Ukraine and Democracy
Ukraine and Democracy
escrito por Dini Harmita
Abstract
Ukrainians have been showing their bravery in defending their democracy. In their eyes the future of democracy is so bright that they never lost any sights for whom democracy is for. This brief paper is written in order to honor their unstoppable efforts, especially Zelensky. Using the framework of democracy as defined in many dimensions including stability, rootedness, and routinisation of party (system) institutionalisation, the author tried to enrich the knowledge of possibilities of why Putin is weakened.
Keywords: Ukraine, Democracy, Stability, Rootedness, Routinisation, Zelensky, Putin, Russia
Introduction
Democracy is like a colorful window. It has a tendency to follow what people need to the point that sometimes it becomes authoritarianism and populism. A mainstream window is usually a square or rectangle thus it’s actually very easy to put its classification. Interestingly, based on most of our experiences theoretically and in practice it’s actually as rounded as our time and pendulum. Casal Bértoa and Enyedi (2021) discussed it by starting with the Czechoslovakia case. Though they didn’t mention it as a repetitive historical timeline but indirectly they said so by explaining the unstable political party (system) institutionalisation.
Earlier Casal Bértoa (2017) summarised and analysed party and party system institutionalisation by comparing seven authors and subjects for party system and eleven authors and subjects for party institutionalisation. Six from the seven authors of party system institutionalisation mentioned stability as one of the indicators. Eight out of eleven scholars of party institutionalisation mentioned routinisation and six from the eleven conferred rootedness as one of dimensions.
Czechoslovakia is a sweet and generous place for those who escaped populism for being accused as communists, including in Indonesia not long after their independence. Decades later, as many other post communist countries, they are exaggerated and overwhelmed by the weakened Putin. Even as advanced and as civilised as Prague tends to always have either 90, 180, 270, or 360 degrees turn. Lucky Putin is weakened though indeed.
Harmita (2022) in her working paper was beautifully drawing a lovely pictorial theoretical framework that she even forgot how amazingly and gorgeously pretty it is. Democracy tends to fly not only because of its ideal indicators but also the rootedness itself. Party institutionalisation indicator tends to engineer people thus it has routinisation and rootedness while party system institutionalisation tends to manufacture the textile machine such as Galician Inditex with their Zara and Massimo Dutti therefore it has stability as the main indicator. What makes the theoretical framework beautiful is mainly the colors of Ukrainians flag. She colored the political actors including voter, activist, politician, and political scientist as blue in the center with its small bubbles representing their influences to the yellow courses and discourses including democracy itself. As everyone who flies, they need requirements based on the destination jurisdiction. We fly to the Schengen area then we need to fulfill the European Union policy. We fly to Asia then we need to get related vaccines. That’s why she painted stability and rootedness or value infusion yellow along with history to symbolise balance between people and institutional development including its timeline.
Not stopping there cause democracy is still in the sky and less benefited people thus she put routinisation first afterwards including stable patterns of competition and prevention of dependency towards donation, sponsor, and charismatic leaders. Public funding was actually a leap in her working paper but she knew it should bridge the bubbles of democracy henceforth she drew it in touch with the routinisation. Little less jump off it will be explained one chapter prior to conclusion. As always, first landing always feels hard no matter how experienced the pilots and how expensive the planes are. That Ukrainians are now thus it’s interesting to know how Putin as the symbol of both authoritarianism and populism is weakened. How? This paper is trying to explore that.
A Colorful Window of Democracy
It’s time to look out the window. The Following is my summary towards fundamentals of democracy I have been learning since I know it.
Mair (2005) in his paper about and for the European Union explained about popular democracy characterised mainly by the electoral system. A little bit deeper before Mair (2002) has explained participation as one of the indicators of the democracy be it popular, party, or populist democracy. Nonetheless, I believe the corrupt political parties either as institutions, individuals and stubborn systems indicated by how at least European and Irish politics should survive many turbulence made him later discuss the party less democracy.
In practice, Zelensky as the leader of Ukrainians themselves has proven the importance of the deeper levels of participation in the forms of confidence and perseverance. Derivatively, democracy then is classified into representative and deliberative. The classification tends to be defined upon dominant practices of the government. In the electoral system, representative democracy is characterised by voting and seats. It’s participatory in the way where people could vote and be voted, could lead and be led. In governance, it is represented by the policies where it is built upon people participation. While deliberative democracy doesn’t have its own definition in the electoral system. It tends to build one sided policies where people have less freedom to choose and determine what they need and want, either because the government chooses efficiency; such as Italy that doesn’t allow the use of air conditioners -or they also have climate considerations such as Sweden-.
