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 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN
INFORMAL POLITICS
Institutions and Democratization in
Post-Soviet Eurasia
By HENRY E. HALE*

rules that are officially and publicly

H OW
codified by the institutions,
do formal state in written form, impact prospects for de-
mocratization? Most answers focus on institutional design during the
transition process, studying how constitutions and legal frameworks es-
tablish rules of the game that guide behavior in ways facilitating demo-
cratic stability, progress, or breakdown. 2 At the same time, a growing
body of work implicitly or explicitly calls this entire enterprise into
question. The scholars, often area specialists with deep country knowl-
edge, provide extensive evidence that formal institutions rarely operate
as assumed. 3 The literature on hybrid regimes-political systems com-
bining authoritarian and democratic elements-is particularly eager to
stress the ways in which actual behavior deviates from the democratic
formal content of a country's constitution and body of law.4 What mat-
ters instead is said to be informal politics, the "real" workings of politics,
those unwritten and officially uncodified norms, habits, and practices
*The author thanks Li Bennich-Bjorkman, Christofer Berglund, Charlotta Friedner-Parrat,
Vsevolod Gunitskiy, Danielle Lussier, Israel Marques, Kelly McMann, Oxana Shevel, Oleksandr
Fisun, the journal's anonymous reviewers, and participants in Columbia University's Comparative
Politics Seminar, the Uppsala Forum at Uppsala University's Department of Government, and a work-
shop of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia for helpful feedback
on earlier drafts.
1 More specifically, informal institutions are "socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are cre-

ated, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels" and formal institutions
are "rules and procedures that are created, communicated, and enforced through channels widely ac-
cepted as official"; Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 727.
2 Some classics in this voluminous literature include the exchange on constitutional design in the
Journalof Democracy, republished in Diamond and Plattner 1996; Fish 2006; Linz and Stepan 1996;
Shugart and Carey 2002; Skach 2005.
E.g., Bratton and van de Walle 1994; O'Donnell 1994; Wilson 2005b.
E.g., Carothers 2002; Magaloni 2006; Schedler 2002; Way 2005.

WorldPolitics63, no. 4 (October 2011), 581-617

Copyright ( 2011 Trustees of Princeton University
doi: 10.1017/S0043887111000189
582 WORLD POLITICS

that actually guide political behavior.' While it is tempting to place

these literatures in opposition, "formal institutions versus informal pol-
itics," this obscures the possibility that formal institutions may impact
regime change in part by altering patterns of informal politics. Indeed,
an emerging body of research is now focusing on how formal rules and
informal institutions interact, and recent theoretical work suggests that
one of the ways that formal institutions can have political effects is by
inducing change in informal rules. 7 That is, formal institutions may still
matter, but not in the way theories and practitioners often assume.
This article advances the latter research agenda with respect to basic
formal constitutional design and democratization. It proceeds from a
familiar starting point in the theory of institutions: constitutions, like
formal institutions more generally, influence an individual's behavior
primarily by shaping that individual's expectations as to the behavior
of others.' But the way such expectations are shaped differs fundamen-
tally depending on whether the underlying social context is character-
ized by high degrees of clientelism, a syndrome typically manifesting
itself in weak rule of law, high levels of corruption, and low levels of so-
cial capital. More specifically, all other things equal, constitutions that
stipulate a directly elected president as the single most powerful office
(presidentialist constitutions) tend to generate expectations of future
political power that encourage clientelistic networks to coordinate their
activities around a single dominant political machine led by the directly
elected president. Constitutions formalizing two independent hold-
ers of roughly equal executive power (divided-executive constitutions),
however, will complicate coordination around a single patron, thereby
working against the amassing of formal and informal power around the
president.
To isolate the impact of formal institutions from that of the many
other factors that can influence both democratization and the arrange-
ment of clientelistic networks, this study analyzes two cases (Ukraine
and Kyrgyzstan in 2005-10) that are highly similar on relevant factors
except for one of particular interest: Ukraine, due to an essentially ex-
ogenous set of events, wound up with a divided-executive constitution
following an electoral revolution, whereas Kyrgyzstan retained a presi-
dentialist constitution after experiencing its own electoral revolution

' One exemplary title is Ledeneva 2006, How Russia Really Works.
6 Levitsky and Helmke 2006; Lauth 2000; Sakwa 2011.
7 Helmke and Levitsky 2004, 732-33. A complementary approach explores how informal institu-
tions impact formal rules; Grzymala-Busse 2010.
' North and Weingast 1989; Veitch 1986; Weingast 1997.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 583

just a few months later. While readers may identify some differences
between the two cases that might be relevant to regime type outcomes,
these are systematically addressed in a careful comparative tracing of
events in each case. The central finding is that it is precisely a for-
mal constitutional change which explains why Ukraine's 2004 Orange
Revolution led to a "democratic" configuration of informal institutions
in its immediate aftermath (2005-10) while Kyrgyzstan's 2005 Tulip
Revolution did not, with a new concentration of informal power in the
latter country eventually sparking yet another successful anti-incum-
bent "revolution"-this one much bloodier than the original-in 2010.
The formal divided-executive constitution was found to have had such
an effect not by being "obeyed" and thereby automatically producing
a democracy-promoting system of checks and balances, as is often as-
sumed by opponents of presidentialism, but instead by creating incen-
tives for practitioners of informal politics that significantly complicated
(though did not rule out) the monopolistic concentration of real power
around the president.

CONSTITUTIONS IN CLIENTELISTIC SOCIETIES

Clientelism is a social equilibrium in which political exchange tends to

be characterized far more by concrete punishments and rewards meted
out to specific individuals than by broad policies that are not targeted
at individuals and that instead impact different parts of society accord-
ing to relatively explicit, generalized rules. 9 It can be conceived of as
a kind of collective action problem, a vicious cycle whereby individu-
als understand politics as an arena of personal wealth redistribution
and targeted coercion and therefore reproduce these very practices
themselves for fear of being "suckers," those feckless souls who act on
principle but only succeed in impoverishing their own families, mar-
ginalizing themselves, and accomplishing nothing. For individuals in
highly clientelistic societies, what matters most for achieving material
welfare is belonging to a coalition that has access to-and hence can
pay out-resources. There is thus a very important process of coordina-
tion at the core of political competition in clientelistic societies: which
side individuals of all levels choose to support depends very much on
which side these individuals expect other individuals to support-or,

