gh, alregimweve

2010faile

legislative sessionule of law. On thecourt which ruledcontinued to bribeto establish a clearward authoritarian

tisfactory outcomeof the 2004 democratic breakthrough in Ukraine. The research focused on both internal and external factors. Some authorspointed to mistakes of the new ruling elite (Kalandadze and Orenstein, 2009) and individual leaders (OBrien, 2010). Othershighlighted the weakness of Ukrainian civil society and its exclusion from the post-revolution political process (Tudoroiu,2007; Laverty, 2008). The institutional legacy of competitive authoritarianism was also examined as a negative internalfactor (Kubicek, 2009). Finally, some scholars questioned whether the Orange Revolution represented any revolutionary

* Corresponding author.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Communist and Post-Communist Studies

Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191the number of draft laws submitted to parliament by the executive branch was the lowest ever for any onesince independence (Arel, 2005). Second, the Orange leadership devoted little effort to entrench the rcontrary, President Yushchenko abused his authority over the judiciary, even going so far as to abolish thein favor of his political opponents (Human Rights Watch, 2008). Both ruling and opposition politiciansjudges, arbitrarily sack them and even storm the courthouses (Trochev, 2010). In sum, the overall failuredivision of power and effective system of checks and balances has left Ukraine vulnerable to sliding back torule.

The academic community has widely discussed possible reasons that could account for the less-than-saof the Orange Revolution, President Yushchenko and other Orange leader, PrimeMinister Yulia Tymoshenko replaced some18,000 government ofcials on the grounds of political loyalty (Bogomolov and Lytvynenko, 2009: 78) but, at the same time,The 2004 democratic breakthrouUkrainian post-communist politicalpolitical rights and civil liberties. Hoconsolidated democracies.

During his ve-year term (2005stacles. First, the Orange leadership0967-067X/$ see front matter 2014 The Regenthttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.postcomstud.2014.01.006programs. 2014 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights

reserved.

so known as the Orange Revolution, was a dramatic moment in the evolution ofe. Mass rallies against election fraud helped Ukrainian citizens to regain basicr, the Orange Revolution fell short of skyrocketing the country into the ranks of

), President Viktor Yushchenko and his team could not overcome two major ob-d to reform state institutions and go beyond a mere personnel change. In the wakeUkraineOrange Revolution leadership did not translate into political bias of US-funded democracy assistanceUS democracy assistance programs in Ukraine after theOrange Revolution

Povilas Zielys*, Ruta Rudinskait _eInstitute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, Vokieciu str. 10, LT-01130 Vilnius, Lithuania

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 24 January 2014

Keywords:DemocratizationDemocracy assistanceUnited States

a b s t r a c t

The 2004 Orange Revolution failed to skyrocket Ukraine into the ranks of consolidateddemocracies. Some previous research claimed that, in the similar case of post-Rose Rev-olution Georgia, its vague democratic perspectives can be explained by, among others, anegative impact of politically biased US democracy assistance programs. This article ex-amines ve groups of US programs (electoral aid, political party development, legislativestrengthening, NGO development and media strengthening) implemented in Ukraine in20052010, and concludes that US diplomatic support for the pro-Western Orange

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/postcomstuds of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 819182change at all (Hale, 2006; Katchanovski, 2008; Lane, 2008). Among the external actors, the European Union (EU) drew themost of academic scrutiny. Many authors investigated the EU conditionality and its impact on democratic reforms in Ukraine(Kubicek, 2005; Solonenko, 2009; Casier, 2011). Others focused on a negative external actor, Russia, arguing that its policiesweakened the democratic perspectives in Ukraine (Ambrosio, 2007; Tolstrup, 2009). Some scholars designed their researchso as to capture the overlap of EU and Russian inuences (Jonavicius, 2009; Petrov and Serdyuk, 2009).

Surprisingly enough, very little attention has been devoted to the policies of the United States (US) and their impacton democratic consolidation in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. Such an omission raises eyebrows because theactivities of US donors were judged to be instrumental in setting the stage for the Orange Revolution (Wilson, 2005,2006: 183189; Prescott, 2006). Did US donors continue with democracy assistance programs after the 2004 demo-cratic breakthrough? Did they revise their strategies? Did those programs protect democratic process or particular po-litical groups?

The last question refers to the similar case of Georgiawhich is much better investigated. As documented byMitchell (2006,2009), Muskhelishvili and Jorjoliani (2009), Lazarus (2010) and Omelicheva (2010), US donors reoriented their support fromdemocratic projects to state-building initiatives after the 2003 Rose Revolution. The mentioned scholars concluded that theUS, as a key external actor, was partly responsible for Georgias stalled transition to consolidated democracy. On the one hand,by redirecting their assistance, US donors undermined the ability of Georgian political opposition and civil society to monitorand control policies of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his team. On the other hand, the unconditional US support to theGeorgian government fueled the sense of self-righteousness and impunity among the Rose leadership and failed to preventabuses of power.

This article looks into US democracy assistance programs implemented in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution (between2005 and 2010). Based on theoretical insights and previous research on the Georgian case, it is hypothesized that US-fundeddemocracy assistance programs were burdened by US security interests and biased in favor of the US-friendly leadership. Totest this hypothesis, the following ve groups of programs will be examined: electoral aid, political party development,legislative strengthening, development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and independent media strengthening.The ndings will answer the question whether US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine have been distorted by USpolitical support for particular Ukrainian leaders. This research will also provide material for further comparative studies ofthe US role with regard to democratization in the post-Soviet area.

1. Democratization goals and security interests

It should be admitted that democratization can never be the sole foreign policy objective of any donor country. Even in theUS, which tends to promote democracy with a missionary zeal, democratization must coexist with other objectives andinterests: curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, dampening regional rivalries anddeveloping better economic relations (Lowenkron, 2007: 202). Unavoidably, all these foreign policy goals not only coexist butalso conict with each other.

