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

LYUDMYLA REFERENCES LITERATUR VOLYNETS
fighting for recognition, unions could have
extracted further benefits, as social partnership
provided for room for control and pressure
mechanisms (e.g. ILO) on the implementation
of pluralist principles in the area of IR.
Independent unions could also draw on bilateral
cooperation with European and American
unions. However, social partnership precluded
the articulation of workers’ interest by means
other than conciliation. Thus far, the rhetoric
of social partnership “was no more consistent
with independent forms of workers’ organization
than had been the rhetoric of “socialism”
before it” (Clarke und Fairbrother 1994: 379).
It prescribed conciliatory and concessiondriven
activities for all IR actors on the cost of
increasing their strength by collective action.
The prospects of the trade union movement
in CIS might not look promising. The prevailing
response of unions was “to exchange the
subservience to management and the state
in the name of “socialism” for subservience
to management and the state in the name of
“social partnership” (Mandel 2004: 59). Indeed,
prospects are provided by the consequent development
of the independent trade unions.
THE STATE OF IR IN UKRAINE
At the onset of transformation, Ukraine was assumed
to quickly catch up with Western living
standards (Mandel 2004). Later on, however,
Ukraine was identified as the slow transformation
country (Wittkowsky 1998) compared to
the others. The lack of transformation progress
was attributed to a lack of political will of
then-Ukrainian governments, strong embeddedness
of the rent-seeking interests (e.g.
Aslund 2002, Wittkowsky 1998), and heavy
economic dependence of Ukraine on Russia
(Mandel 2004). The following section, firstly,
suggests a brief overview of the economic and
political developments since Ukraine gained
its independence in 1991 as well as the social
consequences. It is then followed by a review
of the institutional re-arrangement of IR and
the regulation of union activities. It is once this
Ukrainian context of IR is set that differences
in emerging unionisms are outlined.
POLITICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION
Ukraine declared its independence in 1991,
but the advance of economic reforms hardly
took place until the late 1990s. Notably, as no
clear rules were laid down in the first years
of the transformation, rent-seeking interests
that have originated from nomenklatura
(party top positions) acquired strong positions
in both economics and politics. This tight
overlapping of economic and political
interests resulted in the promotion of reforms
and corrupt privatization serving the profit
and power-oriented needs of wealthy elites.
Business elites that consolidated in 1990s were
identified as oligarchs 12 , clans, and financialindustrial
groups 13 (Kowall und Zimmer
2002). The symbiotic relationships between
the political and economic core actors (and
businesses direct representation in
the Parliament and ministries) led to
the blockade of the economic reforms Seite page 223
(e.g. Pleines 2006, 2008) and “region
capture” (Zimmer 2002). Hence,
prior to 2004 one speaks about Ukraine as
the system in the form of oligarchy (Kowall
und Zimmer 2002) and autocracy (Franzen,