9 This adapts Kitschelt 2000. Note that this differs from the much narrower definition used in
Grzymala-Busse 2008.
584 WORLD POLITICS

more precisely, which side they expect not to wind up losing access to
resources for patronage and coercion due to a lack of support.
In highly clientelistic hybrid regimes, constitutions influence peo-
ple's expectations as to whether any one single network is likely to be
dominant in the foreseeable future, thereby helping to resolve or instead
complicate the problem of coordination that actors in the polity face.10
Of particular interest is whether the constitution signals a concentra-
tion or a relatively equal division of executive authority (usually around
a president and/or prime minister), including whether any different
sources of executive authority are formally dependent on the other (a
signal that one post is the bigger prize).n
To understand how such formal constitutional provisions can
meaningfully shape informal political configurations, let us consider
a hypothetical country that has two large, rival patron-client networks
perceived by all to wield equal informal power. Let us further assume
that there is no history of a national government and no previous con-
stitution, and then introduce to this mix a constitution that formally
stipulates a directly elected presidency to be the most powerful execu-
tive office in the land. At the moment the constitution is introduced, it
is purely formal: there is nothing more behind the presidency than the
piece of parchment on which it is described because the rival patrons'
power is based solely on informal authority.
We can identify both an information effect and afocal effect by which
such a constitution will encourage elites in such a context to gravitate
more to the occupant of the office of president than to the nonoccupant.
The information effect arises from the nature of the presidency as an
indivisible good: only one patron can occupy it. 12 Somehow, a decision
must be made as to who will occupy the post. Because power depends
on convincing individuals that one's network is currently powerful
enough to deliver resources and will continue to be able to do so in the
future, both of our hypothetically equal rival networks can be assumed
to have an interest in occupying a post that a visible, widely accessible
document deems to be superior to one deemed to be subordinate. The

o "Highly clientelistic" communicates the idea that the more pervasive ("higher") are levels of
clientelism, the more pronounced and observable the dynamics discussed in this article should be.
" No claim is made that this difference in the formal arrangement of executive power is the only
determiner of elite expectations, though because executive branches are typically hierarchical and or-
ganized around specific chief executives (usually a president or a prime minister), one would expect
formal arrangements of executive power to be particularly potent in determining elite expectations as
to who has the power to carry out rewards and punishments. The extent to which other institutions
grounded in formal constitutions (such as parliaments) can play similar roles should be a subject for
future research.
12 Stepan, Linz, and Yadav 2011,20,199.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 585

fact that one network occupies the presidency and another does not,
then, signals a marginal superiority of the former. The focal effect pro-
ceeds from the presidentialist constitution's conferral of the symbolism
of supreme power upon its occupant. This can turn the presidency's oc-
cupant into a focal point for elites who do not otherwise have grounds
for deciding whose network other elites will be most likely to support.
By generating expectations that the presidential network is likely to
be marginally more powerful now (information effect) and in the fu-
ture (focal effect), the presidentialist constitution affords the patron
who occupies the presidency an opportunity to accumulate ever greater
informal power. Eventually, as coordination dynamics play themselves
out, the president can construct a system in which s/he dominates the
political system by virtue of both formal and informal authority (usu-
ally in tight combination). Alternative "pyramids" of power under rival
patrons generally face one of the following fates: liquidation as their
most marginal members progressively defect to the dominant network,
co-optation into the larger pyramid, or operation at the margins of the
system. Presidentialist constitutions, then, foster something like a self-
fulfilling prophecy in clientelistic societies, encouraging expectations
as to current and future balances of power that then make themselves
true. When all this happens, the informal power structure in the polity
might be characterized as a kind of single pyramid in which the presi-
dent administers society through an ever-broadening conglomeration
of vertical networks of subpatrons and clients. 13 To casual observers,
such a polity simply looks authoritarian.
Many constitutions, however, do not concentrate the preponderance
of formal executive authority in a single state institution and instead
divide it in some way, usually between a president and a prime minis-
ter. Of specific interest here is the situation when formally the prime
minister is neither nominated/appointed nor removed by the president,
meaning that the prime minister is selected by a parliament indepen-
dently (formally) of the president and is assigned a package of execu-
tive powers roughly equal to those of the president. Returning to the
hypothetical country just discussed, introducing a divided-executive
constitution instead of a presidentialist one (and assuming that each
major network occupies one of the posts) would remove the tendency
to single-pyramid systems by encouraging expectations that there will

" The language of "single-" and "competing-pyramid" systems to refer to the author's conceptual-
ization comes from Graeme Robertson and Matthew Green, personal communication. Others have
used the terms "patronmonopolies" (Scott 1972); "centralized caciquismo" (Matsuzato 2001); and
"bureaucratic neopatrimonialism" (Fisun 2007, 176).
586 WORLD POLITICS

be at least two patrons in the polity with roughly equal power. In terms
of the information effect, the fact that one network occupies the presi-
dency no longer signals that network's relative strength, and in terms
of the focal effect, it supplies no obvious way for elites to determine
what other elites are likely to do and thereby coordinate their actions.
Moreover, the divided-power constitution provides a specific alterna-
tive focal point (the prime minister) around which clientelistic actors
can coordinate, should they not be satisfied with the "deal" offered by
the presidential network. And this, in turn, can have a multiplier effect
by creating maneuvering room for "third" networks to become power-
ful by playing one network off against the other. Such a configuration
of informal politics can be usefully called a competing-pyramidsystem. It
resembles a more democratic outcome by virtue of vigorous competi-
tion and political openness, though the competition is typically fought
by clientelistic means and is thus highly corrupt and far from the liberal
ideal.
These elite coordination problems engendered by a divided-exec-
utive constitution could be resolved if we assume a single person oc-
cupies both executive posts; the information and focal effects would
again induce individuals and elites to orient themselves to the patron
who controls these two posts as opposed to one who controls neither.
But if we drop the assumption that clientelistic networks are unitary
actors and instead imagine a situation in which the dominant net-
work's patron assumes the presidency and a "subpatron" assumes the
premiership, the divided-executive constitution can work to promote
divisions between them. Most importantly, the informally subordinate
prime minister gains resources (an information effect that he may be
the most powerful "subpatron" and focal status as a potential alternative
patron) should he eventually decide to form his own network either
from scratch or by splitting others off from his original network. The
prospects of this, of course, depend on whether the information and
focal effects of the divided-executive constitution prove stronger than
the coordination mechanisms that hold the original network together.
We must leave these mechanisms and their likely strength vis-A-vis the
effects of formal constitutions unspecified in this article and consider
them an agenda for future research.
Of course, in the real world, all other things are not equal as they
are in the hypothetical country discussed so far. Preexisting power con-
figurations influence the design and adoption of constitutions, 14 and

