Authors

Discussion

Do the ways in which young citizens, coming of age in a democratising context, articulate understandings of the state, institutions, and political power, differ from older citizens, socialised under authoritarianism? How do different understandings align with patterns of political participation? The processes of institution-building, nation-building, and democratisation in post-communist Ukraine form an important environment to consider how young people evaluate and engage with their emerging political system. Institutional structures, and the formal and informal ‘rules of the game’ – or the nature of power more broadly – have fluctuated between authoritarianism and democracy. Moreover, Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are under threat. These fluctuations, geopolitical threats, and authoritarian legacies may lead to shifting political meanings and practices across the citizenry.

Studies of post-communist youth culture note how social and political developments, such as regime change, new institutional structures, and civic protest, shape youth understandings and practice. Across democratising contexts, whereas youth is positioned as remote from institutional politics, empirical studies also find that youth political interactions may confer rebellion, coalition, or de-institutionalisation of practice. This paper explores how younger – compared to older – Ukrainians construct narratives around state power and institutions, as they consider their own – actual and potential – political participation. It builds on the literature on political trust, considering closely the content and object of ‘trust’ attitudes in relation to political participation.

I conduct thematic analysis of individual interview and focus group data from the Mobilise Project (Onuch et al., 2019) to map narratives of state power and participation. Analysis shows politics and power to be discussed primarily in diffuse terms (derzhava or vlada) and presented as exclusionary. Resonant with previous studies, vladawas associated with corrupt and hierarchical power, which alternately mobilised or demobilised participants, contingent upon their (collective) efficacy. Traits of youth as rebellious, passive, and de-institutionalised do pattern across the data. Yet, younger participants more clearly articulated belief in the potential for responsive state power, and a desire for greater dialogue between citizen and state.