A. Bugaichuk. The influence of ecological political parties on political processes in Ukraine. – Qualifying scientific work with manuscript status.
The paper examines the concept of environmentalism as an ideology and basis for the emergence and development of environmental political parties and the Green movement in general. It was established that there are two approaches to its study. According to the first, environmentalism arose at the latest in the 1960s as an ideological concept supporting the transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial one with an emphasis on ecology. According to the second approach, the roots of environmentalism are laid in the most ancient times, and the key principles were formulated in the Enlightenment and during the Industrial Revolution, in particular in the works of Zh.-Zh. Rousseau, A. Smith, T. Malthus, V. Vernadskyi.
An analysis of the legal framework of the activities of environmental political parties in Ukraine was also carried out, in particular aspects of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine on Political Parties in Ukraine, the Electoral Code and environmental legislation, which regulate different aspects of the activities of environmental political parties.
The activities of environmental political parties are analyzed in the system of interaction between subjects of environmental policy implementation, in particular their joint work with environmental public organizations within the framework of the common subject «society», whose participation in the implementation of environmental policy is prescribed by current legislation. At the same time, it should be noted that despite the specificity of environmental political parties, they do not have any special legal status compared to other parties, because the ideological orientation does not affect the legal status. At the same time, environmental political parties do pay more attention to environmental issues and, together with environmental non-governmental organizations, use public participation mechanisms, in particular within the framework of environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment procedures.
As a result of the study, the hypothesis was confirmed that environmental parties could not gain significant popularity and influence on political processes at the national level in Ukraine due to a number of objective and subjective factors. Instead, they formed local groups of influence in individual communities, where the influence of environmental parties is based not only on their ideological essence, but also on the personal influence of their leaders. At the same time, even at the local level, environmental parties are mostly in the opposition. The key objective obstacle was the insignificant public demand and insignificant support for the ideological foundations of these parties. Such demand has been reduced even more by the full-scale war, which, despite significant damage to the environment, forces more citizens to change their priorities not in favor of environmental protection.
The key subjective factor of weak development and low influence on the political processes of environmental parties was the lack of their consistent development and frequent non-compliance with their own ideological principles, in particular during the elections in 1998, parliamentary activity in 1998-2002, as well as under the time of mass protests and revolutionary events in 2001, 2004 and 2014.
