Governing through civil society? The making of a post-Soviet
political subject in Ukraine
Alexander Vorbrugg
Department of Human Geography|
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main|
Grüneburgplatz 1| PEG Gebäude
60323 Frankfurt| GERMANY
www.humangeographie.de/vorbrugg
E-Mail: [email protected]
Cite as: Vorbrugg, Alexander (forthcoming): Governing through civil society? The making of a
post-Soviet political subject in Ukraine. In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.
Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research, this study analyzes the work of a German political
foundation in Ukraine. Departing from a governmentality perspective that closely examines
concrete practices, I focus on the organization´s attempts to establish itself as a political actor.
This foundation aims to build more democratic political imaginations and open up different
spaces for contestation. However, in both its rationalities and practices, the foundation’s
project also (re)inscribes enclosures. It is both reflective and productive of boundaries
between those who qualify as full political subjects, and others who do not, and claims a preformed knowledge of democracy and civil society. In examining situated and ambivalent
claims to democracy and civil society - on the level of practices and beyond 'classic' liberal
contexts of governance - this paper demonstrates that studies of governmentality provide
analytical tools to shed light on subjects that have gained little attention in the field so far. It
further contributes to a deeper understanding of what kinds of publics and political realities
emerge in projects of 'actually existing democratization'.
Key words: Post-Soviet, Ukraine, governmentality, civil society, democratization, democracy's
publics
Introduction: post-Soviet politics
Broad anti-government protests in Belarus (2010), Russia (2011/2012), and Ukraine (2013/2014)
mostly hit the public by surprise. Media coverage within these countries and beyond described
these protests as something akin to the return of the political to a scene which has for some time
been characterized by authoritarian tendencies, passivity, and silence. The state repression that
followed these events, on the other hand, was soon displayed as reconfirming the assumption that
free political expression is hardly possible in, or virtually absent from, post-Soviet realities. After
the “Orange Revolution” in 2004, Western media often described Ukraine as a promising case of a
former Soviet republic making its way towards democracy (and the West), but soon thereafter as
drifting back towards an authoritarian Russian model. Legal reforms that facilitated state repression
against protesters and NGOs, court cases against oppositional figures, and the sometimes violent
suppression of oppositional movements were given substantial attention. In such accounts,
apparently, the understanding of emergent political formations along an East-West-axis has not lost
its attraction. When, in December 2013, protestors gathered for the largest demonstrations in
Ukraine since the Orange Revolution to contest the government and its decision to suspend the EU
Association Agreement, Western media tended to portray the situation as (nothing but) an
expression of a pro-European attitude, a call for Western values, and a rapprochement with the EU,
without seriously investigating who actually protested and why. Captions of photographs showing
protestors spraying Nazi symbols during the demonstrations that described them as 'pro-Western'
(read: democratic) youth are only one example of the rearticulation of Cold War rationalities. These
tend to settle the question of who ‘naturally’ occupies democratic (i.e., pro-Western demonstrators)
and anti-democratic (i.e., authoritarian governments) roles beforehand (c.f. Ciută and Klinke,
2010). Other accounts, by contrast, took the presence of ultra-nationalist and fascist factions as an
opportunity to declare the whole movement to be politically immature, anti-democratic, and thus
illegitimate - problematic enough to worry, not serious enough to care much about it. Such diverse
representations of these confusingly complex events were consistent in that they quickly bracketed
questions about conditions and contextuality, and reified frameworks of representation,
intelligibility, and judgment already in place. This echoes broader patterns of representation that
reduce post-Soviet political realities to images of rotten political systems and immature publics,
iterating stereotypes of Eastern Europe as “prone to anticivilizational tendencies, and, always in
need of developmental attention from the West” (Boyer, 2010, page 26; c.f. Chari and Verdery,
2009; Neumann, 1999; Todorova, 2009). This paper, in contrast, focuses on some specific and
contextualized articulations of democratization and political subjectivity in Ukraine.
I draw on participatory research with the regional office of a German political foundation
(Politische Stiftung) in Kiev. 1 These institutions, closely affiliated to parliamentary parties, dedicate
their work to democratization and political education within and outside Germany. Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet republics became a main area of their engagement during the 1990's. Foreign
missions are associated with notions of “development” and “democracy assistance”, and financed
by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). In 2010, €227
million was spent by German political foundations on foreign work, with €2.7 million on Ukraine
alone (Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), 2011, BMZ, personal
inquiry march 2013).
1
For the sake of keeping the anonymity of my interviewees secure, I refrain from naming the
foundation itself.
I got involved with the organization through a ten week internship in autumn 2010 while
conducting research for my diploma thesis. Having opened in 2008, the foundation's Ukrainian
office was in its third year of operation during my stay. A spirit of establishing the organization as a
political player was notable. Its formal task is to accompany, support, and enhance processes of
democratization through political education and the support of local nongovernmental groups and
movements. As its website states:
“The events of the Orange Revolution in the year 2004 became a chance for Ukraine to get on
a new, democratic path of development, providing Ukrainians the possibility to create a real,
active civil society. […] One of the main goals of the representation in Ukraine is the support
of an effective civil society and political education for citizens”.
More specifically, the organization, positioning itself on the political left, works on topics related to
gender, minority rights, and ecology, and focuses on NGOs, grassroots movements, and activists as
the main target groups for workshops, trainings, and public discussions. It aims to develop political
imaginations, and to enact models of democracy and civil society. I suggest that this project can be
adequately analyzed through what it claims to represent: an attempt to contest existing political
realities and to create new ones. My own attempt to describe multiple interdependencies,
implications and effects of this project, and to move beyond reifications of generalizing diagnoses
like neoliberalization, (failed) transition, or path-dependency, on the other hand, made it necessary
to “begin in the middle of things” (Tsing, 2005, page 2). I did this accordingly, with participatory
research and ethnomethodology substantially shaping the form of my project (c.f Ybema, 2009).