1 PrZeworski 1991, 79-88; Knight 1992.

 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 587

context shapes how signals are interpreted." Thus a formally presiden-

tialist constitution suddenly superimposed upon two obviously unequal
informal networks might initially be seen as providing no useful signals
as to which network will be the more powerful. Moreover, the wide
variety of specific provisions on the distribution of numerous itemized
formal powers between a chief executive and other officeholders that
real-world constitutions typically stipulate can also cloud or clarify the
signals sent to elites, as can court rulings on these provisions. Rival
networks have incentives to take advantage of any ambiguities by over-
estimating the status and power of any offices they hold and asserting
limits on any posts held by their rivals. And to make things even more
complicated, elite expectations as to which networks will be dominant
can clearly be influenced by factors other than the constitution. For ex-
ample, when a long-dominant patron becomes incapacitated by illness
with no clear successor in place, an ensuing succession crisis may call
into question earlier expectations as to his network's ability to maintain
its dominance.1 6
These considerations do not supply grounds for neglecting the study
of the effects of formal constitutions, but they do pose quite a challenge
for isolating these effects in empirical studies. For example, let us take
the finding that dominant actors tend to create single-executive instead
of divided-executive constitutions and to augment rather than dimin-
ish executive power to suit their own needs 1 On the one hand, this ob-
servation reinforces the argument here: surely dominant actors do this
because they sense that formal constitutions are able over time to rein-
force or alter power configurations, and the information effect is likely
to be substantial because the occupant of a very powerful presidency is
empirically likely to be someone with great informal as well as formal
power. But on the other hand, all this makes it very hard to determine
what the effect of constitutional design itself is because prior distribu-
tions of power (and potentially many other contextual factors)" may be
(1) determining whether a system is a competing-pyramid or a single-
pyramid one and (2) at the same time causing the adoption of constitu-
tions to reflect more than produce these systems. These difficulties are
exacerbated to the extent that other factors might overpower, obscure, or
even alter (through interaction) the effects of formal constitutions. 19
s Geertz 1973.
6 Hale 2005.
17 Easter 1997.
1 See Cheibub 2007.
19 A promising agenda for future research would be to examine precisely how different contextual
factors shift, cloud, or clarify the signals constitutions send to elites and other actors.
588 WORLD POLITICS

A strong test of the impact of formal constitutions on informal polit-

ical arrangements relevant to democratization, therefore, would require
holding maximally constant the aforementioned contextual variables as
well as other factors reasonably believed to influence regime type, while
at the same time introducing a clear difference in formal constitutions
that cannot itself be attributed to the factors influencing regime type.
Such a strong test would also require demonstrating in detail that pre-
cisely the processes described here, rather than actual obedience to for-
mal constitutional rules, was what generated the observed difference.

A PROCESS-TRACING PAIRED COMPARISON

Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan during 2005-10 provide a strikingly fortuitous
opportunity (arguably as good as can be expected in the real world)
to deal with the empirical difficulties and isolate the effects of formal
constitutional design through a process-tracing paired comparison.20 In
keeping with the logic already outlined, both Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine

-have been enduringly highly clientelistic societies, as defined above; 2 1

-had presidentialist constitutions from at least the mid-1990s up until their
revolutions;
-had single-pyramid systems dominated by a president relying on both for-
mal and informal powers.22

Because these countries were so similar in regime type and constitution

prior to 2005, we cannot explain any dramatic post-2005 differences
by citing factors that did not change dramatically in either country in
2005, including religious heritage, historical legacy, extent of kinship-
based politics, and political culture.
Moreover, the specific events during and immediately following
2005 are strikingly similar in important details that help isolate the ef-
fects of formal constitutions. In both cases:

-The old strongman presidents were toppled by "electoral revolutions"

during the same span of a few months, with both new presidents assuming a

20 George and Bennett 2005; Tarrow 2010.

21 As this study uses Kitschelt's definition of clientelism, it is appropriate also to use his assessments
of levels of clientelism here. Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine fall into the same, most clientelistic category in
the postcommunist world. See Kitschelt et al. 1999, 39. Corroborating this are Ukraine's and Kyr-
gyzstan's persistently high ratings on levels of corruption perception and problems with rule of law in
global indices: Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzze 2008; Transparency International 2008.
2 Hale 2005; McFaul 2005.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 589

five-year term of office in 2005-these terms define the period of this study
(2005-10).23
-Emerging victorious was not a single leader but a "tandem" of leaders who
each represented separate but allied clientelistic networks (Viktor Yushchenko
and Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine and Kurmanbek Bakiev and Feliks Kulov in
Kyrgyzstan).
-A deal was struck in which one member of each tandem became president
(Yushchenko and Bakiev) and the other became prime minister (Tymoshenko
and Kulov).
-The future president, unable to win the presidency outright, was forced to
accept a power-sharing arrangement that involved transferring significant pow-
ers to a prime minister.

The crucial "treatment" that differentiates the two cases is as follows.

In Ukraine the power-sharingarrangementwas anchored in the adoption
of a formal divided-executive constitution. In Kyrgyzstan, by contrast, the
power-sharingdeal was based only on the rough balance of informalpower
that each tandem mate wielded at the time of the revolution, without
changing the presidentialist nature of the formal constitution to make
the prime minister independent of the president. 24 At the time, Bakiev
described his deal with Kulov thus: "This is not a legal document, but
a political document. Of course, the word of a politician is worth noth-
ing, but I gave my word as a man." 25
For purposes of this analysis, this difference in "treatment" was ex-
ogenous. That is, the reason Ukraine experienced constitutional reform
while Kyrgyzstan's "tandem deal" was based on a handshake does not
also explain why Ukraine experienced a significant political opening
during 2005-10 and Kyrgyzstan did not. For one thing, the difference
in treatment did not reflect power differentials that can account for
the differing regime outcomes. Both Yushchenko and Bakiev were ne-
gotiating with a weak hand: neither was able to claim the full-fledged
presidency on his own without a high risk of unpredictable and danger-
ous civil conflict due to prominent regional divisions in each country,
East-West in Ukraine and North-South in Kyrgyzstan.2 6 In Ukraine
the Orange Revolution featured an unprecedented and extended street
standoff between the ruling authorities with support in Ukraine's East
and mass protesters with support in the country's West decrying falsi-