Most situations when the democratization goal conicts with other security interests can be described as one of the twointerrelated dilemmas. The rst dilemma occurs if donors efforts to promote democracy may lead to destabilization in therecipient country. In this case, the donor country must choose between promoting more democratic or more efcientgovernance (Spanger and Wolff, 2005). Consequently, the donor country may prefer a stronger executive branch at theexpense of political competition. The second dilemma occurs if the democratic process in the recipient country may bring topower political groups that are perceived by the donor country as hostile to its interests. In this case, the donor country mayintervene by supporting political allies or by inhibiting the ascent of those forces that oppose the inuence and interests of thedonor country (Boudreau, 2007). Consequently, democracy assistance programs funded by the donor country may becomepolitically biased.

These theoretical assumptions have been veried by the previous research on Georgia. The Rose Revolution brought topower young reformers who appeared to be pro-democratic, pro-Western and fully aligned with US security interests in theregion. From the very beginning, the GeorgeW. Bush administration demonstrated a rm commitment to support Saakashviligovernment. As a side effect, US governmental donors scaled down or closed many democracy assistance programs that wereprioritized before the Rose Revolution. Certain US-funded organizations withdrew from sectors of electoral aid, political partybuilding, NGO building and independent media strengthening because the opposition to the Saakashvili government andcontrol over its activities was no longer considered as necessary (Mitchell, 2009: 130). What is more, US donors started todiscriminate certain elements of Georgian civil society depriving of funds those NGOs that continued to criticize the gov-ernment (Muskhelishvili and Jorjoliani, 2009: 695).

In Ukraine, the rise to power of pro-democratic and pro-Western Yushchenko was welcomed by the US governmentequally warmly. During his rst visit to the US, President Yushchenko was honored by the opportunity to address a jointsession of the US Congress and his speech was interrupted by applause 26 times ve times with standing ovations (Nynka,2005). Most importantly, the US government saw Yushchenko as the only reliable ally among Ukrainian political leaders in itseffort to bring Ukraine into NATO. His value to the US was further reinforced by increasing public support for the pro-Russianand NATO-skeptic Party of Regions and its leader Viktor Yanukovych. The linkage between the democratization goals(consolidating gains of the Orange Revolution) and security interests (preserving the US-friendly executive) created pre-conditions for a political bias in US-funded democracy assistance programs in Ukraine. It is hypothesized in this article that

2. US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191 832.1. Electoral aid

The 2004 presidential elections that triggered the Orange Revolution drew a special attention of the US government. In2004, several famous US political leaders (Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George H.W. Bush, and others) visitedUkraine with a mission to persuade President Leonid Kuchma not to rig the forthcoming elections. At the programmatic level,the US Agency for International Development (USAID) allocated almost $1.5 million for election-related activities (Sushko andPrystayko, 2006: 135). Ukrainian NGOs received enough money to carry out independent exit polls, produce television spotsencouraging people to vote, publish and distribute literature explaining to people their rights, andmonitor violations of thoserights (Kempe and Solonenko, 2005: 118).

The special attention paid by the Bush administration can be explained by its discontent with Kuchmas policies and non-democratic rule. However, with a pro-Western President Yushchenko being in charge of Ukrainian foreign policy, the situ-ation seemed to have radically changed. Following the general hypothesis of this article, one could expect the US to signif-icantly reduce or even terminate funding for electoral aid programs in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. At least, thishypothesis should be valid with regard to the 2006 parliamentary elections because Yanukovych and his Party of Regions hadnot returned to power by that time. In addition, one should look for any bias of US programs in favor of the Orange politicalforces.

All interviewed US assistance providers claimed that electoral aid continued to be provided on demand. An interviewedrepresentative of the USAID Mission in Ukraine (USAID/Ukraine) who spoke on the condition of anonymity argued that theUS government often made additional resources available to support election activities, especially when election-relatedneeds could not be foreseen (USAID/Ukraine representative, 2011). Sergey Reshetov, an expert for Democracy SmallGrants Program at the US Embassy in Ukraine, echoed this argument by saying that the US Embassy had announced addi-tional competitions for funding before every parliamentary and presidential elections: I dont remember a single year whenwe have not supported the national elections in Ukraine. He also admitted that local elections usually received less attention(Reshetov, 2011).

Election monitoring and exit polls can be regarded as two most important programs in the electoral aid sector. Accord-ingly, they can serve as a litmus test when judging whether US funding for electoral aid programs remained steady in Ukraine.Therefore it is important to check if the US governmental donors funded election monitoring and exit polls not only duringthe 2004 presidential elections but also during the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections.after the Orange Revolution US governmental donors revised their priorities, so as to avoid strengthening Yushchenkospolitical rivals.

What democracy assistance programs should be examined? This article focuses on the following ve sectors that wereprioritized by US donors before the Orange Revolution: electoral aid, political party development, legislative strengthening,NGO development and independent media strengthening. It is assumed that the US attention to the free and fair electoralprocess in Ukraine should have decreased as it already had its favorite leaders in power. It is also hypothesized that the USshould have reduced support for the Verkhovna Rada as it was dominated by the Party of Regions and often opposedYushchenkos policies. Similarly, it is assumed that US-funded organizations should have discriminated the Party of Regionsand other Yushchenkos political rivals when providing training for Ukrainian political parties. Finally, it is hypothesized thatUS governmental donors should have cut funding for watchdog NGOs and independent media as the US was no longerinterested in discrediting the incumbent Ukrainian government.

