Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

AT THE ORIGINS OF INFORMAL ECONOMIES:
THE UKRAINIAN CASE
ABSTRACT
AT THE ORIGINS OF INFORMAL ECONOMIES:
SOME EVIDENCE FROM UKRAINE
(1991-2009)
Abel Polese
9
Drawing evidence from participant
observations and informal interviews
between 2003 and 2009, when the
author spent around four years working in
Ukraine as a lecturer and consultant in the non
governmental sector, this article explores the
conditions that make the informal sector blossom
in transitional countries. In this respect, it
will be suggested, informal economies originate
from tensions between citizens and the state,
in which the former feels compelled to respect
decisions and policies imposed from the latter
with no possibility to express their opinions or
react politically.
In such a context, the only way to react is to
use informal economies as weapons of the weak
(Scott 1984). Through informal payments,
(petty) fiscal fraud or suitcase smuggling,
people may reverse the effects of state decisions
that are not tailored to a local context. This, in
turn, may allow people to participate politically
even when a participatory democracy is not
immediately available (Gupta 1995).
INTRODUCTION
page 200
Ukraine gained independence in 1991. Coming
out of a period of nationalist movements, worker
and student strikes as well as an attempted
golpe, the future president Leonid Kravchuk
played the card of a radical rupture with the
past in the hope to rapidly gain stability and
sustainability.
Although a full republic within the USSR,
Ukraine still lacked some of the international