2 The vast literature on the revolutions includes Bunce and Wolchik 2010; and Kuzio 2008a.
2 Christensen, Rakhimkulov, and Wise 2005.
RFE/RL Newsline, May 18, 2005.
26 On regional divides in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, respectively, see Jones Luong 2002, 74-82; and
Kubicek 2000.
590 WORLD POLITICS

fied elections. Since the authorities also could not win outright, they
allowed Yushchenko to become president without further struggle in
return for his agreeing to the transfer of significant presidential power
to a prime minister who would be formally beholden only to parlia-
ment.27 In Kyrgyzstan the Tulip Revolution began in the South, and
its leading figure, Bakiev, was a Southerner, while the ousted president,
Askar Akaev, had his strongest base of support primarily in the North.28
When Akaev fled, northern networks and public opinion quickly ral-
lied around the northern Kulov. Kulov rapidly demonstrated he was
no pushover: one of the country's most prominent politicians and a
longtime Akaev rival whom Akaev had jailed, he took charge of secu-
rity structures after his release during the revolution, quickly restoring
order to the capital city and bringing an end to widespread looting. 29
His support was not just among force agencies. A poll supported by
the Friedrich Ebert Foundation found that Kulov had majority popular
backing in the northern capital Bishkek (52 percent) compared with
only 18 percent favoring Bakiev.30 With a dangerous North-South split
likely in the event that the two campaigned against each other in the
upcoming presidential election, Bakiev was forced to share power with
Kulov: he promised to try to make him prime minister and to give
him real decision-making authority. Both Yushchenko and Bakiev later
cited the threat of national instability when explaining why they com-
promised.3 1
If not from a power differential, then, where did the difference in
"treatment" come from: the introduction of a formal constitutional
change to anchor presidential power-sharing in Ukraine but only a
"word as a man" to anchor presidential power-sharing in Kyrgyzstan?
As it turns out, in Ukraine, unlike in Kyrgyzstan, a formal constitu-
tional reform transferring significant presidential power to a prime
minister was alreadyavailable in concrete draft form. After consistently
working to strengthen presidential powers during the 1990s and early
2000s, incumbent president Leonid Kuchma grew worried that he
might become vulnerable (to the next president) after he personally
left the presidency in 2004. Thus in August 2002 he reversed himself
and proposed a constitutional reform that would greatly weaken the
presidency, minimizing his own vulnerability to any successor. Impor-
27 Kudelia 2010.
28 Radnitz 2006.
29 Marat 2005; RAndkL Newsline, March 25, 2005.
3 0
RFE/L Newsline, April 13, 2005.
31 Kurinanbek Bakiev, "Kurmanbek Bakiev," interview, Gazeta.Kg, June 28, 2005, 21:06; Viktor
Yushchenko, interview published in Kommersant Ukraina,April 15, 2009.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 591

tantly, his concerns were not only that an opposition figure like Yush-
chenko could become president; in addition, he did not fully trust his
own choice for successor, Prime Minister Yanukovych, who represented
the ambitious eastern-based Donetsk network (not Kuchma's own) and
had business and political interests in tension with those of some key
Kuchma allies (including chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk, the re-
form's chief advocate within the administration).3 2 This interpretation
resonates with comparative research indicating that presidents facing
electoral uncertainty shape institutions to hedge their bets.33 With
Kuchma en route to becoming a lame duck as 2004 progressed, some
of his own allies voted with Ukraine's opposition minority to defeat the
reform in parliament. But this meant that a constitutional reform bill
was already predrafted, ready to be pulled off the shelf in the heat of the
moment to resolve the Orange Revolution stalemate. This is exactly
what happened, as it was this "very same draft" that was brought in to
become the basis for the presidential power-sharing arrangement that
ended Ukraine's standoff.3 4
This prior availability of a constitutional reform bill in Ukraine can-
not by itself explain why Ukraine would be more open politically than
Kyrgyzstan during 2005-10. If anything, it owed its existence to the
old regime's self-perceived weakness in 2002-4 relative to Kyrgyzstan's
in the same years, and weak old-regime authorities should if anything
have made it easier for Yushchenko than for Bakiev to establish his
own presidential power because he would face weaker resistance. One
might take the opposite tack and posit that Kuchma's weakness might
reflect a more general pluralism in Ukrainian society, making it harder
for any Ukrainian president to consolidate power than it would be for
any Kyrgyz president. But here we must recall that the old regime was
still strong enough during the late 2004 standoff to force the deal on
Yushchenko, who did not want it. Moreover, the notion that Ukrainian
political society is somehow generally more fractious than Kyrgyzstan's
rings rather hollow to Kyrgyzstan experts, especially in 2010, after Kyr-
gyzstan underwent a second revolution that has its country specialists
questioning whether any political consolidation is possible there at all.3 5

32 D'Anieri 2007, 88-98; Kudelia 2010,172-73; Wilson 2005a, 80.

Frye 1997.
34 Kudelia 2010, 172-73, 182.
3 E.g., McGlinchey 2010. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan in 2010 adopted a divided-executive constitu-
tion. Thus, if there were deeper structural factors at work that explain both divided-executive constitu-
tions and political openings independently of these constitutions, they should have been producing
political opening in both Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine during 2005-10, which is shown below not to be the
case.
592 WORLD POLITICS

Indeed, a detailed tracing of the actual events that produced and sus-
tained competing-pyramid politics in Ukraine and that led to the re-
consolidation of single-pyramid politics in Kyrgyzstan during 2005-10
confirms that it was the fact of the constitutional reform itself, not any
general sociopolitical fractiousness or any factors initiating the original
constitutional reform bill back in 2002 (or any other difference between
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, for that matter), that was the direct and de-
cisive cause of the divergent political paths taken by Kyrgyzstan and
Ukraine in the period under consideration.

