The Challenge of ‘Stateness’ in Estonia and Ukraine

Sammanfattning: The aim of this dissertation is to examine the influence of the international actors i.e. the OSCE, Council of Europe, EU and Russia, on policy and legislative adaptation in two post-Soviet countries since 1991. These are Estonia and Ukraine. The central concept analysed in the dissertation is stateness. It is defined following Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996) as congruence between the territorial definition and the right of citizenship in the state, which has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in the territory, and an effective state bureaucracy. For the analysis, certain policy areas are chosen which operationalise the dimensions of stateness: monopoly on the use of force (borders, army and police), state identity (citizenship, national minorities and language), and basic administration (public administration, education and information). In the democratisation and state-building literature, stateness is a neglected concept, as is the international influence on it. Surprisingly so, as it is an important condition for state and regime stability, especially democracy. To address this gap, the dissertation clarifies the definition of the concept of stateness and analyses the international influence on it in the two countries. This dissertation centres on the impact of the international actors as the causal factor in consolidation of stateness. To investigate this, it analyses in a systematic manner the influence of their policy demands and expectations on adaptation (i.e. policy adoption and change) in the policy areas operationalising stateness in Estonia and Ukraine. As part of the analysis, it provides a detailed overview and comparison of the policy- and legislation-making in both countries after their independence in 1991. The method chosen is a cross-case comparison carried out according to a time-periodisation approach. The analysis illustrates the converging yet context-contingent impact of the international actors in the policy areas operationalising stateness. Therefore, the main finding confirms the emerging consensus in the literature that the international actors have an increasing yet differential impact in traditionally domestic policy areas. The dissertation’s contribution is twofold. First is the theoretical and conceptual contribution to state-building in comparative European politics by clarifying the definition of the concept of stateness. Second is the empirical contribution by providing an applicable operationalisation of the concept through policy areas, which permits its empirical analysis.