Dalton, David Richard;
(2022)
The wealth of the few: the role of material resource power in the institutional reproduction of the Ukrainian oligarchy through its extractive political and economic practices, 2014-17.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The thesis examines the process of reproduction of the modern Ukrainian oligarchy, and its survival as an evolving political economy institution across the “critical juncture” of the Euromaidan revolt of 2013/14, by way of continuation of its “extractive” political and economic practices, focusing on the role played by material resource power (wealth). Covering political and economic capacities and practices central to the reproduction process, the empirical chapters describe, analyse and explain the dynamics of wealth of the Ukrainian super-rich in relation to Ukrainian society in 2006-17, and its political implications; the process of conversion of wealth into political influence through vote-buying in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament); and elite rent-extraction schemes in the Ukrainian gas sector before and after the Euromaidan revolution, which illustrate the means of conversion of political influence back into wealth. A key argument of the study is that continuity in informal political and economic practices between the Yanukovych and Poroshenko presidencies, and of the elite political-economic networks that conduct them, signals continuity in the dominant political economy regime across the two periods. The main economic effects of the continuation of the informal practices of the Ukrainian oligarchy since its inception in the 1990s have been to undermine state capacity and investment. Based on the empirical investigations, the thesis proposes a novel way of envisaging the interconnection between the capacities, practices and processes of the Ukrainian oligarchy at a more general level, represented as a “currency flow”, or circuit, of wealth and power. To the academic literature on the dynamics of informally dominated post-communist political and political economy regimes, the dissertation adds, therefore, a detailed, integrated, and internally comparative case study of Ukraine.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The wealth of the few: the role of material resource power in the institutional reproduction of the Ukrainian oligarchy through its extractive political and economic practices, 2014-17 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > SSEES UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146204 |
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