KYRGYZSTAN: PRESIDENTIALIST CONSTITUTION AND

SINGLE-PYRAMID POLITICS

That Kyrgyzstan would return to its earlier levels of authoritarianism

was not immediately or universally evident.3 6 Indeed, many at the time
hailed the revolution as a democratic breakthrough.3 7 Bakiev himself
declared he did not aim to reconcentrate power around the presi-
dency.38 But the fact that Kyrgyzstan retained its presidentialist consti-
tution would have major consequences for the Kyrgyz political system.
The constitution conferred on Bakiev the symbolic attributes of power
and communicated that because he occupied this post he was in fact
the more powerful of the two partners. As a result, he proved better
able than Kulov at attracting clients, punishing the disloyal, and gradu-
ally stripping his rival of authority and clients by using both informal
and formal powers. By early 2007 Kulov had been maneuvered out of
office and had ceased to be considered a serious rival. There were also
no other serious rivals on the horizon to compete with Bakiev's newly
emergent single-pyramid system.
Bakiev accomplished this in a number of ways, sending signals
through his use of formal and informal powers to induce elite coor-
dination around his personal and formal authority and to marginal-
ize those who resisted. One of the first things he did was to use his
formal powers of appointment to replace senior figures in the Interior
Ministry, the secret police (SND), and territorial governments in both
North and South.3 9 The president also took a number of steps designed

Radnitz 2006.
6
Compare McFaul 2005 and Silitski 2005.
RFE/RL Newsline, July 13, 2005.
39 Gazeta.Kg, June 30, 2005, 19:59; RFE/RL Newsline, February 7, 2006; RFE/RL Newsline, January
30,2006.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 593

to establish his control over financial operations and much economic

activity in Kyrgyzstan, including issuing decrees to create both a Fi-
nancial Intelligence Service (September 2005) and a new Financial Po-
lice Service (November 2005).40 These formal personnel arrangements
then structured the informal process whereby these agents acted con-
trary to law-providing legal pretexts or cover-to secure the transfer
of key economic assets to Bakiev's own family members and close allies.
These assets included but were not limited to many of those formerly
controlled by the Akaev family, as has been documented in a num-
ber of studies.41 Understanding the importance of good relations with
the president, many business and other elites who had previously been
loyal to Akaev worked to seek accommodation with the new president.
Regine Spector's detailed case studies of some of Kyrgyzstan's biggest
businesses describe a pattern by which, for example, Askar Salymbekov,
the co-owner of Kyrgyzstan's massive and rich Dordoi Bazaar, had
carefully developed positive relations with Akaev's family during the
prerevolutionary period but switched to cultivating ties with Bakiev's
family almost immediately after the revolution. Through a conscious
business-preservation strategy of maintaining good relations with
whichever president's family happened to be in place, Salymbekov thus
managed to keep his business holdings despite not being related to the
Bakievs. By contrast, his co-owner, Kubatbek Baibolov, went into po-
litical opposition and was consequently forced out. 42
Both during and after the revolution Bakiev had publicly supported
constitutional amendments to formalize a weaker presidency, 43 but
he did not act to implement it immediately and by early 2006 was
sounding a different note. After several clashes with parliament over
the president's growing authority, Bakiev's administration reportedly
began drawing up its own draft constitution independently of the par-
liament or civil society organizations that were originally promised
a role. Bakiev's constitution would retain "all the powers that Akaev
had," and a referendum was planned for November 2006.44 Opposition
forces rallied over the course of that year. Two large protests in April-
May 2006 prompted Bakiev to reshuffle his cabinet and remove offi-
cials whose resignations were demanded by the opposition. 45 Of course,

40RFEL Newsline, September 12,2005; RzEAL Newsline, November 29,2005.

4 Marat 2008; Ozcan 2010.
42 Spector 2008.
43 E.g., RFE4?L Newsline, April 28, 2005.
4 Stanislav Pritchin, "Vtoroi Akaev?" Oazis, no. 3 (23), February 2006. At http://www.ca-oasis.
info/oasis/?jrn=24&id=171, accessed February 9, 2006.
45RFEL Newsline, May 11, 2006; Polit.Ru, May 10, 2006,11:08,10:01,17:02.
594 WORLD POLITICS

such reshuffling also served the key presidential purpose of dividing

and conquering his own supporters, preventing any from becoming too
entrenched in their posts (for example, by shaping the arrangement
of informal institutions-in this case ministry-based networks-such
that they could not easily organize against him). Bakiev was also on
the offensive. The prominent opposition leader Omurbek Tekebaev
was arrested in Warsaw for allegedly carrying drugs, an incident widely
regarded as a setup arranged by the National Security Service (sNB),
which just happened to be headed by the president's brother.46 Once
again, we see formal institutional arrangements linked to the formal
presidency (in this case the presidentially appointed SNB leadership)
shaping arrangements of informal politics by disrupting rival networks
(such as Tekebaev's) and arranging others in an increasingly tight hier-
archical configuration dominated by the person at the top.
Revelatory of how the formal constitution had rendered Kulov un-
able to act independently of Bakiev were events surrounding the op-
position's last major attempt to force Bakiev to live up to his promise
not to govern as Akaev had. In November 2006 a group of opposition
figures under the banner of the "For Reforms" movement mobilized
several straight days of protests in Bishkek to demand a constitution
that reduced presidential power.4 7 One of the chief rally organizers,
Temir Sariev, reports in a memoir that Kulov had contacted him and
other key opposition figures and communicated that he was "in com-
plete solidarity" with the opposition in making these demands and
planning the rally, but puzzled organizers by acting secretly and refus-
ing to come out in public. 48 Surely, this was not the mark of a man who
expected he could mobilize the government he formally headed against
a president he opposed, and the behavior stood in marked contrast to
that of Ukrainian prime ministers who were similarly dissatisfied with
presidential attempts to usurp some of their authority. Indeed, organiz-
ers report that no significant support was forthcoming from Kulov. 49
That is, Kulov as prime minister appears to have been unable (or un-
willing due to his own dependence on Bakiev's powers of appointment
and removal) to provide actual political cover for opposition politics
and instead could only covertly hint at support while toeing the presi-
dential line in public. Sariev's account also indicates that Kulov was

