Демократизація в Україні: умови та завдання

Анотація

Speaking about democratic choice we are mainly interested in the common features in the motivation of post-colonial, post-totalitarian and post-authoritarian societies, their leaders, elites and people, which determine attractiveness of democracy in the contemporary world. The intention to be democratic today is often connected with the intention to be free, modern, safe, developed state, which is accepted in the circle of developed countries on the conditions of friendly and equal partnership.

Based on the experience in building democracy in the “third wave” countries (S. Huntington) and on the other conceptual assumptions of institutionalists, we can come to the conclusion of necessity to review the traditional approaches to the problem of democratic transit.

These approaches considered democratic transit, firstly, as the issue of the ideological (or value, in a wider sense) choice, and, secondly, as the issue of destruction of non-democratic social institutions with the aim to build institutions of liberal democracy in their place. Therefore, they referred to the following as to the major directions of building democracy: a) understanding by the active part of the society of the liberal paradigm of public consciousness; b) maximal denationalisation of the public sphere; c) harmonisation of the national institutions and standards with the Western samples.

The Western expert community arrived at the conclusion that the so called civil society should become a driving force for democratic changes in the former USSR countries. These approaches considered democratic transit, firstly, as the issue of the ideological (or value, in a wider sense) choice, and, secondly, as the issue of destruction of non-democratic social institutions with the aim to build institutions of liberal democracy in their place. Therefore, they referred to the following as to the major directions of building democracy: a) understanding by the active part of the society of the liberal paradigm of public consciousness; b) maximal denationalisation of the public sphere; c) harmonisation of the national institutions and standards with the Western samples.

However, the modern views enable not to define democracy as just an ideological choice or an institutional model, but as social innovation. This definition opens to us a somewhat different outlook of the study on the problems of building democracy and the problems of practical democratic reforms.

As we speak about innovation, the most important aspects of its study and design in a specific social organism are as follows: a) motivation; b) preconditions; and c) algorithm of its launch.

The issue of a subject of democratic transformations has not lost its topicality, either, though in case of innovation, it would rather mean an initiative core, as well as perceptiveness to novelties and interest towards them by various social groups and political actors.

Returning to the issue of motivation, we should detail the interrelation between democratisation and modernisation. The matter is that intention to modernisation, which is quite understandable to world-system periphery countries, is often understood as readiness for democracy. As a matter of fact, motivation with regard to these two strategies for national development only coincides partially. Modernisation is the shortest way to development and, in certain sense, safety. But often modernisation does not account for motivation of freedom and in certain cases, is conducted much more efficiently and quickly when freedom is restricted.

To Ukraine, motivation of freedom is traditionally one of the leading public values. As for two other aspects of a democratic choice, safety and development motivations, these characteristics of a democratic order were learned and assessed by the Ukrainian society much later. The democratic social innovation in Ukraine is accompanied by processes of national development and the struggle to redistribute the social product. The main trends of Ukraine democracy building include the targeting on state, nation and civil society development.

We can distinguish several key collisions in understanding democracy, which imposed a serious obstacle to building an efficient democracy in Ukraine. The major problem of Ukrainians’ democratic self-determination is related to the correlation between freedom and law.  Other issues are the correlation between rights and obligations and the correlation between the will of the majority and the right of the minority.

Having defined the democratic development objective in Ukraine as a transition from imitation to essence, we have highlighted the key markers of this transformation. These include negotiation of such widespread phenomena as the sword-law, citizens’ passivity, corruption, uncertainty about powers and areas of responsibility of state bodies, political appropriateness, failure to comply with procedures, informational closeness and politicians’ lies, as well as other features of immature public organization, which continue existing under the lee of democratic institutions.