How the "echo of empire" is hindering Ukraine's EU road and what can be done about it
According to the World Bank’s Rule of Law Indicator, Ukraine still falls short of even the minimum standards expected in the European Union.
The rule of law is a cornerstone of European values.
Many people reduce the concept of the rule of law to the judicial system or, even more narrowly, to the fight against corruption. In reality, it is about a fundamental principle.
Merely adopting European regulations without embracing European principles could become a trap for Ukraine.
Read more about the roots of Ukraine’s rule-of-law challenges and how they can be addressed in the article by CASE Ukraine senior economist Volodymyr Dubrovskyi: European principles or European rules? Will Ukraine have to choose on its road to the EU?
If one compares geography with rule-of-law indicators, a striking and persistent divide emerges between the core of the former Russian Empire on the one hand and the countries lying to its west on the other.
This border separates societies with deep historical traditions of patronalism – a system of social relations based on patronage. In such a system, everyone is expected to have a powerful patron or "protector" who informally, not through the law or judicial procedures, "gets things done".
Unfortunately, Ukraine inherited these traditions from the empire.
Unless it overcomes patronalismб as reflected in meaningful progress on the rule of lawб Ukraine should not focus solely on harmonising its legislation with the EU acquis.
At the same time, from a geopolitical perspective, Ukraine needs to reunite with European civilisation within a relatively short period – not necessarily in two years, but within a decade rather than over several decades in order to avoid becoming a "gray zone", or worse, being reabsorbed by the former empire. Is that realistic?
Yes, and there is a modern example: Georgia under Mikheil Saakashvili and Kakha Bendukidze.
Within ten years, Georgia managed to leap from a situation significantly worse than Ukraine’s to a level exceeding that of Bulgaria. Had the reformers not made certain mistakes that their opponents later exploited, the country might well have become a relatively prosperous EU member by now.
The three principles that the brilliant reformer Kakha Bendukidze successfully applied to dismantle patronalism were: radical simplification and liberalisation of legislation; a complete overhaul of state institutions captured by patronal networks; amnesty for past "sins", without which it is impossible to establish the inevitability of punishment because otherwise virtually everyone would have to be prosecuted.
Regarding amnesty, one of the Georgian reformers’ biggest mistakes was probably the sheer number of people imprisoned. At the time, Georgia ranked fourth in the world and first in Europe in terms of the prison population per capita.
Another mistake they later acknowledged was paying insufficient attention to the informal side of patronalism – public attitudes and social consciousness. Yet these are precisely the kinds of issues that political strategists know how to influence, and their methods could be used for constructive rather than manipulative purposes.
Ukraine is not a pioneer – we can learn from Georgia’s mistakes.
Moreover, Ukraine is now in a more favourable position than Georgia was.
After all, both revolutions that shaped Ukraine’s current trajectory were fought under the banner of European principles, not merely European rules. This means there is already strong domestic political demand for the necessary reforms.
Those reforms should include radically simplifying legislation, reducing the discretion of public officials, and easing the regulatory burden, even where doing so may temporarily conflict with the formal process of European integration. At the same time, Ukraine should rapidly harmonise those EU rules that promote simplification, deregulation or demonopolisation.
Against that backdrop, the country should reboot its main supervisory and law-enforcement agencies, complete judicial reform and accompany these efforts with a sustained public education campaign against the "zero-sum" mindset and the blurring of boundaries between public and private spheres.
Only in this way can Ukraine achieve a decisive breakthrough in the struggle to establish the rule of law over patronalism.