Suchergebnisse

Scholarly and media sources have often described the conflict in Ukraine's east as a potential "frozen conflict" similar to other such conflicts in the post-Soviet space. My interviews with young Ukrainian citizens reveal that many imagine not a stalemate but rather a continuous repositioning of the border between Ukraine and Russia. I use the term "mobile boundary" to describe the widespread belief within my sample that the Ukraine-Russia boundary may move back and forth within Ukrainian territory. Some interviewees express their willingness, at least in theory, to surrender the contested territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, but it is their fear of Russian encroachment beyond those territories that provides the rationalization for continued military defense of the Donbas.

In the last decade or so, we have witnessed the spread of so-called democratic revolutions across post-Soviet states, Northern Africa, and the Middle East, and young people have often been at the forefront of these protest movements. This article tracks ruling elite discursive responses to youth-led protests, and particularly elites' constructions of the political agency of youth in Ukraine (the Orange Revolution of 2004) and in the Russian Federation (the anti-government protests of 2011–2012). I propose that it is the slippage between different figurations of youth agency (as both pawn and threat, dangerous and defenseless) that makes tropes of youth useful for elites to think and act with. Drawing on work on millennial capitalism, I argue that ruling elites' use of these tropes reveals their anxiety about governing post-Soviet "citizen-consumers" who appear youth-like in their susceptibility to seduction by Western goods, values, and practices. Through their depictions of protesters as pre-moral and pre-rational (mindless, senseless, easily brainwashed or "bought" by the West), elites in Ukraine and Russia equate the advance of neoliberalism on their territories with the (re)infantilization of their citizenries. On the one hand, these elite discourses provide local audiences with a critical perspective on neoliberalism, but on the other hand, they also articulate a powerful logic of civic exclusion—one that extends not only to young people but also potentially to dissenters of all ages.

This book examines the efforts of European regional organizations in promoting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law among states seeking membership. In country-specific chapters, experts test prevailing theories about how effective the regional organizations' efforts at improvement have been.