Kostiuchenko T. The structure and circulation of political elite network in Ukraine: application of social network analysis for the study of connections

The dissertation summarizes theoretical and empirical materials on power elite studies and the results of author’s own empirical research on the evaluation of importance of common past ties for grouping of political actors under the period of political turmoil, for their circulation and joint legislative efforts. The study solves the scientific problem formed by the incapability of the theoretical approaches of the political elites analysis available in the current Western elitist tradition to explain the functioning of political elite structures in Ukraine as they lack the post-Soviet context and do not consider political changes during Ukraine’s independence. Thus, this dissertation contains designed and empirically verified the model to study the functioning of political elite network in Ukraine considering the cohesion and elites circulation patterns. The research approach includes all authorities branches and different dimensions of ties, and thus enables the comparison of network cohesion and the evaluation of the impact of network cohesion into the sustaining the power position during political turbulences (‘revolutions’). The research results show that the political elite network in 2007-2010 is densely connected via the common past in political, civic and business dimensions, and through the overlap of the studying in the same universities. There is clear «coreperiphery» structure; the actors in the core are connected 5 times denser than in the periphery, proving the presence of brokers in the network. Some fragmentation exists – not by faction affiliation (between the «power» and «opposition»), but higher and lower cohesion among various actors via the common past in different dimensions. Among all types of common past ties the highest centralization is within political ties proving the connectedness of subgroups around particular individuals. The representatives of political elites with the longer experience in power are more central due to the extended connections with their peers in legislative and executive power branches. Weak correlation of ties through the common past in political and business dimensions among businessmen-politicians questions the statement on merging of business and politics in post-Soviet societies. The research reveals the most central political affiliations of businessmen-politicians (committees of economic policy and on budget) and the most central business affiliations (companies of SCM holding). No merging of oligarchic and financial-industrial groups and the networks of the common past among the political elite representatives is revealed. These results were partly affected by the limitations of using the open biographical data for the study of common past ties. Higher network density among businessmen-politicians than among all elite actors, proves the impact of ties for this subgroup. The sustaining of this subgroup in power even after the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014 supporting the idea that business-interest groups manage to keep positions in power during political turmoil. The outcomes of the analysis of the influence of Komsomol and Communist party activists within the political elite network in 2007-2010 add the empirical illustration in the previous studies of recruitment patterns of Ukrainian political elites. In particular, the network cohesion of the subgroup of Komsomol and party activists in the dimension of the common past is higher than the connectedness in the overall network; the importance of particular actors is high within the local centrality and within the betweenness as global centrality. So, they are the significant actors not only in the subgroup of former Komsomol and party activists, but also in the whole political elite network as the brokers between the subgroups. The subgroups cohesion by the circulation patterns revealed higher density by the ties of the common past among the “survivors” who managed to keep their positions in poser during the period of political changes. The similar outcomes were obtained during the verification of the connectedness among survivors after the Revolution of Dignity. The «survivors» who were in power before the political turmoil in 2013 and stayed after the presidential and parliamentary election in 2014, are better connected than those who lost the power positions as a results of the elections in 2014.