Before testing the outlined hypotheses, a clear dividing line needs to be drawn between diplomatic and programmaticlevels of democracy protection. In general, the external actor can contribute to the democratic consolidation in two majorways. First, it can try to constrain the government of the edgling democracy and prevent it from violating democratic rulesand procedures. Based on the principle of democratic conditionality, the external actor can apply public criticism, backstagediplomatic pressure or economic sanctions as a means to deter the government from non-democratic actions. We call thislevel of democracy assistance the diplomatic level as it refers to the interaction of two governments, that is, the politicalleadership of the donor country and their counterparts in the recipient country. The diplomatic level of US democracyassistance in Ukraine has been examined elsewhere (Zielys, 2010) and is not dealt with in this article.

Second, the external actor can try to enable the political opposition and civil society of the edgling democracy, and thuslevel the playing eld and ensure greater government accountability. To achieve that, the external actor funds various pro-grams that promote political pluralism in the recipient country. On the donor countrys side, the main actors are govern-mental and nongovernmental organizations (agencies, funds, institutes, and others) that administer and/or implementdemocracy assistance programs. Since those organizations are analyzed as part of the state-implemented democracy pro-tection, they must be funded from the state budget of the donor country. We call this level of democracy assistance theprogrammatic level, and this article deals namely with this level of US democracy assistance in Ukraine. The followingresearch draws on a series of expert interviews with US assistance providers and recipients conducted by the authors of thisarticle in Kyiv in FebruaryMarch 2011, as well as on the available statistical data and published reports of organizationsinvolved.

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 819184In the eld of election monitoring the most active US donor was the National Democratic Institute (NDI). It both deployedits own observers to Ukraine and funded election observation missions organized by other local and foreign organizations.During the 2004 presidential elections, the Central Election Commission of Ukraine ofcially registered 1274 NDI observers.During the 2006 parliamentary elections, this number plummeted to a mere 15 observers, and it rose again to 41 during the2007 early parliamentary elections. At rst sight it seems that NDI has completely lost its interest in the electoral process inUkraine since 2004. In fact, NDI did fund numerous missions of other organizations during the 2006 and 2007 elections,instead of sending its own observers. In 2006, NDI supported the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), which had the largestlocal mission of 3166 ofcially registered observers, and the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations(ENEMO), which sent the second largest foreign mission of 440 observers. In 2007, NDI again provided support to the ENEMOmission, which had 481 ofcially registered observers and was the largest foreign mission that year. As regards local orga-nizations, NDI diverted its support from CVU to the Civil Network OPORA, which entered the eld of electionmonitoring with54 observers. NDI continued its cooperation with OPORA during the 2010 presidential elections when this organizationdeployed some 2000 local observers (OPORA representative, 2011).

Apart from election monitoring, the other important safeguard of transparent electoral process is an independent exit pollconducted on the day of voting. Indeed, the results of such poll were highly publicized during the 2004 presidential electionsand helped to expose the election fraud. In 2004, the exit poll, titled as national, was carried out by the Ukrainian NGODemocratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF). On the eve of the 2010 presidential elections, the national exit poll drew a lot ofmedia attention again but this time because of the lack of foreign funding. The organizers publicly addressed all presidentialcandidates and ordinary citizens calling for nancial support (UNITER, 2010). Can US governmental donors be blamed forterminating their support for exit polls in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution?

During the 2004 presidential elections, the national exit poll was funded by a group of foreign donors, includingthree US governmental donors: USAID, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US Embassy (DIF, 2007). The pollwas also supported by the Eurasia Foundation, which is funded mostly by USAID and, therefore, can qualify as USgovernmental donor as well. After 2004, USAID and Eurasian Foundation did not support the national exit poll anymore.However, the rest two US governmental donors, NED and US Embassy, funded the poll during both 2006 and 2007parliamentary elections. The exact sums allocated by donors are not available. Therefore, it is impossible to compare USsupport year-by-year. Nevertheless, one can conclude that the US did not withdraw from this eld after the OrangeRevolution and continued supporting exit poll in Ukraine. Even in 2010, when the poll organizers faced nancial dif-culties, NED and US Embassy were still among the donors. In fact, it was not Americans who withdrew, but Europeans. Incomparison to the 2007 donors list, governmental donors of Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway disappearedfrom that list (DIF, 2010).

The collected evidence does not support the hypothesis that the US government, being satisedwith Yushchenkos foreignpolicy, may have abandoned its electoral aid programs in Ukraine. US governmental donors continued to fund both electionmonitoring and exit polls after the Orange Revolution. Naturally, the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections received lessattention than the 2004 presidential elections but they were not neglected. There is only one caveat to be mentioned. SomeUkrainian NGOs dealing with election monitoring reported that foreign donors did not work on important issues in theperiods between election campaigns (Shapovalova, 2010: 6). Various laws on elections can be mentioned as an example.According to Ihor Kohut, the Chair of Ukrainian NGO Laboratory of Legislative Initiatives, the US was very interested in theelectoral legislation in Ukraine but recently it has not paid enough nancial attention to it (Kohut, 2011). However, thecollected evidence suggested that US nancial attention to the electoral process in Ukraine arose each timewhen a nationalelectoral campaign was approaching.

One more hypothesis, which needs to be tested in this section, assumes that US electoral aid programs may have beenbiased in favor of the Orange political forces, namely pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. The2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections were won by the Party of Regions which opposed President Yushchenko. Therefore,one could expect US-funded assessments to be more critical toward the electoral process than assessments of other inter-national organizations. To test this hypothesis, we compare respective reports published by the Organization of Security andCooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission and International Republican Institute (IRI).