46 RFR Newsline, September 11, 14,25,2006.

47 RFE/R Newsline, October 3, 2006.
48 Sariev 2008, 71-72.
49 For example, along with Sariev's account, that given by another opposition leader, Edil Baisalov,
in an interview with the author, Bishkek, June 14,2011.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 595

not expected to be a significant counterweight to Bakiev's presidential

authority because of Kulov's position.
Bakiev ultimately used the opposition's November 2006 protest to
deliver the coup de grace, forcing Kulov out. After complex maneuver-
ing on both sides, the opposition's massive protest went forward and
convened a "Founding Assembly," including members of parliament.
This assembly then adopted a new constitution that met the protest-
ers' demand for a weaker presidency. Facing sustained street protests,
Bakiev agreed to sign it with only modest amendments in November
2006. The protesters dispersed, believing they had won.so But Bakiev
had simply made a tactical retreat that in fact simultaneously got the
crowds to go home and gave him an opportunity to use the informal au-
thority he had already accumulated to remove Kulov as prime minister
and ram through a new presidentialist constitution with even greater
formal presidential powers than before." By one account, Bakiev in this
process used promises of future rewards to co-opt key members of the
opposition, including parliamentarian and Social Democratic Party of
Kyrgyzstan (SDPK) leader Almaz Atambaev.5 2 The president cut Kulov
loose after some complex maneuvering, replacing him first with Azim
Isabekov-a close Bakiev ally 53-and then, less than two months later,
indeed with Atambaev, thereby splitting the opposition and also pro-
viding a semblance of regional balance, as Atambaev was a Northerner.
Kulov, now without his prime ministerial post, tried in a much-her-
alded April 2007 rally to mobilize popular resistance through what was
left of his own network, but he enticed virtually no other high figures
from within the Bakiev administration or even from the government
that Kulov had formally headed for well over a year to cast their lot
with him instead of with Bakiev. Bakiev's forces thus put the protest
down with a decisive show of coercion. As a final humiliation, Bakiev
in May 2008 offered Kulov a minor state post with lucrative patronage
potential: head of the directorate of the Project on Development of
Small and Medium Energy. Bowing to his own utter defeat, Kulov ac-
cepted.5 4 Kulov himself, then, becomes one of the starkest examples of a
major elite being co-opted to Bakiev's side in recognition of the latter's
dominance. Kulov, that is, had in essence been co-opted from himself.

o Sariev 2008, 74-91, 97-100.

s1 Details on these complex events can be found in Kulov 2008; Polit.Ru, December 30, 2007,
10:43, 12:38; RFE/RL Newsline, January 16,2007; Sariev 2008; Utro.ru, December 19, 2006, 13:40.
52 Sariev 2008.
1 Radio Svoboda, January 26, 2007, 13:08 At http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/tran
script/374480.html, accessed April 26, 2011.
5
%4ipress,May 6, 2008, 13:15.
596 WORLD POLITICS

Huskey's and Iskakova's survey of opposition politicians in Kyrgyz-

stan in 2008 helps us get into the minds of at least some Kyrgyz elites,
demonstrating that Kulov's calculus in joining Bakiev even after hav-
ing been blatantly betrayed by him in fact reflects a calculus common
to at least opposition elite politicians. These elites at that time indeed
regarded Bakiev's ability to dole out rewards and mete out punishments
to be a critical reason why opposition figures were unable to join forces
to mount any sort of effective opposition to the president. Very inter-
estingly, the survey finds that this perception of the centrality of state
authority in dividing the opposition is decidedly highest among op-
position figures who had previously served within the government as
executive branch officials, strongly suggesting that this perception is
not held primarily by the opposition but rather is held by elites more
generally." Indeed, Huskey and Iskakova refer to a "long list of op-
position politicians who have succumbed to the temptations of viast'
[power] and abandoned their colleagues in the opposition for high-
ranking positions in government. "56
Kulov's 2007 defeat consolidated the expectation that the power of
the Bakiev network would not be effectively balanced by anyone in state
executive power, and accordingly that point in time marked an accel-
eration in the consolidation of a single-pyramid system around Bakiev's
presidency. The elite expectations involved are explicitly articulated by a
"veteran leader of the opposition" in Huskey's and Iskakova's 2008 elite
interview project: after Kulov left the political scene and Atambaev was
co-opted, there was a general perception that the "last chance to unite
the opposition" was lost, and "people simply turned away in disgust,
saying the opposition is no different from the government."5 7 With
little coordinated elite resistance from inside or outside his regime,
the consolidation of Bakiev's power pyramid was rapid. His loyalists
passed an even more strongly presidentialist constitution by referen-
dum, then forced early parliamentary elections in December 2007 and
filled seventy-one of its ninety seats with a newly created propresiden-
tial party, the Ak Zhol (True Path) Party.58 Minority fractions went
only to parties considered to be pliable, the Party of Communists and
Atambaev's Social Democratic Party, and the territorial breakdowns
of the vote were never released.5 9 The Central Election Commission

" Huskey and Iskakova 2010, 237.

56 Huskey and Iskakova 2010,
238.
Huskey and Iskakova 2010, 247-48.
* RFE/RL Newsline, October 24, 2007.
59
Arpress, December 18, 2007, 17:14; RFR Newsline, December 27,2007.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 597

chief who certified these results later admitted to having been subjected
to unrelenting pressure from the president and his family to influence
election results. 60 Trying to catch the opposition off guard and to win
reelection before the effects of the 2008 financial crisis could hit hard,
Bakiev secured a Constitutional Court ruling moving the election date
up to summer 2009 instead of 2010. The opposition tried to unite, but
Atambaev and Sariev both wound up running, the latter accusing the
former of collaborationism. Neither managed to mobilize much elite
or mass support, and Bakiev won the official count with 76 percent of
the official vote count, far ahead of Atambaev's 8 and Sariev's 6 percent,
respectively. 61 Postelection protests were easily put down, though they
were mostly just ignored because they found few supporters among
either the elite or the masses. Kulov supported Bakiev's campaign. 62
This regression back to single-pyramid politics is generally reflected
in the wide variety of scholarly efforts to systematically measure the
degree to which countries display the attributes of democracy from year
to year. The best known is Freedom House, whose Nations in Transit
project reports that Kyrgyzstan was less democratic by 2007 than it had
been in 2004, the year before its revolution. 63 The component parts
factoring into this index are also what this article's logic would expect:
electoral process, media independence, democratic governance, and ju-
dicial independence were all as bad or worse by 2009 than they had
been immediately before the Tulip Revolution. 64 The Economist Intelli-
gence Unit Index of Democracy, calculated only for 2006 and 2008, also
found that Kyrgyzstan regressed during this interval, with a particularly
sharp drop where the theory would most expect it: in the category of
"electoral process and pluralism."6' The Polity IV ratings likewise find
that as of 2007, the most recent measure available, the latest movement
was away from democracy, including in the most salient components
of democracy for the present theory: constraints on the chief executive
and competitiveness of participation.6 6

