Drawing on ethnographic research, this study analyzes the work of a German political foundation in Ukraine. Departing from a governmentality perspective that closely examines concrete practices, I focus on the organization's attempts to establish itself as a political actor. This foundation aims to build more democratic political imaginations and open up different spaces for contestation. However, in both its rationalities and its practices, the foundation's project also (re)inscribes enclosures. It is both reflective and productive of boundaries between those who qualify as full political subjects, and others who do not, and claims a preformed knowledge of democracy and civil society. In examining situated and ambivalent claims to democracy and civil society—on the level of practices and beyond ‘classic’ liberal contexts of governance—this paper demonstrates that studies of governmentality provide analytical tools to shed light on subjects that have gained little attention in the field so far. It further contributes to a deeper understanding of what kinds of publics and political realities emerge in projects of ‘actually existing democratization’.
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