The analysis of OSCE and IRI reports does not support the hypothesis of US donors bias. The OSCE and IRI reports on the2006 parliamentary elections presented the same conclusions. Both OSCE and IRI observers criticized only some organiza-tional aspects, such as incorrect voter lists, overcrowded polling stations and lengthy vote counting process. The OSCE reportadditionally noted the insufcient transparency of campaign nancing (OSCE, 2006; IRI, 2006). Following the 2007 earlyparliamentary elections, OSCE and IRI missions again published very similar reports. Both documents criticized last-minuteamendments to the election law with regard to home voting and compiling voter lists. IRI observers additionally reported afew cases when Ukrainian political party observers assisted voters into the voting booths and possibly inuenced their votes(OSCE, 2007; IRI, 2007). To summarize, there is no evidence supporting the assumption that US-funded organizations couldhave implemented biased election monitoring against the victorious Party of Regions.

In general, the interviewed experts claimed that any inuence of a foreign donor on the nal report of election observationmission is not likely. According to a representative of one of the largest Ukrainian election observation NGOs OPORA, foreigncountries fund local observers because they are interested in getting a real picture of voting. For this reason, they choose NGOsthat are considered to be an unbiased party, unlike local government and political parties. The interviewee added that, even ifthey had such intentions, foreign donors often could not inuence the substance of the reports due to organizational

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191 85limitations. More than once, OPORA has completed its report less than an hour before the press conference and thus left notime for any donors review (OPORA representative, 2011).

2.2. Political party development

There are a few political parties in Ukraine that could be considered as hostile to US interests. First of all, it is theCommunist Party of Ukraine (CPU), which dominated the Verkhovna Rada throughout 1990s. In comparisonwith some othercommunist successor parties in the post-communist region, CPU underwent little reform after the fall of the Soviet Union andit retained the fairly orthodox ideology. In spite of this, Ukrainian communists were part of the ruling coalition in 20062007.

The Party of Regions (PoR) also promotes policies that are in conict with US security interests. During the 2004 presi-dential elections, PoR leader Yanukovych emerged as a Russian-backed competitor to the pro-Western candidate Yush-chenko. Russian public relations consultants helped to build up Yanukovychs campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putinpersonally demonstrated support for PoR leader (Kempe and Solonenko, 2005: 124125). Later, Yanukovych should haveantagonized the Bush administrationwhen he halted Ukraines integrationwith NATO after becoming PrimeMinister in 2006(Finn, 2006).

It is hypothesized in this section that US-funded programs of political party development in Ukraine may have discrim-inated CPU and PoR. Some previous research indicated that, since the Orange Revolution, most US assistance has gone to theOrange camp, that is, individual constituent parties of the pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc(Bader, 2010: 118). At the same time, PoR has received little assistance and CPU has barely received any assistance at all (Bader,2010: 123124).

In fact, our own research did not yield any evidence which would suggest that certain Ukrainian parties could have beendiscriminated by US governmental donors. The Resident Country Director of the IRI branch in Ukraine (IRI/Ukraine) ChrisHolzen claimed that his organization did a lot of work with PoR. He illustrated his argument by mentioning that, in 2009, thehighest percentage (around 20 percent) of participants in IRI-organized seminars came from PoR. According to Holzen, hecould not understand accusations that IRI discriminates PoR: When I hear people saying this: Oh, you are some Americanorganization, you are here, you areworking against the Party of Regions because they are pro-Russian and you are Americans,I am so surprised that I hear people saying this. Although Holzen admitted that PoR did not always adhere to democraticprinciples internally, he believed it was meaningful for IRI/Ukraine to look for young PoR members, who wished to changetheir party from within, and work with them (Holzen, 2011).

The IRI/Ukraine head also disagreed with allegations that US donors ignored CPU. According to Holzen, IRI/Ukraineinvited the communists to its programs but, with the exception of the city of Kharkiv and occasionally some people in theLuhansk region, CPU was not interested to attend these programs. They think its weird when we reach out [to them],they are like: Why would we come? Why are you inviting us?, said Holzen. He also admitted that IRI/Ukraine did notattempt to persuade the communists: We say: Look, you may come or not but dont ever say you were not invited(Holzen, 2011).

An interviewed representative of the NDI branch in Ukraine (NDI/Ukraine) who spoke on the condition of anonymityassured that NDI/Ukraine was working with all parties represented in the parliament and with some non-parliamentaryparties as well. He stated that none of Ukrainian parties had absolutely refused assistance from NDI/Ukraine. PoR mem-bers participated in various NDI programs, although mostly at the local level. According to the NDI/Ukraine representative,they had worked with the communists as well: We have engaged with them a little bit. They have not refused [to cooperate]directly. We stay in touch with them and offer assistance when relevant. As an example, he mentioned that CPU hadparticipated in the training for party poll watchers (NDI/Ukraine representative, 2011).

In its turn, the CPU leadership tends to deny partys involvement in any US-funded training. An interviewed communistMember of Verkhovna Rada stated that he personally had not seen any invitations for CPU to participate in IRI or NDI trainingseither at the level of the partys Central Committee, or at the level of regional and district committees. Therefore, the questionof CPUs participation in such trainings has not been discussed by any collegial body of the party (Communist Member ofVerkhovna Rada, 2011).

The collected evidence did not support the hypothesis that US governmental donors could have discriminated certainUkrainian parties that opposed to President Yushchenkos foreign policy and were regarded as hostile to US interests. On thecontrary, Party of Regions, as the best organized political party in Ukraine, was able to take more US assistance with each year.US assistance providers were not prejudiced against this party and let its members to participate freely in various trainingsand seminars. Meanwhile, US assistance to CPU was probably limited to sporadic contacts with its individual members. It issafe to conclude that CPU was not involved due to the lack of interest on both sides.

