Influential allies and grassroots movement mobilization: Ukraine’s Maidan,2013

Abstract

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French

Political allies, for example, parties, politicians, and civil society organizations, could be influential in grassroots mobilization. Yet, there are few empirical observations of whether and how these influential allies perform this role. I empirically examine the relationship between the influential allies and activists in Ukraine’s Maidan. I focus on mobilizing structures at the local level, that is, ‘local Maidans’, that arose in 2013–2014. In this mixed-methods study, I combine administrative and protest event data to generalize across cases, and I use interviews with activists, party members, and knowledgeable observers in Ukraine’s localities for conceptual and theoretical insights. The influential allies at the local level assisted in the mobilization of local Maidans across Ukraine. The presence of civil society organizations and opposition parties in localities, as well as interventions of local politicians created favorable conditions for mobilization, regardless of other factors such as the level of economic development.

Keywords

Allies civil society Euromaidan political parties social movements Ukraine

Influential political allies such as parties, politicians, and civil society organizations (CSOs) can potentially assist in grassroots mobilization (McCarthy and Zald, 1977; Türkoğlu, 2021). To explain the importance of alliances, movement theorists contend that there is a dynamic and reciprocal relationship between movements and parties (Muldoon and Rye, 2020). Alliances also involve prominent politicians who are sympathetic to protesters’ claims and may assist in movement emergence (Amenta et al., 2010). CSOs could support mass mobilization through ‘bloc recruitment’ of members (Oberschall, 1973) and by bringing in solidarity and experience (Alexander, 2012). However, it is possible for allies to hinder mobilization. As both the movements and their allies have complex sets of goals (Jasper, 2004), allyship can bring about unhelpful confrontation or even conflict (Rucht, 2004). Alliances require a substantial effort from their members to be able to act together despite their competing interests and motives (Shaffer, 2000; Staggenborg, 1986), and thus, the outcomes of alliance building are never straightforward.

While the potential of influential political allies is rarely questioned, there are few empirical studies of whether and how they facilitate the emergence of local mobilizing structures. While research on protest mobilization focuses on individual participation (e.g. Bozzoli and Brück, 2010; Nikolayenko, 2022; Smyth, 2018) and on macro characteristics at the country level (Costello et al., 2015; Dubrow et al., 2008; Su, 2015), we know little about the emergence of contention at the level of groups and organizations (Tomescu-Dubrow et al., 2013; Vasi and Strang, 2009). Scholars have posited mechanisms of meso-mobilization. Wiemann (2018) studied relations among social movement organizations (SMOs) and the impact of a disruptive event providing an opportunity for meso-level actors to overcome their ideological differences. Jones and his colleagues investigated the effectiveness of various forms of interorganizational cooperation in mobilizing protests (Jones et al., 2001). Mobilization, they found, was a function of an efficient division of labor among different SMOs that made up a coalition. However, the meso-mobilization role of alliances between SMOs and actors outside the broadly defined social movement sector, such as state agencies, political parties, local governments, or courts, is unclear. Empirical studies of meso-level influential allies would further our understanding of meso-mobilization mechanisms, and aid theory-development in this area (Gerhards and Rucht, 1992; Vráblíková and Císař, 2015).

Do influential allies assist in grassroots mobilization? I address this question with an empirical examination of the relationship between influential members of alliances – political parties, prominent politicians, and established CSOs – and participants of the Ukraine’s Euromaidan movement. I focus on mobilizing structures at the local level, that is, ‘local Maidans’, that arose in 2013–2014. The Euromaidan social movement, which began in Kyiv and then spread across the country, provides a case to test the ‘influential allies’ theory. On the eve of Maidan, Ukraine accommodated a weakly consolidated party system composed of multiple loosely structured parties with unclear ideological standing (Rybiy, 2013). Various institutional factors forged a path for large financial-industrial groups to enter party politics to further their interests (Åslund, 2015; Fedorenko et al., 2016; Huss, 2016; Kuzio, 2014). Whereas close ties between politics and business contributed to political ‘pluralism by default’ (Way, 2015), they obviously increased corruption and degraded the possibilities of a transparent democracy (Bachmann, 2014).

Ukrainian politics, historically, have been highly personalized (Fedorenko et al., 2016; Whitmore, 2014). Either as a consequence of the lack of trust in the institutions, which has given greater political prominence to personalities (Rose and Mishler, 1994), or due to the fusion of big business and politics (Fedorenko et al., 2016), highly personalized politics created ‘prominent’ politicians, who treated their party membership as a business project and acted accordingly (Huss, 2016). The mixed electoral system benefited independent candidates, and prominent politicians were not always interested in investing in party building (D’Anieri, 2007). Parties became more of a tool for gaining election than a durable interest-representation mechanism.

Although pre-Euromaidan civil society in Ukraine was initially characterized by low levels of participation in CSOs, rooted in a legacy of mistrust caused by communist-controlled institutions (Howard, 2003), informal groups and local initiatives were surprisingly durable (Burlyuk et al., 2017). This ensured the continuity of mobilization frames in Ukraine’s multiple contentious episodes since the 1980s (Onuch, 2014a). Social movement legacies infused contentious practices into Ukrainian democratic institutions (Ekiert, 2015). By 2013, some parties, especially those in opposition to the increasingly authoritarian regime of President Yanukovych, successfully employed extra-institutional tactics of street politics (Рудич, 2014).

Ukrainian mass mobilization had long involved coalition building that brought in members of diverse activist groups (Beissinger, 2013). Activist SMO networks, formed during the 2004 Orange revolution, coordinated protest events on the eve of Euromaidan, and later framed Maidan movement claims (Onuch, 2014a). Large-scale Euromaidan mobilization in Kyiv was possible thanks to the cooperation of civil society and opposition parties. These parties were a ‘coalition of inconvenience’ (Onuch, 2014b), where ambitious party leaders sought to satisfy their own interests. Disagreements inside the Euromaidan camp were a major reason why there were difficulties in deliberating on a tactical repertoire (Ishchenko, 2020).

The loosely coordinated and fluid alliance of parties, politicians, and civil society was also notable at the local level, where some local offices of opposition parties, individual members of the local legislature, and CSOs were supportive of the movement’s cause (Zelinska, 2021). This was crucial for accumulating resources, attracting participants and ensuring constant support for local protests and the Kyiv Maidan protest camp. At the same time, there were regional differences in support for Euromaidan and participation in protests: while the mobilization was strongest in the western parts of the country, only a marginal share of respondents in eastern regions reported participating in Euromaidan rallies (Фонд «Демократичні ініціативи імені Ілька Кучеріва», 2014).

I focus on the dynamics of local Maidan mobilizing structures – the environments of activist initiatives, party offices, local CSOs and individual politicians who cooperated and negotiated to mobilize individual participants in 2013–2014. In this mixed-methods study, I combine administrative and protest event data to generalize across cases, and I use in-depth interviews that I conducted with activists, party members, and knowledgeable observers in Ukraine’s localities for conceptual and theoretical insights. By investigating the role of influential allies in the emergence of Euromaidan this article contributes to a growing literature on mobilization in post-Communist states (Císař, 2017; Dollbaum, 2020; Mateo, 2022; Nikolayenko, 2022) and existing literature on protest and mobilization patterns in Ukraine (Kowal et al., 2019; Nikolayenko, 2020; Onuch, 2014a, 2015; Reznik, 2016 to name a few) with a closer look at the 2013–2014 mobilization beyond Kyiv (Gladun, 2019; Onuch and Sasse, 2016; Zelinska, 2015; Zubar and Ovcharenko, 2017).

Coalitions and mobilizing structures

To mobilize and be effective, social movements need more than SMOs (Staggenborg, 2002) – they need certain mobilizing structures, that is, the environment of networks, groups, and organizations with varying degrees of formalization that cooperate and negotiate to mobilize individual participants (Boekkooi and Klandermans, 2013).

The mobilizing structures include coalitions. Social movement coalitions form when distinct activist groups either inside a single movement or across different movements work together toward a common goal (Brooker and Meyer, 2019; McCammon and Moon, 2015). Activists may also reach out to members of different social groups, which is known as allyship (for an overview see Rojas et al., 2020).

Influential allies

Alliances are formed when activists reach out to partners from outside the broadly defined social movement sector, including parties, legislators, and CSOs. Alliances may help build the grassroots mobilizing structures. Challengers and their allies, as well as brokers and bystanders are interdependent and embedded within multiorganizational fields (Curtis and Zurcher, 1973; McAdam, 1988; Morris, 1986). Assembling alliances is a key strategic activity of individuals and organizations (Fadaee, 2022; Jasper, 2004). Alliances are fluid (Morris, 1986) and change across different political systems, cultures, and across a movement’s lifetime (Staggenborg, 2002). The dynamic cooperation between activist groups and such influential allies is evident at the local level. Indeed, it is at the local level where the rate of overlapping membership is greater, and interests other than internal organizational policies come into play.

This article examines three main types of allies that may be influential in a movement’s grassroots mobilization: political parties, prominent politicians, and CSOs. Political parties are potential influential allies. The movement-party interaction is conditioned by multiple factors, including the oppositional status of the party (Hutter et al., 2019). Opposition parties would be more willing to support movement issues in exchange for endorsement (Klaukka et al., 2017). The incumbent party, however, would be interested in ‘absorbing’ broader movement themes or altogether suppressing the anti-regime protest (Goldstone, 2003). Thus, the composition of political parties in the area could influence mobilization.

Parties have incentives to ally with an SMO within a mobilizing structure. In a ‘crisis of representation’ (Mainwaring, 2006), parties face declining membership and growing dissatisfaction (Klaukka et al., 2017). Hybrid movement parties no longer hesitate to apply protest tactics in political competition (Kitschelt, 2006). The resulting blurring of the boundaries between intuitional and extra-institutional political participation invites a redefinition of the relationship between these two collective actors (Goldstone, 2003; Tarrow, 2021).

Elected representatives are crucial to the movement’s mobilization, as they impact it both directly through their voting in parliament and indirectly through their influence on public opinion (Amenta et al., 2010; Meyer, 2004). Open support of challengers’ claims from prominent politicians adds credibility to the movement’s cause and attracts potential supporters.

Social movements may have less influence than individual lawmakers in the realm of policy (Olzak et al., 2016) and by allying with them, activists risk taking a subordinate position. As politics become personalized (McAllister, 2007), elected representatives might have different reasons for supporting or not supporting a movement (Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen, 2021). Their position will depend on personal interests rather than on party mandate, becoming yet more unpredictable.

Established CSOs fuel protest movements because they have trained professionals who can contribute to the mobilizing structures. A dense network of civil associations nurtures cooperation and the ability of its members to mobilize on behalf of the public cause (Putnam et al., 1993). These ‘pre-organized’ individuals become subject to ‘bloc recruitment’ (Oberschall, 1973) and build a vast communication infrastructure, which influences movement mobilization (McAdam, 1999).

Past collective actions can provide legacies for future mobilizations (della Porta et al., 2018) through learning experiences that shape alliance-building considerations of new generations of protesters. This can be done through shared social ties (Van Duke, 2013), which are especially dense at the local level. Collective memory of a past action nurtures solidarity, necessary to build bonds and gain influential allies, and creates a narrative of the past that inspires present action (Türkoğlu, 2021).

Alliances within mobilizing structures are dynamic. As movements become increasingly ‘normalized’ into ‘social movement societies’ (Meyer and Tarrow, 1998), civil society moves toward liquid (Bauman, 2000) and networked (Castels, 1996) relationships, producing loose bonds between individuals and organizations. In response, recent decades have witnessed the rise of hybridization of both CSOs and social movements: NGOization of social movements and SMOization of civil society (della Porta, 2020). As social reality changes, relations between movements and their allies ought to be continuously reexamined.

Hypotheses

Political parties

In Ukraine’s regions, owing to the support of the political regime of President Yanukovych, the Party of Regions’ branches outnumbered the offices of the political opposition (ОПОРА, 2012a, 2012b).

(H1): a developed network of political parties at the local level in 2013–2014 likely had a negative impact on Euromaidan mobilizing structure formation.

Prominent politicians

In 2013, seeking inclusion in power-sharing and resource-redistribution arrangements many politicians in Ukraine’s regions identified with, and acted on behalf of the regime of President Yanukovych. There were, however, those who were in opposition, or at least preserved neutrality, in relation to the regime. Thus, one may hypothesize that (H2) the greater share of local elite groups that were not actively pro-regime is associated with the emergence of local Maidan mobilizing structures.

CSOs and history of collective action

In 2012, Ukraine was home to 87 572 organizations with local status, including the offices of national organizations (Громадські організації в Україні у 2012 році. Статистичний бюлетень., 2013). Although some criticize these official statistics as overestimating the real level of civil society activity (e.g. Palyvoda and Golota, 2013), a network of organizations meant the presence of trained professionals and availability of material resources, thus creating leverage in mobilization. Given these considerations, (H3a) a developed and organized civil society at the local level was more likely to form a mobilizing structure during Euromaidan.

Aside from formal organizational structures, the informal ties developed while acting collectively may also facilitate grassroots mobilization. Protest traditions and previous protest experiences are important conditions of present protest actions (Ekiert and Kubik, 1998). Collective action is based on the learning as well as resources gained during previous contentious episodes. Hence, one can expect that (H3b) coherent networks developed during previous contentious episodes facilitated the formation of local mobilizing structures during Euromaidan.

Data and methods

Quantitative data on the availability of allies for local mobilizing structures

Local Maidan mobilizing structures

In 2013–2014, hundreds of Ukrainian localities hosted local Maidans. These took a variety of forms, as this article details below, and were manifested, first and foremost, through single or repetitive protest performances – rallies, marches, and demonstrations. Highly organized mobilizing structures sometimes discussed their claims, drafted their resolutions, voted on their contents, and published the texts. To capture these possible manifestations of mobilization, limited however by the data available, I operationalized the local mobilizing structures as (1) Euromaidan protest events in the locality and (2) resolutions, that is, the documents adopted by the local Maidans.

I used publicly available protest event data by Center for Social and Labor Research (CSLR) think tank for 2013 to create the dependent variable on the Euromaidan protest in the locality (Центр Соціальних і Трудових Досліджень, 2013). The project team (Center for Social and Labor Research, n.d.) monitored, collected, and coded the information on protest events from 190 Ukrainian web media (Ukrainian Protest and Coercion Data Codebook, 2012). The unit of coding was a protest event, which they defined as a range of actions from rallies and demonstrations to arson and killings (Ishchenko, 2016; Methodology: CSLR, n.d.). I constructed a dichotomous variable on the Euromaidan protest in 2013, where 0 = no events, 1 = otherwise. In these data, 23% of localities in the working sample mobilized during Euromaidan (see Online Supplementary Materials).

Data on local Maidan resolutions come from a dataset of 94 resolutions, adopted by 57 localities in 20 Ukraine’s regions, collected with a complex Google search algorithm (see Zelinska, 2015). In this study, the unit of analysis is a rayon (district) or a city. I constructed a dichotomous variable ‘Local Maidan resolution’ that assigns one to each locality (city or rayon) which passed at least one resolution and zero to those Ukrainian cities and rayons for which no such resolution is present in the dataset. About 11% of localities in the working sample adopted resolutions (see Online Supplementary Materials).

These data have their limitations. The most obvious one is that the project team did not make the data for January – March 2014 publicly available. Employing this dataset, limited to 2013, one is likely to find the motivations to mobilize characteristic of those of ‘early risers’. Local Maidan resolutions data cover the entire period of heightened contention, yet is possible that during Euromaidan not every organized mobilizing structure could have produced a resolution. Whereas the universe of Ukrainian local Maidans is unknown, as there are no data that cover every possible account of every mobilizing structure formed in Ukraine between November 2013 and March 2014, the compilation of Euromaidan events and resolutions is likely the largest and most complete representation of local Maidans.

Party offices and CSO network

I used the number of party offices and the number of registered CSOs, per capita, in the locality as of 1 January 2013. These data come from yearbooks issued by oblast offices of the State Statistic Service of Ukraine (Ukrstat). I collected quantitative data on Ukraine’s localities after Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and the east in 2014. At the time, there were no centralized data for the variables of interest in Ukrstat, and thus I contacted each of Ukraine’s oblast statistical offices to piece together the data. Since the Ukrainian statistics account both for parties’ and organizations’ headquarters and their regional offices, this indicator reflects not only the public organizations and parties registered and operating in the locality. The constructed metric variables ‘Party offices per capita’ and ‘CSOs per capita’ also reflect the density of a network of political parties and public organizations, potential allies available at the nearest proximity to protesters.

History of protests

To mitigate potential bias of the official CSO statistics, I measure pre-existing networks formed while acting collectively by controlling for the previous history of protest actions in the localities using CSLR data. These data are available for specific localities (cities, towns, and villages). I created a metric variable ‘Protest history’ using the total number of protests for October 2009 through October 2013, aggregated to the rayon level.

Influential allies inside local councils

To account for the availability of sympathetic politicians at the local level, this article draws from the results of the 2010 local elections provided by the Central Electoral Commission (Центральна виборча комісія України, n.d.). I used the electoral outcomes of the incumbent Party of Regions (PoR) as the basis for generating the total share of the political parties, other than the pro-presidential party, in the legislature following the 2010 local government elections. Although at that time the Communist party and some other ‘local’ parties in rayon and city councils were loyal to the incumbent PoR, their loyalty came at a cost. Supporting or not supporting a local contention by individual resourceful politicians could have been used as leverage to bargain in local politics. This bargaining between the local elites and the PoR became evident during the 2010 local elections (Когут and Сідаш, 2011) and further reflected in clashes inside pro-presidential factions during Euromaidan (e.g. Яремчук, 2014: 232). Given the volatility of Ukrainian politics, accounting for a joint weight of parties other than the PoR is the best possible proxy for potential political elite allies at the local level. Although complicated, the logic behind this indicator is not unusual in social sciences. For example, Vanhanen (2000: 253) used the smaller parties’ share of all votes cast in elections to measure the degree of Competition, as a part of his Index of Democratization. Scholars across the region have used a similar index (Dollbaum, 2020). I created the ‘Prominent politicians’ with the following formula (1):

P r o m i n e n t p o l i t i c i a n s = 1 - \frac{number of seats taken by the PoR}{total number of seats in the r a y o n or city council}

(1)

In addition, the models control for economic development for rayons and cities, operationalized as the retail turnover of enterprises, per capita, divided by a thousand. Models in the Online Supplementary Materials control for locality administrative status (oblast center, city) and location in western Ukraine. The cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol were excluded from the analysis, rendering 667 rayons and cities.

There are substantial problems with data availability. During the Russian aggression in 2014, the statistical offices were evacuated and the paper reports on the numbers of CSOs and party offices at the city/rayon level in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts were left behind. In Crimea, following the Russian annexation in April 2014, Ukrstat was unavailable. For all three regions, the data on the number of CSOs and political parties cannot be provided. These urgent circumstances generated a substantial share of missing data cases, about 22% for both CSOs and political parties’ offices, effectively limiting the working sample to n = 517 complete observations. The results of the models demonstrate the tendencies in Ukraine’s localities, excluding those in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

I applied logistic regression to the dichotomous variables of the Euromaidan protests and local Maidan resolutions to analyze the impact of local allies’ availability on the emergence of the Maidan mobilizing structure in Ukrainian rayons and cities (logit procedure in Stata 16). The Online Supplementary Materials contain an analysis of linear regressions of continuous measures of protests and resolutions, which reflect more on the size and intensity of contention.

Qualitative data on the mechanisms inside the local mobilizing structures

The qualitative part of this analysis draws data from the interviews I conducted in four localities in 2018. I selected localities in western and central parts of Ukraine among those cities and rayons that hosted an organized local mobilizing structure. In each community, I interviewed (1) activists, (2) local authorities, and (3) knowledgeable observers. The semi-structured interviews covered respondents’ experience of local mobilization and the perceived interplay of the authorities, challengers, and third parties in their community. In total, I interviewed 33 respondents (see Zelinska, 2021).

Maidan participants are a vulnerable population and I took measures to protect respondents’ anonymity (Ellard-Gray et al., 2015). The analysis below does not include the locality name, respondent’s name, gender, age, or occupation. These data are limited to localities that mobilized during Euromaidan and I did not interview any members from the incumbent PoR who might have hindered mobilization in 2013–2014. Yet, these stories offer insights into the mechanisms of movement activists’ and their allies’ interaction inside the local mobilizing structures.

Results

The local Maidans came in a variety of forms. The qualitative data show that the mobilizing structures emerged and developed according to each one’s particular timing, actor composition, and relationship to influential allies. In Locality 1, apart from the first spontaneous Euromaidan rallies run by students, well-planned events mostly involved party members. A young activist remembered that they were not quite sure what to do. They improvised before several political parties joined them, and turned the local Maidan into an ad hoc gathering of an opposition cadre. While they strategized on how to best address the local authorities and divide the responsibility for organizing protest events, they never attempted to formally register their initiative.

In Locality 2, rallies were initially numerous and dynamic. To drum up support, they invited ‘celebrity’ activists from Kyiv. Activists quickly formalized the Maidan SMO with defined membership criteria and a publicly elected leader. Members of CSOs, opposition parties, unaffiliated activists, students, and clergy actively participated. Protesters elaborated on the list of locally salient issues and placed these onto the agenda of their mobilizing structure.

In Locality 3, to commemorate protesters killed on Kyiv Maidan, a group of students lit candles in late February 2014. Because of the reported repressive regime of the local governor, ‘there was not a single political party or public organization that could implement the idea [of protest] in an organized manner’ (activist). The organizer and a few volunteers of a Euromaidan rally drafted the resolution text and read it aloud in front of a small crowd. Immediately after this event, activists who met at the improvised stage formed a Maidan SMO.

In Locality 4, the local Maidan united all sorts of members: opposition parties, public organizations, members of the local council, businessmen, and unaffiliated activists. They arranged weekly rallies and bus travels to Kyiv. An observer thought that this initiative was merely ‘ceremonial’ in nature. They argued that the diversity of groups led to a haphazard agenda: ‘There were many groups involved in the process, and the agenda was shaped by different interests. It’s neither good nor bad, it is just the way it was’.

The role of political parties in local Maidans

The results of the logistic regression on the Euromaidan mobilization are in line with the hypotheses above (Table 1). The network of party offices in the locality lowers the odds of mobilization (H1). Considering that the majority of the registered offices were those of the PoR, it is not surprising that localities with an overwhelming presence of the incumbent party were unlikely to host much dissent.

Table 1.

Logistic regression of Euromaidan mobilization against the availability of allies in the localities.

	Euromaidan protest (dichotomous)			Local Maidan resolution (dichotomous)
	Coefficient	Standard error	Odds ratio	Coefficient	Standard error	Odds ratio
Party offices (per capita)	−0.08^**	0.03	0.92	−0.09^**	0.03	0.92
Prominent politicians	2.68^***	0.65	14.62	3.89^***	0.84	48.88
CSOs (per capita)	0.16	0.10	1.18	0.29^**	0.10	1.34
Protest history (2009–2013)	0.12^***	0.03	1.13	0.00^*	0.00	1.00
Economic development	0.07^*	0.03	1.07	0.06	0.03	1.06
Intercept	−3.21^***	0.54		−4.83^***	0.74
Number of observations	517			517
Pseudo R ²	0.29			0.24

Note: ^*p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.01; ^***p < 0.001.

The interviews offer a nuanced view of how parties’ presence played out during mobilization. The opposition parties had organizational structures, financial resources, and connections in the national and local governments. As many opposition party members had participated in various protests in the past, they knew how to organize a rally. Opposition members were motivated to join Euromaidan both because the movement’s slogans (e.g. European integration, fight against corruption) resonated with their political agenda and because of electoral considerations: ‘It was so obvious how they wanted to jump onto this moving train’ (Locality 1, observer).

In some cases, the support of the opposition party was decisive for grassroots mobilization. In Locality 1, for example, party members were able to carry out regular coordination meetings and elaborate on action plans and written demands. In party members’ stories of their contribution to the local Maidan, they omitted the role of unaffiliated activists. This omission had an important consequence: as political parties pragmatically joined local Maidans based on orders from the party headquarters, they just as easily abandoned local interests: ‘We organized one rally, then another . . . Then it was decided [. . .] that we were going to Kyiv because locally there was nothing to be done’. (opposition party member).

In other cases, the mobilizing structures formed with activists and allied political parties sharing equal responsibility. In Locality 2, for example, rallies were initially numerous and featured party flags and banners. An activist remembers: ‘We from the “public” sector were loyal to this. We had to unite, to look for allies so that Maidan grows in strength’. This was the case of overlapping memberships: some activists mentioned joining protests together with their colleagues from political parties.

In Locality 3, suppression of dissent contributed to a lack of protest experience and a virtual absence of organized civil society. It also led to little trust among various actors in the community. Activists who joined the Maidan SMO were able to build bonds based on their common experience of Kyiv protests. However, they never accepted political parties as allies. One activist remembers that some founders were trying to use the local mobilizing structure as a platform for support of a candidate in the upcoming elections. This support was decidedly rejected:

We would not support this. You can be a member of [SMO], you can join the party, but the organization will not support any political parties or any presidential candidate. No. It was created to achieve something at the local level. [For this], it is not necessary to carry any political banner.

Prominent politicians as local Maidan allies

The presence of influential allies in the local legislature had a positive and significant association with the emergence of a mobilizing structure in the locality, confirming H2 (Table 1). Local actors had many examples of prominent politicians who took a supportive stance toward Euromaidan. The politicians used their connections and powers to support mobilization. In Locality 1, a member of the local council remembered:

I found a colleague from [Party A], and others, and told [them] – ‘let’s organize [a rally]’. We agreed on a date, and I posted it on Facebook. Why did I do it? Because many people were scared, and I was not. I stated it publicly. I had experience from 2004.

In Locality 2, a council member who also owned a local business used it to host coordination meetings: ‘[This person] was among a few who were not afraid at that time. This was getting scary by then, repressions had started . . . ’ – an activist explained. A council member remembered placing the tent on the protest site and labeling it as a ‘Consulting room of an elected representative’ – a banner usually placed on the door of a deputy’s office, indicating a place where they consult with constituency representatives. By law, such places are protected from intrusion. This tent was used as protection against local police attempts to dismantle the protest site.

Established CSOs

The density of CSOs in a locality was positively and significantly associated with that locality passing a local Maidan resolution, partially confirming hypothesis H3a (Table 1). With each additional CSO office per capita in the rayon/city, the odds of a local Maidan resolution increased. Activists reported that they had few personal resources to sustain their involvement. This might not be crucial for a one-time rally or march, but it substantially hindered their ability to gather regularly and develop a joint agenda. CSOs (e.g. Prosvita, Afghan Veterans’ union) already operating in the locality made mobilization easier by offering know-how and trained staff.

Experience of collective action since 2009 was also positively and significantly associated with the Euromaidan mobilization, which confirms hypothesis H3b (Table 1). Furthermore, my interviewees noted a history of dissent that dated back to the 1990s People’s Movement (Narodny Rukh), labor unions protests in the early 2000s or the 2004 Orange Revolution. During these contentious episodes, the activists formed bonds, learned to act collectively, and sometimes formed public organizations.

Having the established CSOs mattered. Locality 2 was an outstanding example of a developed and experienced civil society. Activists knew each other and developed bonds and mutual trust. Consequently, they quickly formed a protesting identity ‘we, the Maidaners’, which they used when they referred to their comrades years after they formed the local Maidan. Activists were experienced in legal matters, registered and ran public organizations. This lessened the transaction costs of activism and allowed them to mobilize during Euromaidan, assuming equal roles with partners from political parties and other CSOs. Respondents in Locality 1, in contrast, did not mention any sustained public initiatives which would form during the earlier episodes of Ukraine’s contentious history. Young people who started Euromaidan admit they did not know how to act collectively, nor had the resources to learn. As a result, the local Maidan there resembled a ‘club’ of political entrepreneurs.

In addition, economic development was significantly and positively associated with the Euromaidan protest: more affluent localities were more likely to hold a rally in 2013, but not necessarily adopt a local Maidan resolution, other things equal (Table 1). The predictors explain about a quarter of the variation in local mobilization.

Conclusions and discussion

I empirically examined the theory that influential allies, including political parties, prominent politicians, and CSOs, meaningfully assist in grassroots mobilization. I hypothesized that the availability of influential allies at the local level facilitated the emergence of local mobilizing structures. This mixed-methods study of Ukraine on the emergence of local Maidans – the mobilizing structures that arose during the 2013–2014 Euromaidan social movement – combined administrative and protest event data with interviews with activists, party members, and knowledgeable observers in Ukraine’s localities.

Theoretically, parties differ in their stances on a new social movement (Goldstone, 2003; Hutter et al., 2019), but they do so in predictable ways, for example, parties in power would not favor social movements that would depose them. I found that a developed network of party offices in the nearest proximity to protesters was negatively and significantly associated with grassroots mobilization. Indeed, in pre-2013 Ukraine, most registered party offices were those of the incumbent Party of Regions, therefore the ‘party network’ at the time of Euromaidan was largely the Yanukovych party and thus against the anti-regime social movement.

Elected representatives sympathetic to the Euromaidan cause aptly facilitated grassroots mobilization. Their direct action was to employ all possible powers at their disposal. This brought credibility to challengers’ claims and attracted more participants. The personalization of Ukrainian politics (Fedorenko et al., 2016) provided a space for individual legislators to act solely on their preferences. Their membership in the political elite made them less fearful of the repressions that soon came.

The relationship between parties and politicians is complex and dynamic. As political parties in Ukraine can be tools of financial-industrial groups (Whitmore, 2014) or personal projects of individual politicians (Fedorenko et al., 2016), the role of prominent politicians as influential allies was amplified. Individual party entrepreneurs may pursue protest as ‘politics by other means’ and engage the protesters for their own benefit. As parties in Ukraine gradually become more professional, party leaders may exert control over these prominent politicians. Indeed, the interviews suggest that the party cadre, who were few yet well-organized, followed the party orders, and could support or abandon local Maidans.

Established CSOs were also influential allies within the Maidan mobilizing structures. This finding contributes to the ongoing debates on the ‘weakness’ and ‘strength’ of Ukrainian civil society in general (Burlyuk et al., 2017), and in particular its ability to channel popular discontent (Way, 2014). Activists lacked resources, and a wide and interconnected array of formal and informal ties among them made it easier for local Maidans to form. CSOs provided the expertise and experience of their members.

Previous experience with mobilization provided ready-to-use patterns for action in 2013 (Onuch, 2014a). Legacies of the past mobilizations not only empowered protesters with social ties indispensable to effective protest, they also nurtured solidarities among different actors (hence, e.g. western Ukrainian miners supported local Euromaidan) and created narratives of past actions which inspired mobilization. It is thus reasonable to suggest that, once the formal organizational ties diminished (Bauman, 2000; Castels, 1996), civil society activists continued to be an important ally of social movements, given that they shared a common goal.

The influential allies were a significant force in the grassroots mobilization of Euromaidan from its Kyiv beginnings to a nationwide movement of local Maidans. Yet, parties, politicians, and CSOs were not in lockstep with the movement goals. In this dynamic, the loosely coordinated networks of mobilizing structures and influential allies, especially parties and politicians, at times pursued their own ends and with their own means.

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Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism. She is grateful to Joshua K. Dubrow for his persistent support with this article. Her grateful thanks are extended to Irina Tomescu-Dubrow and Kazimierz Maciej Słomczyński for their help with data operationalization and statistical analysis. She also thanks her interviewees for their time and courage to speak about Euromaidan events. Gratitude is extended to employees of local statistical offices for their efforts in addressing her numerous information requests.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Data collection was supported by the [Graduate School for Social Research, IFiS PAN] under Grant [15/2016] and Grant [11/2018]; further data collection, analysis, and write-up were supported by [Poland’s National Science Center] under Grant [UMO-2021/40/C/HS6/00229].

ORCID iD

Olga Zelinska

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biography

Olga Zelinska is a researcher at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland. Her research covers the interaction of social movements and political parties, and social and political inequality.

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Influential allies and grassroots movement mobilization: Ukraine’s Maidan,2013–2014

Abstract

Keywords

Coalitions and mobilizing structures

Influential allies

Hypotheses

Political parties

Prominent politicians

CSOs and history of collective action

Data and methods

Quantitative data on the availability of allies for local mobilizing structures

Local Maidan mobilizing structures

Party offices and CSO network

History of protests

Influential allies inside local councils

Qualitative data on the mechanisms inside the local mobilizing structures

Results

The role of political parties in local Maidans

Prominent politicians as local Maidan allies

Established CSOs

Conclusions and discussion

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-iss-10.1177_02685809231166575 – Supplemental material for Influential allies and grassroots movement mobilization: Ukraine’s Maidan, 2013–2014

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Supplemental material

Author biography

References

Supplementary Material