60
AKipress, September 26, 2008, 10:19, 15:22, 17:17, 17:41, 18:50.
61 AKrpress, July 21, 2009, 19:15.
62
AKpress, June 19, 2009, 14:23.
63 Goehring 2008, 44.
64 Marat 2009. This is also true of the separate Freedom House (2010) Freedom in the World
study.
6' Economist Intelligence Unit 2008; Kekic 2007.
66 Marshall 2008. The components referenced here are xconst and parcomp.
598 WORLD POLITICS

UKRAINE: DIVIDED-EXECUTIVE CONSTITUTION AND

COMPETING-PYRAMID POLITICS

A detailed look at post-color-revolution Ukraine presents a dramatic

contrast, a clear postrevolutionary move toward open, competing-pyr-
amid politics. Regardless of their measures or definitions of democracy,
all of the indices just discussed for Kyrgyzstan indicate that Ukraine
was much more democratic during the five years after its revolution
than it had been before it, with no trend toward authoritarianization
straight through the 2010 presidential election.6 7 Breaking down these
indices into their components provides even more specific support for
the theory advanced here. The weakest support comes from Polity IV,
which registers improvement in constraints on the executive, though
not in the competitiveness of participation, but it carries us only
through 2007.68 Nations in Transitreports that Ukraine made dramatic
improvements in electoral process and media independence during the
period of interest, reflecting the contested and open nature of politics
characteristic of competing-pyramid network configurations. Equally
importantly, it also records no significant improvement in levels of cor-
ruption and governance, reflecting the persistence of clientelist politics
that is also expected by the present theory.69 The Economist Intelligence
Unit, too, reveals Ukraine after the Orange Revolution to be at the level
of Switzerland and Ireland in terms of electoral process and pluralism
but at the level of Mali and Nicaragua when it comes to the function-
ing of government. 70 Taken all together, this pattern strongly confirms
theoretical expectations: the important "outcome" that changed was not
the level of clientelistic politics but the arrangementof clientelistic net-
works into more competitive rather than more closed configurations.
While evidence at the time of this writing, in mid-2011, indicates
Ukraine has started a slide back toward single-pyramid politics after its
2010 presidential election and with a reversion to the old presidential-
ist constitution, the stark difference between Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan
during their first postrevolutionary presidential terms calls for expla-
nation.7 1 Indeed, during this period, Ukraine was the only non-Baltic
post-Soviet country ever to have been rated fully "free" by Freedom
House's Freedom in the World index, a remarkable achievement. 72

67 Economist Intelligence Unit 2008; Sushko and Prystayko 2009; Kekic 2007; Marshall 2008.
6 Marshall 2008.
69 Sushko and Prystayko 2009.
7o Economist Intelligence Unit 2008.
71 Walker and Orttung 2011.
7 Goehring 2008.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 599

The following discussion identifies this variation in terms of the way

in which different formal constitutions produced different arrangements
of informal institutions. Ukraine's new divided-executive constitution
complicated and ultimately undermined attempts by any one pyramid
to emerge dominant-by creating uncertainty as to who would domi-
nate, promoting coordination around more than one clientelistic "pyra-
mid," and thereby incentivizing rivalry between these pyramids. While
this barrier to power concentration appears to have succumbed starting
in 2010, indicating it is not all-powerful, the evidence presented below
indicates that formal divided-executive constitutions nevertheless can
provide enough resistance to single-pyramid politics to give democ-
racy a fighting chance even in the most difficult environments, a better
chance than one gets with formally presidentialist constitutions.
As noted above, the Orange Revolution's standoff in the streets re-
sulted in a constitutional change that the team of outgoing President
Leonid Kuchma forced Yushchenko to accept in return for a peaceful
transition to the presidency in early 2005: the presidency Yushchenko
inherited would be weakened as ofJanuary 2006, with the prime minis-
ter gaining direct control over key ministries (including the police) and,
most importantly, becoming exclusively beholden to parliament, rather
than being nominated or removed at the whim of the president. 73 The
fact that the new division of power formally went into effect only in
January 2006 helps us separate the "informal" effects of the constitu-
tional reform from the formal effects. Despite the formality of Yush-
chenko's wielding the powers of Kuchma during 2005, the adoption of
the constitutional reform to resolve the Orange Revolution standoff
had already created the expectation that the president would not be
the single dominant authority as of 2006. Thus Yushchenko did use
his formal power to try to subordinate the prime minister after they
clashed publicly, replacing Tymoshenko in September 2005 with the
more pliable YuryYekhanurov. But the constitutional reform meant that
observers already regarded Yekhanurov as a "caretaker" prime minister
from the outset, expecting that the March 2006 parliamentary election
would determine an independent prime minister and that the president
might thus not be in position after that point to follow through on
previously made promises or threats. 74 Tymoshenko voiced (and sought
to reinforce) these expectations rather dramatically just before the 2006
elections, saying the prime ministership was worth fighting for in the

Christensen, Rakhimkulov, and Wise 2005.