Finally, the possible bias of US party development programs could havemanifested itself as an attempt to establish the US-friendly coalition of parties. This is precisely the strategy which has been applied by US governmental donors in Ukrainebefore the Orange Revolution. For example, on the eve of the 2002 parliamentary elections, NDI gathered around tenUkrainian opposition parties in Poland to discuss opportunities for cooperation. At that occasion, NDI representatives urgedparty leaders to unite into an alliance, nominate only one opposition candidate per single member district and thus challengethe Kuchma regime (Bader, 2010: 117). Did any of US-funded organizations try to reunite the Orange political forces after the2006 parliamentary elections, when PoR and CPU forged a ruling coalition? In fact, we could not nd evidence indicating anyUS efforts of this kind. Holzen admitted that IRI was involved in coalition building activities in the past. However, since the

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 819186Orange Revolution, IRI has only encouraged issue-based coalitions on the local level and never attempted to reunite theOrange camp (Holzen, 2011).

2.3. Legislative strengthening

During his term, President Yushchenko has never enjoyed a full support of the Parliament. Although his bloc Our Ukrainecame rst in the 2002 parliamentary elections, it secured a mere 112 out of 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada. In 2005,Yushchenko won Radas support for the proposed candidacy of Tymoshenko as Prime Minister thanks to the revolutionaryeuphoria. However, the relationship between the President and the Parliament steadily deteriorated afterward. In the 2006parliamentary elections, Our Ukraine came only third surrendering the victory to Yanukovych and his Party of Regions. PoRjoined the ruling coalitionwith the communists and socialists and the Verkhovna Rada approved Yanukovych as a new PrimeMinister on 4 August 2006.

The ascendancy of PoR and CPU in the Ukrainian Parliament should have been a clear disappointment for the Bushadministration. Both parties opposed President Yushchenkos foreign policy and could be considered as hostile to US securityinterests. Therefore, we can hypothesize that US governmental donors may have reacted by terminating assistance to theUkrainian Parliament or, at least, cutting funds for legislative strengthening programs.

The very rst glance at developments on the ground refutes the assumption that the USmay have terminated its assistanceto the PoR-dominated Verkhovna Rada. USAID/Ukraine has been supporting the Ukrainian Parliament since 1994. Accordingto USAID, this represents one of USAIDs longest running, sustained legislative strengthening efforts anywhere in the world(USAID, 2008: 1). As a rule, USAID used to choose Indiana University as themajor contractor for implementing this program inUkraine. The term of President Yushchenko roughly coincides with the ve-year Parliament Development Project (PDP)carried out by Indiana University from August 2003 to August 2008. The main PDP goals included strengthening Parliamentsinternal management systems, improving executivelegislative relations and enhancing citizen access to the legislativeprocess (USAID, 2008: 4).

The Orange Revolution did not have any impact on the implementation of this program. According to an interviewed PDPrepresentative, PDP staff monitored political developments in the country but the goals of the program did not change. PDPworked mainly with parliamentary committees trying to increase the transparency of their work and enhance theinvolvement of NGOs (PDP representative, 2011). The open animosity between President Yushchenko and the VerkhovnaRada in 20062007 did not impel USAID to terminate its support to the Ukrainian Parliament. In 2008, USAID offered IndianaUniversity a new three-year contract to continue the Parliament Development Project (named PDP II) in Ukraine. What ismore, USAID did not decrease but, on the contrary, increased the budget of this program. In the period of 20032008, theaverage annual PDP budget was $1.1 million. For the period of 20092011, the projected annual PDP II budget rose to $1.3million. This nding clearly contradicts the assumption that US governmental donors may have been less willing to engagewith the PoR-dominated Parliament.

Another illustrative example is the development of cooperation between the US Congress and the Verkhovna Rada. TheOrange Revolution became a catalyst which spurred US-Ukrainian interparliamentary relations. In January 2005, the USHouse of Representatives adopted the resolution which called for the establishment and full funding of a staff exchangeprogram between the House of Representatives and the Verkhovna Rada as soon as possible (US House of Representatives,2005). Although the agreement to establish such program was signed back in 1999, the interaction between the two par-liaments remained conned to the format of video conferences. Following the Orange Revolution, the US showed muchgreater interest to proceed with this program. Formally, the House Democracy Assistance Commission approved a legislativestrengthening partnership with Ukraine in November 2006. Within the framework of this program, several seminars andtrainings were organized for Ukrainian members of parliament and parliamentary staff in both Ukraine and the US. It shouldbe noted that the exchange programwas approved two months after the new ruling coalition, comprising PoR, CPU and thesocialists, had been built. Such timing contradicts the assumption that the US may have reacted to the establishment of theundesired coalition by withdrawing its support for the Verkhovna Rada.

One more US-funded legislative strengthening program should be mentioned in this context. After the Orange Revolution,USAID decided to terminate an NDI-implemented program which aimed to introduce to Ukrainian parliamentary partiespeculiarities of work in factions and best practices of coalition building. However, this fact does not support the hypothesis ofthis section either. According to the interviewed NDI/Ukraine representative, USAIDs decision not to extend the programwasmade in the period when the Orange forces still prevailed in the Parliament, that is, before PoR gained the majority (NDI/Ukraine representative, 2011). Again, such timing does not prove a link between political developments in Ukraine andvolumes of US funding for legislative strengthening programs in this country.

In order to obtain a full picture of US legislative strengthening programs in Ukraine, onemore assumption should be tested.It can be assumed that US governmental donorsmayhave retained the total amount of assistance to theVerkhovnaRada but, atthe same time, discriminated PoR and CPU factions, when choosing aid recipients within the Parliament. The PDP represen-tative rejected such assumption stating that PDP did not apply any selection criteria and offered assistance to all parliamentaryfactions, including the communists: We are trying to be non-partisan. We are offering it to everyone. Whoever is answering,weareproviding. The interviewee added that themost activeparticipants of PDP-organized trainings hadbeen the two largestfactions of the time, Party of Regions and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and none of the factions had ever refused to participate (PDPrepresentative, 2011). Similarly, US-funded programs of inter-parliamentary cooperation also involved representatives of all

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191 87factions, including the communistswhose ideologywas incompatiblewithUS interests. The communistMemberof Parliamentconrmed that representatives of theCPU faction tookpart in interparliamentarymeetings, seminars andexchanges organizedby the US Congress in the US territory (Communist Member of Verkhovna Rada, 2011).