Participatory democracy is part of the colorful window of democracy that tends to be closer to home where people get the benefits a little bit more. Theoretically, Pateman (1970) started the discussion of participatory theory as part of democratic theory. Interestingly, democracy tends to be seen as the alternative shape of government no matter in what forms and colors the windows are; particularly in participatory democracy where the word ‘participatory’ itself tends to be used to explain the types of empowerment embedded in the alterations.
Building upon lessons learned from globalisation or modernisation, dependencies, and neoliberalism theories, scholars started to discuss localised or indigenous development including Mansuri and Rao (2012). In between specific terms are glued to the participatory including the very trending currently: participatory budgeting, as part of participatory democracy.
The positive side of participatory democracy is that we don’t need to think alone. Nonetheless, it’s very prone to changes in the individual spectrum where countries who used to be consolidated democracies tend to be illiberal democracies simply because their friends become democracies but not because of them. Imagine your friends are very authoritarian and you want them to be at least a little bit democratic but then when they’re in the process of becoming democratic countries not because of you or without involving you, you become authoritarian instead. Silly I know but it happened: The dark side of democracy. We’ll discuss Putin with this framework in the following chapters too.
Another significant type of democracy is religion based democracy. Harmita (2022) explained a bit how each religion could actually complete each other to develop a better democracy, nonetheless even the exercises are troublesome. It’s proven by how now the acculturation and accumulation process following the immigration policy in countries such as the United States where democracy was born tends to backslide the democracy. It may take time indeed but it’s easily being used by persons such as Putin and groups such as Tories till Musk who used to defend Ukraine too now chooses not to.
Stability, Rootedness, and Routinisation
In previous windows I also put populism and authoritarianism characterised by the way how the leaders bring themselves and the involvement of militarism and oligarchs. Putin is very stable in terms of economic capital defined by Bourdieu (1986) as material owning. Russia as a country should be actually very stable in terms of. Perhaps it’s in the fear of losing stability that makes them invade Ukraine.
I know the stability mentioned in the introduction is mainly for political party (system) institutionalisation but basically it’s also applied in the contexts of democracy prior and post elections. That’s why I think Bourdieu (1986) used the word ‘institutionalised’ to define each capital. Especially since Russia has always been a communist country even post USSR. Thus indeed perhaps that’s why Putin is so afraid because his authoritarianism is ripped off in each post USSR country one by one.
As routinisation to build and strengthen rootedness, cultural capital is institutionalised in the forms of education (Bourdieu, 1986). Russia is well known for their dictatorship education system mainly from military and espionage. Therefore though Putin is strong economically, he is so afraid of losing his empire that he has lost it one by one. Though he is part of respected religion and oligarchy groups at the same time, his heart is weakened by his own fear where because of that he vigorously attacks innocent people.
Future of Democracy in Russia’s Putin point of view
In Putin’s point of view, democracy is only a threat when the idea doesn’t come from himself. That’s another characteristic of authoritarianism and populism. He could kill thousands of Ukrainians and still call himself a democracy.
This could be seen from his networks, but one by one his spiders are also leaving him. Nonetheless, indeed there will be authoritarian people still in this world. Democratic people could be easily changed into populists and authoritarians in the hands of temptation such as corruption.
Future of Democracy for Ukrainians
Corruption is more individual challenges thus it is predictable if it also happens in Ukraine. To recall when I had an honor to help the victims of the tsunami in 2004; I might be a very successful coordinator by classifying and delivering assistance precisely and in relatively more participatory ways, nonetheless what would you feel when you know that the refugees sold back your assistance? Is it because they need money? It was a natural disaster, we couldn’t repeat the ten day trip to exchange it with money; and neither did we initiate participatory action research because we came exactly after the tsunami.
For Ukrainians, democracy is the future where they should be proud of because they’re in the process of rebuilding it. They must have been happy they could vote post USSR. Nonetheless, what they’re building now is more lovely than the electoral system.
Balancing with Public Finance
Balancing private finance with public finance could be seen also from how Ukrainians collect funds collaboratively to defend themselves and rebuild the country at the same time.
In political party (system) contexts, the public finance could help the poor politicians with pure heart and big dreams to revive their countries and reduce corruption, especially prior campaigns and elections. Ukrainians have proven how it could be applied for any definition of democracy.
Conclusion: It’s in the Essence
I actually knew nothing about Ukraine; but Putin, whom I didn’t know who came to my dream prior to the first attack on the Ukrainians. Since then he never came neither to my feed nor my dream but today I saw a big photo of him in the Journal of Democracy saying that Putin and his allies are weakened, yet they are still exercising their power in Azerbaijan and Armenia. After killing many of Ukrainians and his right hands Putin should actually feel numb. There may have been many reasons why he is weakened but allow me to borrow a quote from the Last Avatar instead of Last Tzars; it may have been because fire tends to always work alone.