During my stay, I: fulfilled administrative and analytical tasks; attended public lectures and
roundtables; and took part in regular internal discussions and meetings with Ukrainian partnerorganizations, representatives of the foundation´s international network, and other Western
organizations, journalists, diplomats, politicians, and activists. This resulted in 150 pages of field
notes complemented with interviews with all project employees, conducted in Russian and
German. All unspecified quotes in this paper stem from these interviews – all translations are mine.
Ethnomethodology provided a very useful background for analyzing interviews, provided insights
into otherwise invisible dynamics, negotiations, and reflection processes, and brought to light
different ambiguities. These ambiguities, of course, partly reflected my own positionality. I joined
the organization as a student with an activist background, sharing many political concerns with
employees and collaborating with them in political work beyond formal office hours. This did not,
however, neutralize my skepticism towards certain rationalities that the foundation's work
fundamentally builds on. At the same time, I am aware of the risk of disqualifying political
articulations through the abstraction and inevitable reduction of an account that cannot do justice to
the complex and situated realities, positionalities, and power relations it refers to. This was not,
however, my intention. With these articulations, my account shares the necessity of positioning and
partiality, as well as the situatedness of the subject who speaks, as conditions of its articulation (c.f.
(Haraway, 1991). Participatory research created much of the ambiguity the paper attempts to make
sense of, thus the paper is written in a spirit of keeping this ambiguity alive and visible (c.f.
Britzman, 1995).
My account aims to decenter representations of what ‘the post-Soviet' means for political realities
in spaces labeled as such. The dichotomizing and reductionist tendencies mentioned above can also
be found in parts of the academic literature on post-Soviet 'democratization'. There is a tradition
that tends to assign degrees of authoritarianism versus political freedom, identifies steps forward or
backward on a modular path to democracy on a national scale, and conceives of the Soviet legacy
as exclusively hindering, obstructing and delaying the emergence of civil society and
'democratization' (Howard, 2003; Ljubownikow et al, 2013; O'Dowd and Dimitrovova, 2011; Scott,
2011; Stan, 2009). Other authors, more convincingly, emphasize how specific legacies prevent
straightforward implementations of certain (often neoliberal) policies and models (Hirt et al, 2013,
page 1247; Smith and Rochovská, 2007). This paper, in contrast, focuses rather on how the
problematization of the Soviet past is turned productive in that it informs, legitimates, and
underscores present governmental agendas. In so doing, it adds to a growing literature showing
how “the past is reinvented and textualized through the discourses and practices of the present”
(Britzman, 1995, page 234) in post-Soviet contexts (Hörschelmann and Stenning, 2008; Lindner,
2013; Sokol, 2013; Stark, 1996; Todorova, 2010b; Todorova and Gille, 2010). It asks what role this
referencing of the past plays in shaping emerging realities, and in situated descriptions,
legitimizations, and contestations of present socio-political conditions and changes. In this spirit,
the paper takes the declared absence of the political as a starting rather than final point of analysis not accepting this absence as an ontological statement, but turning attention to how this diagnosis is
itself employed in governmental strategies. I analyze “the relational realm of everyday politics”
(Hakli and Kallio, 2013, page 3) as a space that conditions political articulation and action, and at
the same time is subject to governmental intervention and reconfiguration (c.f. Walters, 2012, pages
79ff). Unlike snapshots of protests, court cases, and scandals in Western media coverage, the paper
focuses on subtle but permanent interventions into fields of governmental practices and political
imaginaries.
Paying close attention to processes of establishing, ordering and translation, my account is inspired
by organization studies informed by actor-network-theory (Hernes, 2008; Latour, 1996; Müller,
2012). In contrast to much of this literature, however, its main aim is not to describe what exactly
constitutes this organization and its agency. The focus is rather on how the enactment of an idea of
democratization and civil society brings into being certain realities and statements about these
realities, and thus on the co-constitution of power relations and knowledge. This echoes the famous
Foucauldian theme and brings it ‘down’ to the analytical level of current social practice (c.f. Law,
2004a). As the next section shows, Foucault's writings and the broader governmentality literature
provide useful conceptual instruments for analyzing such implications and the limits they inscribe
into this foundation´s project. Later, I describe how the organization attempts to establish itself as a
political actor, and to work towards certain ideas of democracy and civil society. I trace how the
material institutional context, and certain problematizations, condition and frame this project in
practice, and shape emerging imaginaries and associations. My general argument is that the
organization's striving for actorness cannot be separated from its attempts to (re)define the political
stage on which it performs and the public it addresses and engages. What is problematic here is that
some of its basic rationalities rest on and tend to reify boundaries between people who qualify as
full political subjects and others who do not. They further imply claims to know already what
democracy and civil society mean and how to get there. I conclude by reflecting on concepts of the
polis, democracy, and democracy’s legitimate subject, in relation to enclosures identified in
empirical analysis before.
Approaching contested fields of governance
I draw on an analytical vocabulary informed by Foucault's later lectures and writings, and the
studies of governmentality they inspired (Bröckling et al, 2011; Burchell et al, 1991; Elden, 2007).
From this perspective, attempts to shape and reconfigure the conditions of peoples’ actions and
schemes of conduct are understood as being omnipresent and inevitable: governance represents a
constant project and effort for all different kinds of actors. Governmentality, on the other hand,
presents an analytical perspective rather than a fixed explanatory framework, providing instruments
to grasp changing configurations of governance (Lemke, 2011b, pages 98–99).