2.4. NGO development

The US support for the Ukrainian NGO sector was instrumental in setting the stage for the Orange Revolution. It could beclearly seen that NGO activities were highly politicized at that time. In fact, NGOs played the role of political opposition to theincumbent Kuchma regime. What happened after the Orange Revolution? Following the hypothesis of this article, one couldexpect US donors to cut funding for the Ukrainian NGO sector and divert assistance to the governmental sector. According tothe logic of security-burdened democracy assistance, the US government may have lost interest in funding Ukrainianwatchdog NGOs, whose activities would likely result in criticizing the executive and thus undermine the public condence inUS-favored President Yushchenko.

After the Orange Revolution, the biggest US governmental donor USAID indeed scaled down democracy assistance pro-grams in Ukraine. This is reected by changes in USAID funds expended annually under the heading of Democratic Reforms.The USAID assistance to democratic reforms peaked in the scal year of 2005 (from 1 October 2004 to 30 September 2005),which coincides with the Orange Revolution. Before the revolution, the funding was steadily increasing from $12.17million in2002 to $36.94 million in 2005. After the revolution, it started to gradually decrease and equaled $21.60 million in 2008 (U.S.Department of State, 2010). Not all of those funds were allocated to the NGO sector but statistics on USAID democracyassistance reect the general trend.

The sudden withdrawal of foreign donors from Ukraine after the Orange Revolution has been documented by the annualsurvey of Ukrainian NGOs, which is conducted by the local NGO CCC Creative Center. According to this survey, following theOrange Revolution the number of NGOs that received grants from foreign donors dropped almost twice: from 51 percent in2004 to 27 percent in 2005. At the same time, the share of foreign funding in budgets of those Ukrainian NGOs that stillreceived it did not change (Palyvoda and Golota, 2010: 4142). Although this survey does not address US donors specically,its results suggest that external funding has signicantly decreased inwake of the Orange Revolution. This state of affairs wasnot lasting, however. The number of Ukrainian NGOs funded from abroad returned to the pre-revolutionary level as soon as2006, according to the same survey (Palyvoda and Golota, 2010: 41). It cannot be ruled out that the quick return of foreigndonors to Ukraine was related to PoR victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections.

Of course, not all US governmental donors reduced their nancial support to Ukrainian NGOs after the Orange Revolution.For example, the Democracy Small Grants Program, funded by the US Department of State and administered by the USEmbassy in Ukraine, enjoyed a budget increase after the revolution. In the scal year of 2004, the budget equaled $521thousand. In 2005, it increased to $686 thousand, and then it surged to $887 one year later. In 20062009, the budgetuctuated randomly but it never went down to the pre-revolution level (US Embassy in Ukraine, 2011a). However, the in-crease of funding was rather modest in this case, if you compare it to the mentioned reduction of the USAID general spendingon democratic reforms in Ukraine.

The available statistical data does not give a precise picture of changes in US assistance to Ukrainian NGOs and, therefore,needs to be complemented by evidence obtained from interviews with representatives of Ukrainian NGO community. Ingeneral, all interviewees pointed out the decrease of US assistance to Ukrainian civil society after the Orange Revolution. Intheir opinion, US donors were too optimistic toward democratic perspectives in Ukraine. For example, this opinion wasshared by an interviewed representative of Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF): After the Orange Revolution, our donorsdecided that democracy has been established in Ukraine, and so the funding has been cut. Of course, not decisively but partly(DIF representative, 2011). The head of Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Volodymyr Yavorsky echoed the argument.According to him, after the Orange Revolution everybody thought that Ukraine was already a democratic country and it didnot need external funding anymore. Yavorsky assessed such conclusion of foreign donors as strange (Yavorsky, 2011). Thehead of Laboratory of Legislative Initiatives Kohut also noted that many democracy assistance programs, which were nancedby US donors, ceased to exist after the Orange Revolution. However, the revolutionwas only one of several reasons accountingfor this change. According to Kohut, the other important reasonwas optimizing of funds by means of coordinating and tasksharing among international donors (Kohut, 2011).

There were several additional factors reinforcing the impression of Ukrainian NGOs that they have been abandoned by USdonors. First, USAID and other foreign donors started to apply a new assistance strategy after the Orange Revolution. Theirfocus shifted from institutional development of many NGOs to implementation of particular projects by the strongest.Recipient organizations in Ukraine have been told that donors are not willing to cover administrative costs and expect NGOsto make their own contributions to the projects (Shapovalova, 2010: 7). Second, USAID centralized the distribution of itsassistance. Before the Orange Revolution, there were many civil society programs and many local contractors. In words ofUkrainian NGO sector researchers Lyubov Palyvoda and Volodymyr Kupriy, there were big money and many players in thateld (Palyvoda and Kupriy, 2011). After the revolution, this situation changed completely. According to an interviewedrepresentative of the local NGO Freedom House Ukraine, USAID now is trying to get one contractor for bigger amount ofmoney for bigger portion of the sector (Freedom House Ukraine representative, 2011).

So far, this section addressed the issue of cuts in US funding for Ukrainian NGOs. The other important issue is the balancebetween assisting the government and civil society. Did US governmental donors offer their support to the Orange

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 819188government at the expense of the third sector? The interviewed USAID/Ukraine representative claimed that all programsunder the heading of Democracy and Governance were equally important and USAIDs attention to each of them remainedunchanged after the Orange Revolution (USAID/Ukraine representative, 2011). However, available statistical data clearlycontradicts such claims. According to data published on the USAID website, the 20042007 period saw a 71 percent decreasein the budget of the program Strengthening Citizen Participation and a simultaneous 59 percent increase in funds for theGood Governance program (USAID, 2006).

The surge in US assistance to the Ukrainian governmental sector has been observed by interviewed NGO representatives aswell. The interviewed DIF representative noted that foreign donors redistributed their funding in favor of the governmentalsector after the Orange Revolution. According to the interviewee, this observation applies mostly to European donors, but toAmerican ones as well (DIF representative, 2011). Yavorsky, representing 29 Ukrainian human rights organizations, went evenfurther by stating that over 95 percent of foreign aid has been channeled through the Ukrainian government after 2004(Yavorsky, 2011). By contrast, the providers of US assistance insisted that they never gave up supporting Ukrainian NGOs. Forexample, the Democracy Small Grants Program administered by the US Embassy in Ukraine has reserved its funds exclusivelyfor NGOs and never worked with state institutions. The expert for this program Reshetov added that the other major donor,USAID, also continued to support NGOs by involving them in its government-oriented projects (Reshetov, 2011).

Some Ukrainian NGOs failed to adapt to post-revolution strategies of foreign donors. According to Palyvoda and Kupriy,donors then expected NGOs to start cooperating with the government but not all NGOs felt comfortable or were capable toforge partnerships with state institutions. In addition, the topics of externally funded projects narrowed after 2004 and someUkrainian NGOs simply lacked professional skills to participate in those projects (Palyvoda and Kupriy, 2011).

For donors part, they probably made a mistake by not communicating to Ukrainian NGOs the new strategy of assistance.Palyvoda and Kupriy regretted that NGOs were not explicitly told that their role had changed and now they were supposed tosupply products and services instead of going out on the streets and advocating against something. Unlike some otherdonors, USAID/Ukraine has never discussed its strategy with local partners: We have not heard about any consultations,discussions or round tables regarding the [USAID] strategy and its revision (Palyvoda and Kupriy, 2011). The US donorsfailure to set Ukrainian NGOs for closer cooperationwith the government partly accounts for the feeling among NGOs that theUS abandoned Ukrainian civil society after the Orange Revolution.

2.5. Independent media strengthening

The US assistance to Ukrainian independent media dates back to 1993, when USAID distributed its rst grants in thissector. During the years of the Kuchma regime, external support was crucial to preserving an alternative point of view inUkrainian media coverage. Did the situation change after the Orange Revolution? Following the general hypothesis of thispaper, one could assume that US governmental donors may have become reluctant to nancemedia strengthening programs.After the US-supported Orange leaders assumed power in Ukraine, the USmay have no longer been eager to facilitate publicscrutiny of Ukrainian government policies.

In the sector of media support, the agship programwas the USAID-funded Strengthening Independent Media in Ukraine(U-Media). This ve-year program was launched in 2003 and implemented by Internews, in cooperation with InternationalResearch & Exchanges Board (IREX) and few other organizations. It had an average budget of $2 million to spend annually onimproving legal, managerial and journalistic skills of personnel employed in Ukrainian media outlets. The Orange Revolutionhad virtually no impact on U-Media. In October 2008, when the initial ve-year term expired, USAID extended the programfor another three years signing a new contract with Internews. The level of funding stayed at $2 million per year. The constantUS funding for the central media assistance program clearly contradicts the assumed logic of security-burdened US approachto media strengthening in Ukraine.

Apart from USAIDs U-Media program, the other signicant source of support for Ukrainian independent media was theMedia Development Fund (MDF) administered by the US Embassy in Ukraine. It operated as a grant-giving entity providingnancial support to Ukrainian journalists, media organizations and other NGOs for media-related projects. It should be notedthat the MDF budget fell from $882 thousand in 2006 to $424 thousand in 2007. The number of projects nanced by MDFdecreased from 117 to 54 in the same period. In spite of the slight recovery ($540 thousand) in 2008, the MDF budget furthershrank to $392 thousand in 2009 (US Embassy in Ukraine, 2011b). The expert for MDF at the US Embassy Olha Zhyr-yachenkova explained funding cuts by the fact that freedom of speech was considered to be one of the biggest achievementsof the Orange Revolution (Zhyryachenkova, 2011). The example of reduced MDF budget does not allow to reject the hy-pothesis outright and encourages to study the motivation of US donors more thoroughly.

Interviewed US assistance recipients mostly acknowledged the relative drawdown of US funding for media-related pro-jects in the wake of the Orange Revolution. Natalya Ligacheva, the Editor-in-Chief of Ukrainian media monitoring websiteTelekritika, observed that in 20052006 Western grant givers signicantly reduced their support for media NGOs as theyconcluded that everything is now ne in Ukraine and freedom of speech has been established. Telekritika also felt theconsequences because there were much less projects to participate in (Ligacheva, 2011). An interviewed representative ofanother Ukrainian NGO, Institute of Mass Information (IMI), echoed the observation that US nancial support for the mediasector was in decline during the Orange times (IMI representative, 2011).

Onemore local NGO, Internews Ukraine, faced severe cuts in funding somewhat later. The head of the organization NatalyaPedchenko recalled that in 20032008 InterNews Ukraine was part of the U-Media project and enjoyed an annual budget of

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191 89$400500 thousand. In 2009, its budget shrank tenfold to a mere $50 thousand. Pedchenko noted that US donors cut thefunding because democracy came to Ukraine (Pedchenko, 2011).

The IREX branch in Ukraine (IREX/Ukraine), another major player in Ukrainian media sector, did not experience anysignicant cuts in funding after the Orange Revolution. Since 2002, IREX/Ukraine has been implementing the Ukraine MediaPartnership Program nanced by the US Embassy in Ukraine. This program pairs independent Ukrainian and USmedia outletsand conducts exchanges to encourage sharing of editorial and business practices. According to the coordinator of the programSvitlana Zholobaylo, the number of partnerships was uctuating between ve and two in the post-revolution period. Shenoted that the decrease in the number of partnerships was balanced by better opportunities to send Ukrainian journalists tointernships in the US (Zholobaylo, 2011).

Although somewhat mixed, the collected evidence tends to support the assumption that US governmental donors havereduced their nancial assistance to Ukrainian independent media in the wake of the Orange Revolution. However, this doesnot automatically conrm the hypothesis regarding the security-driven motivation of the US government. Did US donorsreduce funding for media-related projects in order to shield President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko frompublic scrutiny and criticism?

Interviewed representatives of Ukrainian NGOs provided quite a different assessment. As noted by the IMI representative,violations of journalist rights became less frequent during the Orange times. As a result, US-funded projects on monitoringsuch violations were no longer appropriate. However, US governmental donors did not withdraw from the media sector. IMItried to draw donors attention to the poor quality of Ukrainian media reports and invited donors to focus on training ofjournalists and pursuing certain media standards. According to the IMI representative, the problem did not lie in the au-thorities, not in their pressure anymore but rather in journalists themselves who were not willing to change. There is aproblem of paid content in Ukrainian media coverage. We put an emphasis namely on this [problem] and Americans took ourposition into account. Unlike European donors that withdrew from Ukraine after 2004, US donors decided to stay in themedia sector. In interviewees words, US donors considered withdrawing in 57 years if everything continued to be ne but,until then, they were ready to work on improving the quality of media reporting (IMI representative, 2011).

The Telekritika head Ligacheva also stressed that US support was essential in ghting the so-called jeansa, that is,corruption in mass media (paid content, covert advertising, and so on). Since December 2006, the website Telekritika, whichadvocates independent and impartial media, has merged into the Ukrainian business holding Glavred. Various grants ob-tained from Western donors (mostly, American) constituted 25 percent of Telekritikas annual budget and the rest of it wasnanced by the holding. Nevertheless, Western grants enabled Telekritika to retain the independence of its editorial policy.Ligacheva acknowledged that sometimes Telekritika was pressured by holding owners to engage in jeansa but Telekritikacould resist them by saying: We cannot do this as we pursue independent editorial policies. We have received grants fromWestern donors to monitor cases of covert advertising in Ukrainian media. [The cooperation with Western donors] is veryuseful for you as owners of the holding because it improves your image abroad (Ligacheva, 2011).

3. Conclusions

The general hypothesis developed and tested in this article was largely refuted. We could not nd any reliable evidenceindicating that after the Orange Revolution US-funded democracy assistance programs in Ukraine were burdened by USsecurity interests and biased in favor of the US-friendly leadership. US governmental donors continued to focus on free andfair electoral process, participation in US-funded training for political parties was not conned to the favored Orange campand interparliamentary cooperation between the US Congress and the Verkhovna Rada advanced even after allegedly pro-Russian parties had forged a ruling coalition.

Some indications of security-burdened assistance have been detected in the sectors of NGO development and mediastrengthening. In the wake of the Orange Revolution, US governmental donors reduced their support for Ukrainian NGOs andindependent media, while diverting funds to Ukrainian state institutions. However, this shift can be explained by reasonsother than US security interests. The main idea behind those cuts was to revise the assistance strategy and adapt it to post-revolution realities in Ukraine. US donors decided to stop funding the institutional development of many NGOs and focus onthe implementation of particular projects that often involved cooperation between the most professional NGOs and Ukrai-nian state institutions. The other decisionmade by US donorswas to cut funding formonitoring andwatchdog activities in themedia sector and concentrate on the quality of media reporting instead. In both cases, the new approach produced quitemanyUkrainian civil society organizations that suddenly felt abandoned by US donors.

After having tested and refuted the hypothesis, it is of the utmost importance to discuss which assumptions and whyproved to be wrong. As outlined in the beginning of this article, the political bias in democracy assistance programs can occurif the donor country is worried about the overall stability in the recipient country or if the donor country is interested toprevent certain groups from coming to power. The results of the research suggest that the Bush administration either did notconsider the domestic political competition as a threat to stability in Ukraine or did not believe in the ability of the Orangeleadership to monopolize the power and govern efciently. Furthermore, US decision makers likely took into account deepdivisions within the Ukrainian society and the considerable support for Party of Regions in the eastern and southern parts ofthe country. Therefore, the US government refrained from implementing its democracy assistance programs in a way, whichcould be perceived as meddling in Ukraines internal affairs. As a result, US-funded programs did not explicitly favor theOrange camp and discriminate other political forces alleged to be hostile to US interests.

P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 819190The relative strength of the opposition may be the key factor which makes the Ukrainian case different from the Georgianone. Indeed, security-burdened US democracy assistance programs in Georgia reported by other authors may have becomepossible due to the modest support base of Georgian opposition parties. The Rose leadership simply did not have equallystrong political rivals that would compete for their share of US assistance. However, to test this assumption, it is necessary toconduct a comparative analysis of Georgian and Ukrainian cases. The present article has set a framework for such futureresearch.

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P. Zielys, R. Rudinskait _e / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191 91

US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution1 Democratization goals and security interests2 US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine2.1 Electoral aid2.2 Political party development2.3 Legislative strengthening2.4 NGO development2.5 Independent media strengthening

3 ConclusionsReferences