The Third Session of the 14th programme of the Ukrainian School of Political Studies

Participants spent four days discussing issues of local self-government, regional policy and analysed socio-political processes in Ukraine. The session began with reflections of the group together with Svitlana Matviienko, Council Chair of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives and a curator of USPS.

After an opening discussion, the group met with Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. Together with the mayor, the School participants discussed importance of local development, as it is an engine of transformation in the country. In addition, during the meeting, they discussed with Andriy Sadovyi issues of decentralisation, stimulating small and medium-size businesses on the ground, opportunities to attract investment, and identified main priorities for development of Lviv in the near future.

The second day of the session started with reflections on morality of a political process.

Traditionally, politics and morality are considered to contradict each other. Machiavelli’s tradition, with its principle of “a goal justifies the means,” is behind that.

Kant’s position is diametrically opposite: in his/her behavior, a person should be guided by moral motives and not by practical needs (categorical imperative). Not every successful policy is highly moral, but every immoral policy is destructive. Ukrainian realities provide many illustrations of destructive nature of immoral power.

Is moral politics possible in Ukraine? Can politics be moral? Should we talk about a moral movement?

The participants were looking for answers to these questions together with Myroslav Marynovych, Lecturer of USPS and vice-rector on purpose and mission at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Andriy Andrushkiv, a USPS alumnus and Head of Department of Public Policy and Advocacy in NGO “Centre UA”, discussed with the participants of the 14th USPS programme a role of religion in a political process.

According to the speaker, politics and religion are connected more than we think. The church issue still affects the electoral choice of Ukrainians, and politicians periodically play a religious card on the eve of elections. Why is this happening, and how not to build our own Russian Orthodox Church in a hybrid war with Russia?

Andriy Andrushkiv encouraged to reflections.

The second day concluded with a tour to the National Museum-Memorial of Victims of the Occupation Regimes, or the Prison on Łącki, where the group met with Ruslan Zabily, its director, a specialist in history of OUN and UIA.

Over the centuries, it has happened that history of Ukraine is a story of struggle of its people for independence. Creation and activity of the UIA is a phenomenon of Ukrainian history of the 20th century. However, the organisation and its activities are still shrouded in myths used in political battles and propaganda narratives.

Ruslan Zabily discussed with the participants of USPS whether the struggle of UIA has ended today and how idealisation or demonisation of UIA leaders affects public perception of the insurgent movement.

The third day of the session began with a lecture by Anatoly Romanyuk, PhD in Political Sciences and head of Department of political science at Ivan Franko LNU, who spoke to participants about modern political parties and ideologies.

There are more than 300 political parties in Ukraine. And which of them can be called as such?

Weight of “all-encompassing” parties is growing more and more, and they are characterised by appealing not to supporters but directly to social groups, personalising politics, increasing influence of interest groups on party politics, blurring boundaries of the social base of parties and reducing the role of an ideological factor in the development of party strategies and programmes.

During the meeting with Anatoly Romanyuk, our participants discussed how to characterise Ukrainian parties, how they position themselves before elections, and build relations with voters.

Mykhailo Koltsov, Senior Lecturer of the Department of philosophy and religious studies at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, spoke with the School participants about policy analysis.

According to him, policy analysis, as a form of political rationality, allows to combine understanding current state of affairs with planning, implementation and evaluation of government actions in achieving economic well-being.

During a workshop with the lecturer, the group learned basic principles of policy analysis, its tools, and applications for solving socio-economic problems.

On the fourth day, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University and a member of the Nestor group, had a discussion with the participants. Together, the speaker and the group tried to answer the question – how do we overcome history and get ahead?

Till now, “slowly but surely” or “slug strategy” has been a development strategy of Ukraine. But we need to make a jump. In addition to a political one, the leap must have a humanitarian dimension. But economic changes cannot occur if the value basis of the society itself has not changed. Conditions for such a leap have matured in Ukraine because carriers of new values have emerged.

What are the values of modern Ukrainian society? What is necessary for the “jump”?

Yaroslav Hrytsak did not have ready-made recipes and suggested to search for them individually.

At the end of the Third Session, Uliana Poltavets, Programme director of the Ukrainian School of Political Studies, held a game for participants, the purpose of which was to determine social preferences of Ukrainians regarding political candidates and to analyse willingness to choose professionals, not populists or authoritarian leaders.

At that point, discussions of the third session of the 14th USPS programme concluded. Next up is the last stage of training of the 14th group of the School – the International session in Strasbourg during the World Forum for Democracy.