My account puts emphasis on specific modes of governing, and avoids the risk of essentializing
forms of governance by focusing on contextualized practices (c.f. Collier, 2011; Koch, 2014; Li,
2007; Ong, 2007; Rabinow, 2003; Staeheli, 2008). It thus stands in contrast to most studies of
governmentality that exclusively take programs as a starting point, and bracket the level of
practices - thus running risk of “painting a rather top-down view of the world” (Walters, 2012, page
145). It assumes that programming always rests on particular tactics, resources, and rationalities in
order to have an impact on reality (Foucault, 1991, page 80), and that what generates change are
not programs, but the reason and resources they offer while being enacted (Pawson, 2002, page
343). In following what Tania Li termed an ethnography of government, I refrain from separating
“the study of governmental rationalities from the study of situated practices” (Li, 2007, page 282),
understanding governance as “an eminently practical activity” (Walters, 2012, page 2) and the
“knowledge incorporated in governmental practices [as] always practical knowledge” (Bröckling et
al, 2011, page 11). Keeping an eye to the particular and the practical, then, implies paying attention
to the political reasoning of actors involved and understanding it “as a situated practice through
which existing governmental forms are reflected upon, reworked, and redeployed” (Collier, 2011,
page 19). Rationalities (and discursive and programmatic fragments), then, are not analyzed as
mere parts of a larger environment or system, but through the contexts and practices in which
actors refer to them and employ them in their reasoning and arguments (c.f. Law, 2004b). Thus, if I
describe processes of governmentalization implying potentially political issues being rendered
technical (Ferguson, 1990; Li, 2007), these cannot be understood as merely technical processes.
Rather, actors' aspirations, affiliations, and strategic reasoning play a crucial role, as do the limits
inscribed in truth regimes that condition this reasoning. Studying changing governmental
configurations from a perspective faithful to ethnomethodology, then, promises that paying
attention to the particular will reveal more about specific shifts in power relations and regimes of
truth than will reducing them to the status of elements within more general processes. The latter is a
tendency evident in various 'transition' narratives, which explain processes of post-Soviet change
through tropes such as democratization, neoliberalization, globalization, or generalized
understandings of path dependency. In contrast, this study assumes that their driving forces,
constitutive rationalities, and emergent realities are more complex and contingent (Pickles and
Smith, 1998; Stark and Bruszt, 2001). It thus scrutinizes a particular project of ‘actually existing
democratization’ in relation to its context of emergence, as well as the positionality and reasoning
of those who enact it. While neo-liberalism or 'the post-Soviet' are denied the status of mastercategories that will by themselves explain what we will find (Collier, 2009), they are not absent
from this analysis. However, the question of how they relate to the particular stands at the end
rather than the beginning of analysis. This also helps to do justice to the specificity of this case.
Highlighting forms of governance beyond 'classic' liberal models and contexts in such a way
contributes to decentering studies of governmentality which often privilege (neo)liberalism to the
point that non-Western and non-liberal contexts, the co-presence of liberal and non-liberal forms of
governance, and their entanglements, recede from view (Lemke, 2011b, page 97; Walters, 2012,
page 72).
As an analytical take on mutually constitutive sets of practices and forms of knowledge, Foucault,
in later writings, proposes to focus on what he defines as problematizations (Foucault, 1986).
These form specific relations between a condition that raises conceptual and practical problems,
and the responses given. Foucault describes this as “the transformation of the difficulties and
obstacles of a practice into a general problem for which one proposes diverse practical solutions”
(1984, page 390). Problematizations thus turn givens into questions and introduce them “into the
play of true and false” (Foucault, 1988, page 257). Analytically, this purports to understand
arguments, strategies, and programs presented as solutions, in their relation to the
problematizations that constitute their very status as answers (Rose, 1999, page 58), or, in other
words, to ask for “the conditions in which possible responses can be given” (Foucault, 1984, page
390). Such conditions, however, are not understood as determining structures unbeknownst to
actors, but rather point to the necessity of relating to existing truth regimes - even while contesting
them (Lemke, 2011a). In the following sections I describe some problematizations of post-Soviet
conditions and subjectivities that are constitutive of the intelligibility and legitimacy of the
foundation's presence, agenda, and goals. They surely have problematic implications, but cannot be
reduced to mere manifestations of neoliberal or anti-political tendencies. Rather, I propose to
understand them as playing a role in critical moments in which government is at stake and actors
pose the question of how to govern (Dean, 2010, page 38). Taking these critical moments as a point
of departure, I query some underlying assumptions and latent implications of answers given, and
call into question their self-evidence. Approaching the “activity of problematization” (Lemke,
2011a, page 39) this way corresponds with ethnomethodology's call for symmetry (c.f. Garfinkel,
1984) insofar as it starts from the reflective capacity of both actors and analysts.
With regard to the foundation's work, a clear and absolute differentiation between governance and
resistance, or anti-political and political moments, would be hard to maintain. The organization
operates on a fuzzy front line between different rationalities of governance and opposition, as well
as the intersection of formal politics and forms of activism, and aims to establish new political
networks and rationalities while also seeing itself as a “mediator” between the state and the public “two worlds that otherwise would not meet” as one employee states. While binary classifications
hardly seem appropriate, a clear analytical take on “the political” is nevertheless necessary in order
to deal with such ambiguity. There is a relative neglect of this aspect in the governmentality
literature, which focuses instead on the “governmental” side of power relations (Walters, 2012,
pages 5, 80). Questions of what eludes and opposes the grasp of governance often remain implicit,
and the will to “not being governed like that” (Foucault, 1997, page 29) tends to be seen as a
basically subjective task, mirroring a specific reading of Foucault's notion of critique as a “political
and moral attitude, a way of thinking” (Foucault, 1997, page 29). In contrast, shifting attention to
Foucault´s understanding of experience, embedded in a collective practice (Foucault, 2002, page
244), as constitutive of the activity of critique (Lemke, 2011a), and to the fundamentally relational
constitution of agency and power that define the field of governance (Cadman, 2010, page 548;
Foucault, 1982; 2008, page 12), helps to understand the distribution, form, and openness of
relations of governing and of being governed as critical stakes in political moments.
Reading Foucault with Rancière at this point further shifts the focus to claims to the common as
potentially decisive dimensions in opposition to established structures of governance. Like other
authors concerned with the “political difference” (Marchart, 2007), Rancière develops a nuanced
understanding of “the political” in contrast to the “police”. The “police” is defined as the
consensual management of the existing order of things (Rancière, 1999) and to some extend
comparable with Foucault's notion of governance. “The political” calls into question and disrupts
the usual course of events and the order of administration. By its logic, the political represents a
negation of established forms of governance, although it cannot not refer to them (Rancière, 2011b,
page 172). “Political moments” (Rancière, 2011a) introduce questions of what counts as a matter of
common concern, and who has a part in a political scene (and under which conditions), as crucial
stakes in this game (Rancière, 2011c, page 7; Swyngedouw, 2011). In other words, what is at stake
in political moments is the constitution of a polis defined by and constitutive of what counts as
significant matters of collective concern, and who counts as political subject. Parts of the literature
drawing on the political difference tend to identify ideal types of political and anti-political
constellations, or to ontologize “the political” (Barnett, 2012). In contrast, looking closely at
contexts and practices, the following sections bring to light the co-presence, entanglements, and
mixings of political and anti-political moments and rationalities. Analyzing specific moments in
which openness and encounter turn into enclosure and static power relations helps to develop a
more nuanced understanding of the relational dynamics immanent in political difference. This
allows us to step beyond a mere reification of the diagnosis that “there is no clear point at which
government ends and resistance begins” (Barry, 2004, page 203), as following empirical sections
demonstrate. I begin by describing the role that context, practices, and ‘being on the ground’ play
in the foundation's work and strategies.
Beginning in the middle of things
This study's methodological preference for practices over written programs corresponds to the
foundation's employees' perception of how their strategies and agendas usually evolve. As one
employee explained: “Everything is learning by doing here”. Accordingly, tracing back what
happened on the ground to programs, guidelines, and written strategies (which do exist) in any
meaningful way seemed impossible. Topics and strategies were, rather, discussed and developed at
regular internal meetings, meetings with local partner organizations, or with representatives of the
foundation´s international network. While references to universals like democracy, civil society, or
human rights played an important role, as the next sections will show, they did not have determined
programmatic consequences. Questions of how to process tasks and create impacts under particular
conditions appeared as practical, and were addressed as such, while claims to universality were
always engaged in specific and practical ways (c.f. Butler, 2000, page 35; Tsing, 2005, pages 5ff).
The focus on situated insights also corresponds to the importance that the foundation's
representatives and foreign partners ascribe to their being on the ground. For (mainly Western)
journalists, authors, researchers, representatives of think tanks, politicians, and policy-consultants
who contact the office daily, it is the combination of expertise and access to first-hand local
knowledge that, in their eyes, makes it a valuable source of information. If they fail to make sense
of Ukrainian political realities and local processes, they turn to this office to find out 'how things
really are', as the following lines from an e-mail inquiry by an EU parliamentary consultant
indicates:
“I send you in attachment the draft resolution on Ukraine [...]. I read quite a few reports about
the elections, including the study of the EP policy department in attachment, and they seem
contradicting each other. [...] Could you gather some information directly from our people on
the ground [foundation employees]”?
All employees are native Ukrainians and represent a wide range of professional and activist
backgrounds - former employees of the German embassy and coordinators of LGBT (lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender,) organizations, members of liberal civil society organizations and of
radical feminist and anarchist groups etc. They understand their being part of local sociopolitical
processes as a resource as well. As one employee puts it, “being able to follow all social activity in
Kiev, all different kinds of forums, conferences, movements, this is clearly our strength”. The task,
however, is not merely gathering knowledge about local circumstances, but being able to act upon
them. When it comes to generating change and proposing alternatives, notions like democracy, civil
society, and human rights take center stage in the terminology employed:
“We have clearly defined priorities […] that is strengthening of democracy and civil society,
[...] human rights, gender, LGBT, minority rights etc. In this field we believe to have enough
competences and enough local knowledge as well, because our project coordinators are all
natives, [...] we live in this society, we talk to partners, we are familiar with the media [...].
And from our understanding of what is important in these fields in order to guarantee further
development in Ukraine, and how reality really looks like, we formulate all these topics and
fields of discussion, questions to be discussed, which are important for society.”
Shifting positionalities and claims to be both participant and observer, to be deeply involved in
local political matters and to be able to abstract from local circumstances through “universal
concepts” and “general values”, are employed strategically in the foundation's positioning. As the
head of the Kiev office puts it, this allows to claim the ability to “process and formulate these big
priorities [democratization, civil society, human rights etc.] within or through the Ukrainian reality
in a way that allows us to plan and to realize the really relevant things on the ground” (my
emphasis). The claim to clarity (“clearly defined priorities”), and the reference to programmatic
universals, represented and enacted by an institution that claims to know them, are staged against
an image of Ukraine's public-political scene as opaque and ambiguous. As such, notions of clarity
become strategic stakes in and of themselves. At the same time, of course, the heterogeneity of
positionalities and strategies assembled in this institution cannot be reduced to a clear and coherent
position (c.f. Hernes, 2008). Rather, strategies and methods, positioning and rhetoric, the scope of
certain claims, and the willingness to compromise in certain points, among other issues, are matters
of contestation amongst employees. In what follows, I describe attempts to draw actors into the
orbit of the organization, and how these relate to problematizations and discursive underpinnings
that constitute arguments, positions, and strategies as plausible and legitimate.
Creating impacts, spinning networks
If the foundation's declared goal is the strengthening of democracy, the mechanism deployed to
achieve this is political education. In practical application, this implies multi-dimensional labor - as
one employee put it:
“We understand [the task of political education] in a broad sense, this is to say not only talks,
lectures, and conferences, but educational work as well. And also, what we consider important
[...] is the setting of topics. We try to make important topics socially acceptable, to use our
political weight to support those topics which actually aren't mainstream yet, but in our eyes
should, must be mainstream in a modern society. It is a difficult task, even a challenge,
because many topics are not being discussed, or even taboo”.
