFES_Ukraine_Review_and_Analysis_of_Draft_Law_2011.pdf.Google Scholar
Ehin, Piret, and Berg, Eiki. 2009. “Incompatible Identities? Baltic-Russian relations and the EU as an arena for Identity Conflict.” Chapter 1 in Identity and Foreign Policy: Baltic-Russian Relations and European Integration, edited by Eiki, Berg and Ehin, Piret. Ashgate: February.Google Scholar
Ferree, Karen, and Horowitz, Jeremy. 2010. “Ties that Bind? The Rise and Decline of Ethno-Regional Partisanship in Malawi, 1994–2009.” Democratization 17 (3): 534–563.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kuperman, Alan, and Crawford, Timothy, eds. 2006. Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion, and Internal War. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kulyk, Volodymyr. 2011. “Language identity, linguistic diversity, and political cleavages: evidence from Ukraine.” Nations and Nationalism 17 (3): 627–648.Google Scholar
Kulyk, Volodymyr. 2007. “The Demography of Language Practices and Attitudes in Ukraine.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 29 (1/4): 295–326.Google Scholar
Latin, David. 1998. Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the New Abroad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Levitsky, Steven, and Way, Lucan A. 2002. “Elections Without Democracy: the rise of competitive authoritarianism.” Journal of Democracy 12 (2): 51–66.Google Scholar
Lieven, Anatol. 1999. Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, Doubleday & Co.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Rokkan, Stein. 2009. “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction.” In The West European Party System, edited by Peter Mair, 91-138. Oxford University Press. [From Lipset and Rokkan, eds. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: The Free Press, 1967).]Google Scholar
Mabry, Tristan James. 2011. “Language and Conflict.” International Political Science Review 20 (10): 1–19.Google Scholar
Magocsi, Paul Robert. 1996. A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Maley, William, and Rose, Richard. 1994. Nationalities in the Baltic States: A survey study. Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy.Google Scholar
Mylonas, Harris. 2013. The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Osipian, Ararat L., and Osipian, Alexandr L. 2012. “Regional Diversity and Divided Memories in Ukraine Contested Past as Electoral Resource, 2004-2010.” East European Politics & Societies 26 (3): 616–642.Google Scholar
Ozolins, Uldis. 2003. “The Impact Of European Accession Upon Language Policy In The Baltic States.” Language Policy 2: 217–238.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2008. “Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries: Language Revival, Language Removal, and Sociolinguistic Theory.” The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 11 (3 & 4).Google Scholar
Petersen, Roger. 2011. Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics.Google Scholar
Posner, Daniel. 2004. “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi.” American Political Science Review 98 (4): 529–545.Google Scholar
Protsyk, Oleh. 2008. “Majority-Minority Relations in Ukraine.” Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 7 (1): 1–42.Google Scholar
Reinhard, Janine. 2010. “EU Democracy Promotion through Conditionality in its Neighbourhood: The Temptation of Membership Perspective or Flexible Integration? Caucasian Review of International Affairs 4 (3): 196–213.Google Scholar
Schimmelfennig, Frank. 2007. “European Regional organizations, Political Conditionality, and Democratic Transformation in Eastern Europe.” East European Politics and Societies 21 (1): 126–141.Google Scholar
Shulga, Nikolai. 2009. “Rodnoi iazyk: nadumannyi konstrukt ili real'nost'. Odna Rodyna, Sept. 24, http://odnarodyna.com.ua/content/rodnoy-yazyk-nadumannyy-konstrukt-ili-realnost. Accessed Oct. 31, 2012.Google Scholar
Shumlianskyi, Stanislav. 2010. “Conflicting abstractions: language groups in language politics in Ukraine.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 201: 135–161.Google Scholar
Smith, David J. 2002. “Framing the National Question in Central and Eastern Europe: A Quadratic Nexus? The Global Review of Ethnopolitics 2 (1): 3–16.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald. 2004. “Why We ate You: the Passions of National Identity and Ethnic Violence.” Berkeley Program on Soviet and Post-Soviet studies. Paper 2004_01-suny.Google Scholar
Taranenko, Oleksandr. 2007. “Ukrainian and Russian in contact: Attraction and estrangement.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 183: 119–140.Google Scholar
Wittenberg, Jason. 2006. Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar