The OSCE/ODHIR election observation mission9 criti-cised the election, deeming it neither competitive, impar-tial nor transparent (OSCE/ODHIR, 2012). While the votingprocess on polling day itself was generally assessed posi-

esticshape of government. The elections exist tolegitimdem

himself has previously resisted such demands, unwilling to

Central Election Commission of Belarus, 2008. Vybory Deputatov PalatyPredstavitelei Natsionalnogo Sobraniya Respubliki Belarus Chetver-

2012. Available from:04.07.13.).a 3 Oktyabrya 2012.a12-39.html (accessed

dings and Conclusions:er 2012. Available from:

Padhol, U.M., Marples, D.R., 2011. The 2010 presidential election inBelarus. Problems of Post-Communism 58 (1), 316.

and Belarus in 2009. Institute for Strategic Studies, Paris, pp. 2536.

ain

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356 353authorities would actually allow them to win any seats,they once again failed to agree on either a strategy or acommon platform which offered a coherent alternative to

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.07.007

The parliamentary elections in Ukr

Erik S. HerronUniversity of Kansas, 1541 Lilac Lane, Blake Hall, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 19 December 2012Accepted 16 August 2013

On October 28, 2012, Ukrainian citizens voted in theirsixth parliamentary elections since the collapse of the So-viet Union in 1991. Over 20 million citizens cast ballots toelect 450 members of the Verkhovna Rada, the countrys

9 The author was a short-term observer on this mission.E-mail addresses: eherron@ku.edu, erik.s.herron@gmail.com.unicameral legislative institution. As the rst election fornational-level institutions since Viktor Yanukovych gainedthe presidency in 2010, the parliamentary contests werewidely viewed as a critical test of Ukraines democratictrajectory. While the country had been seen as makingprogress toward democracy after 2004s Orange Revolu-tion, the Yanukovych administration had been accused ofrestricting media freedoms, presiding over awed localChaillot Paper No. 119.White, S., Korosteleva-Polglase, E., 2006. The parliamentary election

and referendum in Belarus, October 2004. Electoral Studies 25 (1),155160.

e, October 2012and the general public.While the opposition was under no illusion that thecreate an unnecessary additional layer between himselfSilitski, V., 2009. Belarus a country in transition? The state, elections,

and the opposition. In: Fischer, S. (Ed.), Back From the Cold? the EUtion to be transformed into a ruling political party. How-ever, plans to discuss any change at the congress of BelayaRus held on 3 November were postponed. Lukashenka

http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/93975 (accessed 01.10.12.).Potocki, R., 2011. Belarus: a tale of two elections. Journal of Democracy 22

(3), 4963.but to pass legislation handed down by the PresidentialAdministration.

With 63 of the deputies in parliament now also mem-bers of the pro-regime public association Belaya Rus, therewere renewed calls from some quarters for the organisa-

10.12.).IISEPS, 2012a. Natsionalnyi Opros 212 Iyunya

http://iiseps.org/old/data12-26.html (accessedIISEPS, 2012b. Natsionalnyi Opros 24 Sentyabry

Available from: http://www.iiseps.org/old/dat04.07.13.).

OSCE/ODHIR, 2012. Statement of Preliminary FinBelarus Parliamentary Elections, 23 Septembopposition has been comprehensively beaten. The role ofdeputies is not to represent the collective will of the voters,

Predstavitelei Natsionalnogo Sobraniya Respubliki Belarus PyatogoSozyva. Available from: http://rec.gov.by/Elections-PP5 (accessed 15.little importance in Belarusian domtional Assembly has no say over theor nomination of the prime ministerpresent an appearance of electoralthorities, and equally importantly, toacy for the au-onstrate that the

togo Sozyva. Available from: http://www.rec.gov.by/Archive-Elections-PPNS4 (accessed 31.08.12.).

Central Election Commission of Belarus, 2012. Vybory Deputatov PalatyUltimately, results of parliamenta ctions are of verypolitics. The Na-

References

ry ele6. Implications viewed the elections as neither free nor fair.tively, the situation deteriorated during the count whichwas evaluated as bad or very bad in 37% of cases observed.the electorate. Even before this campaign was over, theirfocus had already shifted to debates about tactics and po-tential consolidation on the road to the 2015 presidentialelection. Unsurprisingly, voters remain highly apathetictowards, and disinterested in, both the authorities and theopposition. Finally, the results do not offer any window ofopportunity for a thaw in relations with the West, which

elections, and abusing the judicial system to remove po-tential electoral rivals from competition. As in previousparliamentary elections, the results revealed that Ukrainecontinues to be a deeply divided society.

subsequent alterations to the rights of voters abroad and

with many aspects of contemporary politics, but

respondents consistently identied economic conditions askey concerns for the elections.2

The second cleavage is a national identity dimension,with some parties advocating the pre-eminence of the

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 3433563541 The threshold was higher than the 4% used in 1998 or 2002, or the 3%used in 2006 and 2007.

2 See, for example, the results of surveys conducted by IFES (2012).the elimination of dual candidacy prompted oppositiondiscontent.

The election rules initially adopted for 2012were similarto the rules used in 1998: 450 seats, divided evenly into anational PR district with a 5% threshold1 and SMD con-stituencies with winners determined by a plurality rule.The new version of the law, however, banned blocs ofparties and did not include an against all option on theballot. Parliament reinstated the option of dual candidacythat had been ruled unconstitutional and removed from the2002 version of the mixed system, but it was once againruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court andremoved as an option for candidates.

While the new election rules were predominantly areturn to past practices, they included some innovations.Most notably, Ukraine would follow Russias practice ofinstalling webcams in all polling sites as a tool ostensiblydesigned to promote transparency. The return of single-member districts also required reapportionment andredistricting as the previous elections with local constitu-encies were held a decade prior. Reapportionment shiftedconstituencies across regions due to population changes;the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk lost threedistricts compared to 2002, and they were shifted to Kyivand the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk. Districtboundaries were also changed within regions, amid someaccusations of gerrymandering.

2. Contenders and issues

The Ukrainian party system has been divided along atleast two prominent cleavages in the post-Communistperiod. The rst cleavage is a traditional left-right dimen-sion, featuring variation in preferences about state inter-vention in economic activities. Ukraines economyexperienced a downturn in productive activities and thevalue of the local currency after the nancial crisis in 2008.Pre-election public opinion surveys revealed dissatisfaction1. Electoral system

Ukraine has substantially altered its parliamentaryelectoral system three times since its rst post-communistelection in 1994: from majority-runoff (1994) to a mixed-member system (1998, 2002), to a proportional represen-tation system (2006, 2007), returning to a mixed-membersystem for the 2012 campaign (see Herron, 2007). Theregime-supported Party of Regions and political oppositioninitially supported the return to the mixed system, butUkrainian language, an approach to historical interpreta-tion that favors folk heroes and symbols associated withresistance to external forces (e.g., WWII era partisans), anda strong foreign policy orientation toward accession toEuropean institutions. The other end of the identitydimension supports enhanced status for the Russian lan-guage, a more benevolent view of Soviet-era history, andrecognition of important historic, cultural, and economicconnections with Russia.

In the 1990s, Ukraines party systemwas inchoate, withmany proto-parties contesting elections amid shiftingparty afliations among politicians. The 2002 parliamen-tary election was critical notably for demonstrating thethen party-of-powers weakness and the development of astrong opposition in the Our Ukraine bloc. The 2004 pres-idential election further enhanced the oppositions statusas post-election protests led to a re-vote and victory by theopposition presidential candidate.

Since 2004, the Ukrainian party system has experiencedconsolidation and institutionalization processes, althoughit retains strong elements of the personalized politics thathave characterized electoral competition since indepen-dence. Following 2004s Orange Revolution, two parlia-mentary elections were held using nationwide party listproportional representation with a 3% threshold. Four ofthe ve parties that won seats passed the threshold in bothelections: the Party of Regions, Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko,Our Ukraine, and the Communist Party of Ukraine. TheSocialist Party of Ukraine gained seats in 2006, but wasreplaced in the Rada by the Bloc of Volodymyr Lytvyn in2007.

Since 2007, some parties have undergone rebrandingdue to new election rules and changes in political condi-tions, and several parties merged to enhance coordination.The pro-regime Party of Regions incorporated the StrongUkraine party, led by a former presidential contender andmember of government. The Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko,which emerged after 2007 as the leading opposition partychallenging the party-of-power, reclaimed its party nameof Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) and merged with the Frontof Change, led by former Rada speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk,to offer a joint list and coordinated constituency nomina-tions in the districts. This United Opposition also incor-porated small parties into its campaign, including Reformsand Order, Peoples Self-Defense For Ukraine, and thePeoples Movement. Other prominent opposition organi-zations, such as Vitaliy Klychkos UDAR and Oleh Tyahny-boks right-wing Svoboda Party3 competed separately onparty lists. Svoboda coordinated SMD nominationswith theUnited Opposition but some pre-electionwithdrawals werecontroversial, with UDAR alleging that the United Opposi-tion had reneged on some agreements, especially in andaround the capital city.

3 For an assessment of Svobodas rise, see Shekhovtsov (2011).

these alleged violations did not affect the certication ofresults.

3. Results

Table 1 presents the ofcial results published online byUkraines Central Electoral Commission. Turnout in 2012

Table 1Results of the parliamentary election in Ukraine, October 2012.

Party list SMDseats

Totalseats

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356 355Following Viktor Yanukovychs victory in the presiden-tial election of 2010, several events raised concerns aboutthe status of democracy and the likelihood of free and faircompetition in the parliamentary elections. The mostserious issue was the jailing of former opposition leaders,including former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, Jus-tice Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, and Defense Minister ValeriyIvashchenko. While these former ofcials were ostensiblyconvicted of charges related to the abuse of power, inter-national and domestic observers alleged that the prosecu-tions were politically motivated.

The most substantial policy decision, in terms of itslikelihood to mobilize voters and inuence the fall 2012campaign, was the debate over the status of the Russianlanguage. Ukraine is linguistically divided, with some citi-

Votes Votes (%) Seats

Party of Regions 6,116,746 30.0 72 113 185Batkivshchyna 5,209,090 25.5 62 39 101UDAR 2,847,979 14.0 34 6 40Communist Party 2,687,269 13.2 32 0 32Svoboda 2,129,933 10.4 25 12 36United Center N/A 0 3 3Peoples Party N/A 0 2 2Oleg Lyashka Party 221,144 1.1 0 1 1Soyuz N/A 0 1 1Independents N/A 0 43 43Other parties 1,175,858 5.8 0Turnout 20,388,019 58.0%Wasted votes 1,397,002 6.9%Total seats 225 220 445a

Note: The calculation of turnout is based on valid votes cast. Partiesdenoted N/A for the party list vote did not contest the proportionalcomponent.

a Five SMD races were not certied and by-elections will be held in2013.Source: Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine (http://www.cvk.gov.ua/).zens preferring to use Ukrainian and others Russian.4

Ukrainian is the countrys state language, but Russian iswidely spoken, especially in eastern and southern regions.The Ukrainization of the country, in which Ukrainianbecame the language for education and other ofcial in-teractions, has been used by political actors to mobilizecitizens in traditionally Russophone regions. The debateover the language law, which would allow Russianenhanced status in some regions, prompted protests byadvocates of Ukrainian national identity. The formalizationof the new law led some regions to elevate the status ofRussian while others actively opposed change.

Another critical factor in the campaign was theperception that the Party of Regions would use adminis-trative resources to secure election victories. Local elec-tions, held in autumn 2010, revealed substantialadministrative problems in several regions. Domestic andinternational observation groups identied signicant vi-olations of proper procedures in some municipalities, but

4 A hybrid, Surzhyk, is also spoken in some parts of the countryside.was almost identical to that of the previous election, with58.0% of registered voters casting a ballot in 2012,compared with 57.9% in 2007. This seems to mark a at-tening of the decline in turnout since independence: from75.8% in 1994, 69.6% in 1998, 65.2% in 2002, to 59.0% in2006.5 Although modifying the threshold could haveincreased the proportion of wasted votes, it was lower in2012 (6.85%) than in 2007 (11.4%).

The Party of Regions received the most seats overall(185) and the most seats in both tiers of the mixed sys-tem. Nonetheless, the partys performance was sub-stantially better in the constituency races than in theparty list component. The two main opposition partiesnished in second and third places in terms of the pro-portion of votes received on the party list and in the totalnumber of seats acquired. Batkivshchyna and UDARgained more seats in the party list component than inthe constituencies, garnering a total of 101 and 40 seats,respectively. The third main opposition party, Svoboda,received 36 seats, giving the opposition 177 seats. TheCommunist Party, small parties, and independentsaccounted for the remainder. By winning a plurality, theParty of Regions would have the rst opportunity to forma coalition, but it fell 41 short of the 226 seats needed fora majority.

Regional divisions were once again evident in the partylist and constituency votes, with the Party of Regions per-forming especially well in the eastern and southern areas ofthe country, and opposition parties performing better inthe western regions. The region around the capital city ofKyiv was especially hotly contested in this election, in partdue to the failure of opposition parties to fully coordinatenominations in this area.

The Central Electoral Commission registered 3797 in-ternational observers from national and organizationalmissions and 40,017 domestic observers. In addition,citizen-observers participated in data-gathering projectscoordinated by non-governmental organizations (e.g.,Maidan Monitoring, http://maidan.org.ua/). Domestic andinternational monitoring groups varied in their assess-ments of election quality but some of the most prominentorganizations noted that the areas of greatest concernoccurred not on election day, but prior to and following thecasting of ballots.6 In the pre-election period, unevenmediacoverage and changes to the composition of electoralcommissions raised concerns.7 Further controversies then

5 Turnout gures are from Ukraines Central Electoral Commission,except for data from 1994 which come from International IDEA. The IDEAdata consistently report higher turnout than the CEC, but they also showa general decline in participation over time (with an uptick in 2002).

6 See, for example, OSCE (2012).7 The Ukrainian non-governmental organization Cifra published an

analysis of the change in commission members. See Boyko (2012).

emerged after election day. Vote tabulation in severalcontested districts was scrutinized, and district electoralcommissions were accused of tampering with results. Dueto concerns about the integrity of the vote, results in veconstituencies were not certied. By-elections for the veremaining seats have not yet been scheduled.

4. Effects

Because of election rule changes permitting indepen-dent candidates to contest the election in constituencyraces, it is difcult to fully compare the results of 2012 withrecent contests. Election results tracked closely with par-liamentary party alignments after the 2006 and 2007

produced victories by independent candidates, but many

constitution. Further, the current constellation of partiesseated in the Rada will alter the substance and style ofdebate. Svobodas delegation is most likely to generatecontroversy, as some of the partys most extreme membershave made intolerant remarks, or participated in overtlyracist and homophobic activities. The traditional opposi-tion, currently represented by Batkivshchyna and UDAR, islikely to be challenged by its association with Svoboda,especially if Svobodas rhetoric and actions continue toadvocate policies at odds with a more pro-Europeanorientation. The responses of Ukraines newly electedparliament to these challenges will provide further evi-dence about the regimes orientation toward democrati-zation or increasing authoritarianism.

The author thanks the National Science Foundation for

author and do not reect the views of the NSF.

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356356liamentary party. At the time this article was completed,the Party of Regions had 207 members in its parliamentaryparty, Batkivshchyna 92, UDAR 42, Svoboda 36, CommunistParty 32, and the remaining 33 were unafliated.8

Early meetings of the newly elected Rada were markedby several disruptions, including a widely publicized st-ght among deputies. On December 13, 2012, MykolaAzarov was reafrmed as prime minister, the post he hasheld since Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010.Azarov received 252 votes, with support coming frommembers of the Party of Regions, the Communist Party, anddeputies who remained independent.

The new parliament and government faces a substantialagenda to address, including the ongoing controversy overthe treatment of opposition politicians and the media,management of natural resource disputes with Russia,discussions about joining a customs unionwith post-Sovietcountries, moving toward or away from EuropeanUnion accession, and efforts to modify Ukraines

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.08.007

8 Ukraines parliament provides updated information about parlia-mentary alignments on its website. See Verkhovna Rada (2013).References

Boyko, N., 2012. PCL: c{e sublta cjbpryp[p Vrpxfsu ep pbltacjbpryjy nao{Vum>x{k (TECs: From Subject of the Electoral Process toObjects of Electoral Manipulation) (accessed 30.07.13.). http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/09/18/6972914/.

Herron, E.S., 2007. State institutions, political context, and parliamentaryelection Legislation in Ukraine, 20002006. Journal of CommunistStudies and Transition Politics 23, 5776.

IFES, 2012. Key Findings: Public Opinion in Ukraine: Key Findings from anIFES September 2012 Survey. http://www.ifes.org/Home/Content/Publications/Survey/2012/w/media/Files/Publications/Survey/2012/Ukraine_2012_Summary_of_Findings.pdf (accessed 02.11.12.).

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2012. Statement ofPreliminary Findings and Conclusions. http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/96675 (accessed 17.12.12.).

Rada, V., 2013. Syfna rpin{7foo> efVutats:ljy vralx{k { [ruV usfs{ko{k iam{ (Distribution of Party Factions and Groups in the SessionHall). http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/radan_gs09/ns_zal_frack (accessed30.07.13.).

Shekhovtsov, A., 2011. The creeping resurgence of the Ukrainianradical right? The case of the freedom party. Europe-Asia Studies 62(2), 203228.of Regions received tenmore seats in 2012 than in 2007 butit also beneted from independents aligning with its par-independents leaned toward established parties. The Party Individual Research and Development time to complete thearticle. All interpretations are the responsibility of theelections, propelled by the nationwide party list vote andthe requirement that deputies remain afliated with theirparties. The re-establishment of the mixed system in 2012

Acknowledgments

The parliamentary elections in Ukraine, October 20121 Electoral system2 Contenders and issues3 Results4 EffectsAcknowledgmentsReferences