Providing information and a platform for discussion is part of this agenda. Another is pushing
forward specific positions and topics, presented as important not only in themselves, but as crucial
elements of democratization or building a “modern society” more generally. Diagnosing and
calling out these silences and taboos is part of the foundation's legitimation narrative (see next
section). The “challenge” mentioned, however, also points to the practical fact that introducing
topics into public debate requires a public which usually does not exist beforehand (Arendt, 1998,
pages 198ff; Latour, 2005; Walters, 2012, page 80). The appearance as political actor and voice
requires a counterpart to speak to, a requirement with very concrete and practical implications. The
foundation's financing head office holds local employees directly accountable for the numbers of
participants at their events and in their projects, and local commentators and critics judge them by
the visible interest their activities generate. The mobilization of a crowd implies some effort, but a
mailing list containing about 1000 contacts (as was the case in 2011), and 40 to 70 people attending
public lectures and discussions are seen as promising indicators.
Besides public talks and discussions, project-bound funding is another key tool in creating impacts.
Funding opportunities in Ukraine depend heavily on applicant positions and agendas. If the wider
nongovernmental sector represents a million-dollar business with big opportunities for some, it
represents a closed door for others. The range of institutions that provide funds or infrastructure for
groups on the liberal leftist spectrum is limited. At the same time the possibility of realizing certain
initiatives often fundamentally depends on such support. NGOs and other action groups approach
the foundation’s office nearly every day, asking for funds or basic infrastructure like rooms for
seminars. During my ten-week stay with the foundation, about ten project-partnerships were forged
- some within minutes. There is a demand that works in the foundation’s favor, which adds to the
dependency and conditionality that these relations produce. It also catalyzes alliances between
groups that have been quite critical towards each other's position (too radical, too liberal etc.).
Money shapes all kinds of bonds. Here, it helps to forge alliances that subsequently appear on a
public scene under the banner of civil society and Western models of democracy - often literally
under the foundation's banner as well. This is more than metaphoric as it points to the material and
symbolic resources and supports necessary for making matters public, and subsequently to
questions of control over and access to such structures (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013; Foucault,
1982, pages 217ff).
Besides the foundation’s ephemeral project collaborations, and the quite anonymous and loosely
associated “publics” it addresses, its “partners” constitute a more permanent web of relations.
These relations rest heavily on personal contacts and various intersections between office members'
professional tasks and their personal affiliations in activist and civil society circles. They also show
how the foundation's capacity to act is contingent on a network of actors enabling and sustaining
this activity (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1986) - on information, access to material structures and
affiliated publics (e.g. via their mailing lists), and the specific knowledge or personal capacities
these “partners” provide. On the other hand, partner organizations make strategic use of the
foundation's funds, know-how, and image. Acting in activist roles, office members often make use
of their professional knowledge, contacts, and strategies. Though the office thereby becomes a
place where different political subjectivities and rationalities, or material and social resources,
come together in various ways and are negotiated, unequal power relations and the foundation's
institutional status characterize this scene. At the moment when partners and activists enter the
space to debate and organize democratic matters by crossing the office's threshold, or when the
specific formats of action pushed forward are such that they require resources (contacts,
infrastructure, money etc.) which strengthen the foundation's strategic position within these
partnerships, this becomes all the more evident.
Though the foundations' Kiev office does not seriously struggle to find people willing to accept
funds or visit events, this does not mean that it is not confronted with criticism. Radical groups
have criticized it for its bourgeois ideology and strategies; nationalist and clerical groups have
accused it of undermining national interests and wellbeing (e.g. by being non-homophobic or
defending the right to abortion); and representatives of the Ukrainian state have lambasted it for
questioning the state’s authority, sometimes accusing it of being an agent of foreign interests. The
backing of a German parliamentary party and the embassy provide certain guarantees that help to
push forward certain topics regardless - still, such accusations pose a challenge to the foundation’s
legitimation narrative. Responses to criticism vary but are revealing in that they draw on patterns
that may be used in different situations - one of these patterns points to the Soviet legacy.
From the Soviet Legacy to Civil Society
When asked about the aims and goals of the foundation's work in Ukraine, the head of the office
started by problematizing the post-Soviet condition. He called the present state of society
“difficult” and argued that the “legacy of the Soviet Union” weighs heavily on people who are
“tired” due to the historical experience, and live atomized, passive lives. This, he states, is the
reason for the unwillingness to show “commitment for any good cause”. He concludes that
“breaking this tendency is the main task of all Western institutions - to make society truly
come to life […]. A society [...] should consist of active groups showing commitment, having
certain ideas etc. And unfortunately this isn't the case yet”.
This echoes a well-known, dominant narrative prominent in public, policy, and academic debates in
post-Soviet countries and the West that share certain patterns of problematizing the post-Soviet
condition. This often takes on highly problematic forms: A legacy of mistrust, a generalized
passivity, and a lack of interest in politics are described as “characteristic features of these
societies” (O'Dowd and Dimitrovova, 2011, page 188). Post-Soviet spaces are marked as “virgin
territory [sic!] for democracy and the development of civil society [that] need external support and
expertise” (Piehl, 2004, page 62). Other authors hope for the “civilizing potential” (Rosa, 2005,
page 17) of civil society as a panacea against different kinds of 'post-Soviet anomalies'. Within this
discursive matrix the past is present in images like homo sovieticus and declared responsible for
citizens' passivity, politicians' proneness to corruption, or activists' inappropriate ideologies, with
“the shaken Eastern European [perceived as] a figure whose past trauma casts into doubt his/her
capacity to function effectively as a historical actor in the future“ (Boyer, 2010, page 19). Given
these obstacles on the path to democratization, the narrative goes, post-Soviet societies depend on
the help of appropriate partners to guide the way towards modernization. Thus, the Soviet legacy
becomes the raison d'être for Western organizations and 'naturally' defines their tasks (c.f. Phillips,
2008, pages 66ff). Foundation employees, too, tend to depict obstacles to 'democratization' and
'modernization' as relating to a time lag, with people in other places (e.g. Eastern Germany) once
having had similar problems that eventually were resolved.
If, within this discursive matrix, the Soviet legacy stands for the need for a radical rearrangement
of the socio-political scene, the ”creation of a civil society [...] which was suppressed for 70 years”
promises the possibility of this reconfiguration. This project gains plausibility and strength through
problematizations that depict and constitute those obstacles to democratic development that civil
society promises to overcome. The claim to civil society translates a declared lack into a positive
agenda for political reconfiguration. As an employee puts it:
“I don´t think that German civil society is the best [...], but that´s already a level that allows to
be quite sure that society is healthy and that it has the qualities a civil society in our eyes
should have. Of course, though, we are quite far from that stage in Ukraine […]. Well I
believe there are no ideal models, or those models do exist, but they never become reality.
Thus as an ideal model we have in mind of course that of an active civil society, where each
citizen doesn't solely care for his or her private interests, but for the public good as well […],
and where political authorities take notice of this civil society, support it, are in dialogue and
convert impulses from bellow into realpolitik. This is an ideal, an idealistic picture, you won´t
find this anywhere in the world – not even in Germany. But we try to get as near as possible to
this ideal”.
Rationalities of activation, as well as consensual and synergetic models of processing social and
political issues have been broadly criticized (Cruikshank, 1999; Ferguson, 1990; Lemke, 2007).
They should not be conflated with a settled, post-political state of reality, however (Barnett, 2012,
page 677). In this case, the idea of governance through civil society is articulated as an unrealized
task and a political claim, gaining transformative power as it is set against a 'deficient' reality. The
reference to civil society promises the possibility of a better future by offering a normative
framework which allows one to formulate clear and substantial goals, strategies, and agendas for
change - exactly what the Ukrainian political reality is said to lack. This claim to clarity seems
handy to make up for another lack as well: when democratization turns out to be a rather difficult,
vague, and messy task:
“We are hoping for resonance, that these topics are taken up and continued […] so that society
would start to talk about that, to discuss, and possibly, that this will lead to some changes”.
“Sure, the foundation isn't even a political party, to really regulate anything, to lead any
processes. Sure, we are just like a catalyst of processes that have to evolve themselves”.
To merely catalyze self-evolving processes can be understood as a tribute to the logic of civil
society's autonomy, or to the practical or general limits to governance capacities. As for
rationalities of governance, it echoes an understanding of civil society as a “'transactional' domain
at the frontier of political power and what 'naturally' eludes its grasp” (Burchell, 1991, page 144).
But it also figures as a strategic counterargument. When accused of intervening into Ukrainian
internal affairs or pursuing specific political or economic interests, claiming to act in the name and
as part of civil society provides a foreign political foundation the possibility of positioning itself
beyond particularism and strategic interest. However, if in some cases claims to universality are
employed to transcend antagonism, in other contexts they are used to make visible and underscore
particular claims. As a LGBT-activist working for the foundation states:
“That people perceive us as a German foundation, with a supposedly developed democracy in
Germany, brings us in a good position. [They] treat us as a respectable German foundation,
standing for democratic values, and it is for this reason that they may listen to us. [Because of
the topic of LGBT-rights] being absolutely stigmatized and taboo, it makes a completely
different impression if a German foundation protects LGBT-rights, stating that this relates to
values, as if a LGBT-organization would do that. Means like: those perverts gathered to
protect themselves, and here more like: respectable”.
The support the foundation offers is understood and presented as a precondition for speaking out
publicly (providing institutional or even physical protection and ideological backing), and
enhancing the potential to be heard (providing channels for communication and the claim to
universal values, transcending contestable particular interests). I do not aim to deny or to detract
from the emancipatory potential in the strategic employment of such institutionalized supports to
contest modes of domination. Still, in what follows, I focus on certain enclosures and limits to
democracy inscribed in and by the rationalities articulated. Those should be understood in the
context of an institution trying to establish itself as a political actor
•
involved in political education, which perceives of itself as a “factory of ideas”
(“Ideenfabrik”, a German term for think tank). Its declared task is to work on the horizon of
political imagination.
•
claiming to enact a political model and a way to do politics. Representatives repeatedly state
that “you have to show people how to do things”, which is programmatic.
•
having some capacities to enact the model by bringing together activists, different publics,
the media, funds, spaces of collaborative action and public appearance, etc.
•
forging alliances and collaborations, as well as providing funding, a platform for political
articulation and a legitimizing narrative and image. It thereby regulates access to certain
means of political articulation which it provides to some and not to others.
Inscribing boundaries
“Of course you will find people who are enlightened already, and for whom it is already very
important to show commitment, to be active in society. But unfortunately, they make no
critical mass yet that could determine social live”.
“To show that we as a German political foundation attach great importance to these topics.
That it is not just some freaks who deal with it, but that a respectable German political
foundation has it a priority […], this is a message that we hope is understood and respectably
perceived up there”.
These quotes represent forms of boundary drawing that separate those who can rightfully claim to
know what society should look like from those who cannot. Such distinctions are not made on a
merely abstract level: they inform day-to-day decisions about who can be addressed as “the
public”; which claims to support; who to include in certain projects or institutionalized networks;
who to fund; who to provide a platform to speak from and a place under the banner of civil society;
and whose voice can speak in the name of universal values, among other things. This introduces
moments of conditionality revealing for the image of democracy enacted here. What, then, qualifies
for being taken into account as a legitimate claim and a full political subject, according to this
rationality and practice? The following reflection introduces a first dividing line.
“We actually don´t deal with [poor people] as we cannot find access to them. And in fact there
are no really good ideas how to address those people and how to motivate them not to care
solely for their own existence but to become active for society. [For them] the point is not to
be active politically, socially, the point is to earn money to survive, to secure their livelihoods.
Now under such circumstances it is difficult, of course, to talk about any big values of civil
society”.
The quote is from an interview with the head of the office conducted at the very end of my stay,
after several debates with office members about in how far class issues are a blind spot in the
foundation's perspective. Such statements, which do not address poverty as a problem, but rather
the passivity of those affected by it, keep the “values of civil society” as discrete from the lived
realities of many to whom they might appeal. Stating the necessity to motivate citizens “not to care
solely for their own existence but to become active for society” and “consciously participate in and
contribute to social life […] voluntarily, without thinking about who will be paying for that”, the
interviewees do not merely diagnose a division between the actual and the values of civil society as
separate spheres, but state the necessity of this division and thereby call for its realization – given
these values, socio-economic conditions do not, and should not matter. This echoes a common
pattern of disqualifying dissatisfaction with the rising inequality and material losses which
accompanied the post-Soviet transformation for many. Through “allegations of `mereness´”
(Berdhal, 2010, page 186) such forms of critique are reduced to nostalgic sentimentalism, and are
declared backward and insufficient in face of the present political-economical order (Todorova,
2010a). The reduction is prominent and consequential, given that large segments of the population
see rising inequality, social and material vulnerability, and generalized uncertainty as among the
most pressing political issues and matters of discontent, as polls over the last years have regularly
demonstrated (McAllister and White, 2010). Are these exclusions constitutive in that they allow the
concept of civil society to figure as a universal solution?
There is a remarkable tension between the depiction of democratization through civil society as
universal and inclusive, and the (dis)qualification of people, through identity markers, as more or
less inadequate to participate in the civil society project: The problematization constituting the
project's plausibility and necessity is the declared lack of political consciousness and activity of a
population declared incapable of mature political conduct. What we find presented as a universal
solution, however, is not a democratization of the polis, but a project which by admission stands
beyond the interests and living conditions of most people: “We don't have enough resources, […]
thus we limit our work to big cities, because there you find that thin middle classes interesting for
us, […] because these are exactly the people who will visit our events”. This section of people that
can be mobilized to attend discussions and participate in programs, in contrast to an aspired-for
national outreach, constitutes the foundation's public in a more substantial sense. It is not only
inevitably partial, but also thought of as particular: “We try to attract public attention and initiate
discussion […] when we invite all those who are interesting for us and try to raise some political
questions that seem important to us”. In order to qualify as proper and desirable publics, those
should be “active”, “interested“, “competent”, and preferably potential disseminators (members of
think tanks, journalists, politicians, student activists, etc.). If civil society is thought of as
democracy's subject, and constituting this subject is the foundation's (and many others') goal, what
becomes visible here are power mechanisms and enclosures (e.g. under the guise of mutual
“interest”), structuring the field of appearance and participation prior to the emergence of civil
society (Butler, 2011). In this regard, it seems telling that the only idea for addressing poor people
discussed during my stay was the creation of a street newspaper aiming to create an opportunity (or
urge) for homeless people to become active and have something to offer in exchange for their
demands for support. Turning this articulation of personalized fate into a demand ('contribute by
telling your story!') translates exclusion into individual obligation ('if you contribute, you might be
heard and supported!'). Poor people are not seen as contributors to civil society. In order to become
part of this project, they must change. In their present state, they do not so much as count as part of
the audience for democratic speech.
Besides an audience to address as its public, the foundation depends on “partners” getting directly
involved in the enactment of its project. Fields and issues of concern are usually defined by
employees: “We try to make clear what is important for us, what our values are, and try to educate
our partners – not in the sense that we knew everything better and could do everything better, but in
that we have a clear ideological framework that we clearly stand for”. With an already defined
framework, what counts for qualifying as a good partner, or a contributor to a roundtable,
anthology, or project collaboration, are constructive and creative propositions, applicable concepts,
and realizable solutions. Those addressed as partners are deemed to be “active” already. However,
their declared lack of a solid agenda and clear language provides an opportunity to intervene:
“When we see that they are talking without knowing what they are talking about, we provide them
with training”. These trainings are made up of thematic inputs as well as enhancements of soft
skills. If only some of the groups involved with the foundation are in search of know-how,
expertise, or organizational support, this is what all will end up with. Aiming to not figure merely
as a sponsor, the foundation gets immediately involved in the organization and conceptualization of
projects and events. Representatives check and revise project outlines, make recommendations on
how to present topics or whom to invite as a moderator, presenter, or trainer. An initiative with an
initially rather open format and ad hoc mode of organization may, in this way, be enriched with
recommended best practices, consultation based on foreign expertise, and accountability for any
funds spent and results expected. Crucially, what is depicted as the decisive problem (for which
these measures shall provide a solution) is a lack of clear strategies, know-how, and
professionalism. This is held to be true not only for particular projects, but for the path to
democracy more generally. It would be naïve, it is stated, to expect democracy to evolve by itself.
According to the solutions offered, however, it seems that expertise is what is needed. This matches
well with the particular resources the foundation is able to provide, and with what can be gleaned
through trainings or expert consultations. It matches well with the foundation’s focus on graspable
results and visible public events. It does not necessarily match well, however, with democracy.
The problem lies not in expertise but in the power ascribed to it. A declared lack of expertise
provides the rationale for educational measures, as it defines the distance between activists and full
political actors. On the other hand, expertise is presented as being enough to overcome this
‘democratic deficit’. The claim to know already what democracy and civil society mean is the flip
side of the coin for this rationale. It is part of the declared self-evidence of these concepts. The goal
is “naturally that of an active civil society” - a step towards “modernization”. In addition, the claim
to know already has a legitimating dimension. What, according to its own descriptions, makes the
foundation not only a legitimate political player, but quite indispensable to political life, after all, is
that it not only knows what society should look like, but also how to get there. It can draw on
experiences already made (e.g. transformation in Germany), concepts and best practices mediated
through an international network of experts. What is said to be needed to reach democracy is an
expertise that already essentially exists - it exists in other places and within certain institutions, and
has to be mediated and spread out. In other words, the path to democracy is represented and
imagined in a way that makes necessary the transfer and application of existing models, as it must
be learned through the help of those who know how to proceed. The actual and the local, on the
other hand, define a lack rather than a path forward. Experience, by this logic, is subsumed under
expertise in sort of a short-circuit - it is seen to provide the potential for change only insofar as it
can be translated into terms of know-how and competence. Such rationality makes it difficult to ask
questions that have not already been answered. To state too bluntly that this rationality (and the
institutional setting enforcing it) reveals this work as anti-democratic would fail to do justice to the
courageous and important struggles these actors are involved in. There is a danger, however.
Politics interrupted
In this paper I refrain from equating notions of civil society and democratization with good forms
of governance per se, thereby draining the self-evidence and innocence that much of the transition
literature ascribes to them (see Hemment, 2012; Jeffrey, 2007, 2008 for related arguments). This,
however, does not render them elusive. I have shown how claims to democratization and civil
society play a crucial role in certain strategies of legitimation and persuasion. Statements holding
civil society to be the basis of democracy become performative as they are translated into situated
claims to that reality. This speaks to the ontological effects of an irreducibly utopian project.
Understanding democracy and civil society not as suppressed or unrealized givens thus shifts
attention to practices and utterances that call them into being, and to the worldly constraints that
come with them (c.f. Latour, 2005; Lemke, 2011a, page 31). Projects, events, and associations
initiated and realized in the name of civil society generate experiences, reiterate and bring into
circulation patterns of legitimation and critique, and shape truth regimes. While claiming
universality, they are, of course, not neutral. Rather, they set the criteria for who qualifies as a
political subject, for which concerns are legitimate, for which claims should be supported as
relating to universal values, for which conditions are problematic (e.g. passive citizens), and for
which developments and circumstances have to be accepted as invariable (e.g. poverty). Such
emerging political ontologies, as this paper demonstrates, take form and may be grasped where
situated universality claims are shaped by their more-than-situational conditions - institutional and
material supports enabling and constraining them, problematizations and truth regimes constituting
their intelligibility and legitimacy, or the scenes and publics that allow for their appearance.
The attempt to establish the foundation as a political actor implies the redefinition of the scene it
acts upon. It implies a call for an order that holds a certain place for this kind of political subject. In
the name of civil society, the foundation also calls for a configuration inclusive of itself, one that
affirms its goals, resources, and arguments as significant and legitimate. It claims to represent and
to be part of civil society - democracy's legitimate subject - and to bring it into being through the
projects it realizes. Even so, it cannot do this without allies. The foundation’s appearance as
political actor, platform, and voice depends on a public that does not exist prior to this appearance.
Positions and agendas are processed through constructing, selecting, addressing, and engaging this
public. Actorness and ‘being democratic’ are co-constitutive in this entangled process, through
which the foundation and ‘its’ publics and partners appear as political and democratic subjects. But
the foundation also enacts forms of conditionality attached to this political subjectivity. It supports
claims to universality articulated by some, but denies the status of political subjectivity to others
who do not qualify as contributors to the(ir) project of civil society. Furthermore, in decisions about
who to support, conditions like expertise, respectability, and realizability are imposed – departing
from the idea of civil society on a conceptual level.
If we understand the foundation as enacting ideas of democracy (through material and textual
practices) and creating political realities (through events, spaces, and associations), these are
fundamentally shaped by what they exclude and neglect. Resting upon universality claims that
redefine what counts as public, what counts as politics, and what will be its spaces (Butler, 1997;
Dikeç, 2005; Rancière, 1999), they constitute poleis in relation to which issues “gain significance
and become political” (Hakli and Kallio, 2013, page 15; c.f. Barnett, 2012, page 684). But these
poleis recognize only certain actors as political subjects, and certain claims as legitimate and
significant in the path to democracy. The universalizing gestures they rest upon to some extent
universalize the exclusions they imply. They are both reflective and productive of a division that
structures the spaces of the political prior to any particular articulation (Butler, 1992), (re)inscribing
the insignificance of certain subjects and issues. What is problematic, then, about the way the
“introduction of values, human rights, and democratic values” is imagined as means of democratic
change here is the reduction of democratization to a question of values. These are claimed as
universals, but appear as dematerialized in their indifference towards actual living conditions, and
exclusionary in the way that situated subjects and demands are declared to be insignificant in
relation to these values. Such indifference can make claims to universality become violent (Butler,
2005, page 7). It seems as if immature subjects appear on a political scene which is already there,
already defined, and fall back behind preformed necessities.
The aim of this paper is not to condemn necessarily messy and ambivalent political practices by
measuring them against ideals of “purer” politics. From a Foucauldian perspective, critique “is
always already involved in what it addresses. It relies on the existing normative and institutional
system while seeking to expose its limits in order to explore ways to transform it. [...] Critique
means altering the ‘rules of the game’ while playing the game” (Lemke, 2011a, pages 33 – 36). The
point, then, is to enter fields where such games are staged, to identify how established rules are
problematized, contested, and modified, to shed light on the limits that established and emergent
truth regimes impose on autonomy and democracy, and to negotiate truth with the means of truth.
For the civil society and democracy in question, this might imply refusing the claim to know them
already: “The point [...] is not to answer these questions, but to permit them an opening, to provoke
a political discourse that sustains the questions and shows how unknowing any democracy must be
about its future” (Butler, 2000, page 41).
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Veit Bachmann, Marc Boeckler, Iris Dzudzek, Andreas Folkers, Thomas Lemke,
Peter Lindner, Nadine Marquardt, Martin Müller, Rachel Naylor, Stefan Ouma, Nathan Prier,
James Sidaway, Marit Rosol, Simon Sontowski and Anna-Christine Weirich for helpful and
constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also particularly thankful to Stuart Elden
and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable remarks and support.
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