RFEAL Newsline, September 12, 2005.
600 WORLD POLITICS

election because "under the new constitution, the president has practi-
cally lost all of his powers."" Despite the falling out with the president
that had led to her dismissal, she ran for parliament in 2006 again as
part of a "democratic" coalition with Yushchenko. This election returned
the man Yushchenko had defeated in the 2004 presidential battle, Vik-
tor Yanukovych, to the premiership atop a new parliamentary coalition
that was formed only after a key member of the "democratic" coalition
defected to hand Yanukovych the majority he needed: Yushchenko had
refused to cede the post of parliamentary chairman to Socialist Party of
Ukraine leader Oleksandr Moroz in hopes of keeping it for a closer ally,
whereupon Yanukovych promised it to him if he switched sides.
Close analysis of political events after this reveals a history of all
major political networks flouting formal rules and employing clien-
telistic practices to gain power at the expense of their rivals, using and
claiming state executive authority wherever possible. Prime Minister
Yanukovych wasted little time. One of his first and most creative moves
was to unilaterally claim the right to invalidate presidential decrees by
refusing to countersign them as required by procedural regulations. 6
Even more momentous was his 2006-7 push for a new Law on the
Council of Ministers that would have significantly augmented prime
ministerial power at the president's expense. These determined moves,
along with widely rumored material blandishments, induced a grow-
ing stream of elites (especially parliamentary deputies) to defect from
Yushchenko and join Yanukovych's coalition. The prime minister's al-
lies bragged that they would soon get the three hundred parliamentary
votes needed to amend the constitution unilaterally, potentially emas-
culating or even eliminating the presidency. This led many to forecast
a new single-pyramid "vertikal' of power, now operating out of the
premier's office instead of the president's.7 7
What stopped Yanukovych in 2007? Here we see a pattern that oc-
curs repeatedly in the Ukraine of 2005-10: efforts by one arm of the
executive to flout formal rules and usurp power from the other were
defeated by similarly clientelistic political practices undertaken in re-
sponse by the occupant of the rival executive post. In this case, Presi-
dent Yushchenko became the focal point for opposition to Yanukovych,
renewing his alliance with Tymoshenko and rallying other elites, as he
issued and enforced a decree of extremely dubious constitutionality in

RFE/RLNewsline, February 28, 2006.

76 UkraiinskaPravda, September 21,2006,13:31, 15:42.
UkraiinskaPravda,April 6,2007,17:10; Korrespondent,January20,2007,20.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 601

April 2007 to dissolve the parliament.7 ' This decree was not simply
"obeyed" but was enforced through the extensive coordination of in-
formal networks around the president. The defense minister, who by
Ukraine's divided-executive constitution was appointed by the presi-
dent, quickly made clear that should Yanukovych attempt to resist by
using force, "the army will only carry out orders from the commander
in chief" (Yushchenko)." The parliamentary coalition behind Yanuk-
ovych nevertheless sought to block any new elections by passing a reso-
lution to disband the Central Election Commission.so About a week
later, with the eighteen-member Constitutional Court gearing up to
decide the case, five of the justices linked to Yushchenko publicly ac-
cused "some well-known statesmen and political figures" of pressuring
the court into a ruling, forcing the hearing to be delayed. When doing
so, however, they seemed to back Yushchenko even before the delibera-
tions had begun, calling his decree "within his presidential authority.""
In early May, while the case was still being decided, Yushchenko issued
decrees unilaterally removing three justices who had been appointed by
his predecessor, Kuchma.8 2 As the month went by, Yushchenko took
direct control of antiriot police troops and then ordered more of them
into the capital city. At that point, Yanukovych conceded, with new
elections bringing Tymoshenko back as premier in fall 2007 as part of
an alliance with Yushchenko.83
Power grabs were not limited to Yanukovych, but were undertaken
by Yushchenko as well. The most dramatic occurred in 2008. Shortly
after she became prime minister, Tymoshenko experienced another
falling out with Yushchenko as he sought to augment the power of the
presidency at the prime minister's expense, especially over control of
the economy. Yushchenko's team systematically issued bogus consti-
tutional challenges so as to stall or undermine government decisions; 8 4

7 The president's status as "guarantor of the Constitution," he asserted, implied the duty to dis-

solve parliament if it acted in a way that the president unilaterally deemed unconstitutional. This
justification, to say the least, did not appear among the three circumstances that the Constitution
explicitly stipulated as the only grounds for the president to dissolve parliament. See Ukaz prezydenta
Ukraiiny, "Pro dostrokove prypynennia povnovazhen' Verkhovnoi Rady Ukraiiny." In Ofitsiinyi Visnyk
Prezydenta Ukraiina,April 2,2007, no.1, 3-5. At http://www2.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/4/5/56948.
htm, accessed April 26, 2011; Maksymiuk 2007.
79 Maksymiuk 2007.
soRFEL Newsline, April 3, 2007.
s RFEL Newsline, April 11, 2007; Polit.Ru, April 11, 2007, 11:28.
82 For more details on these extraordinarily complex maneuverings and the general pervasiveness
of clientelism in Ukraine's judiciary of this period, see Trochev 2010, 134.
1RFE/L Newsline, May 29, 2007.
8 Yatsenko 2008, 1, 3.
602 WORLD POLITICS

sought to revoke the citizenship of a prominent critic on the grounds he

had falsified his application back in 1999;" pressured certain television
outlets to influence political content (driving the famous former Radio
Liberty journalist Savik Shuster to leave one such channel);1 6 and even
ordered the Ukrainian Security Service (sBu) to open a case against
Tymoshenko in 2008 for treason over an alleged secret deal with Rus-
sian president Vladimir Putin.17 The culmination was his attempt to
force a new dissolution of the parliament and new elections in 2008 so
as to get a new, more pliable government. Trying to enforce this move,
Yushchenko's administration was found to have removed judges who
had decided against him or were expected to do so," dissolved an entire
court that ruled against him so as to get the desired decision from one
of the two courts he created to replace it, 9 and sent state guard (uGo)
troops under his authority to "protect" a court making a decision im-
portant to Yushchenko. 90 Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko, elected atop
the party list that Yushchenko himself had supported, reported that the
Presidential Secretariat had put through several phone calls to judges
during the precise times of key court deliberations. 91
President Yushchenko's power grab was rebuffed in much the same
way Prime Minister Yanukovych's had been: the occupant of the oppo-
site branch of executive power became a rallying point for those elites
who wished to restrain the overstepping branch and accordingly was
able to employ "political machine" tactics effectively enough to defeat
the effort. This focal effect helped Prime Minister Tymoshenko coor-
dinate efforts with some unlikely tactical allies, including Yanukovych's
Party of Regions, which joined with her bloc to deny funding for the
early elections Yushchenko had decreed. Tymoshenko's supporters also
physically blocked the work of courts thought likely to rule in favor
of Yushchenko. 92 She also went on the counterattack by entering into
negotiations with the Party of Regions on a plan to pool their par-
liamentary votes to amend the constitution and eliminate the directly
elected presidency, subordinating the office instead to the parliament.
Yushchenko, in turn, countered by warning that he would call a ref-

" Korduban 2008a; Ukraiinska Pravda,July 21,2008,19:31.

16 Savik Shuster, interview, Segodnia, August 7, 2008, 7; Segodnia, July 30,
2008, 4; Nailem and
Leshchenko 2008.
SUkraiinska Pravda,August 21, 2008, 11:50; Ukraiins'ka Pravda,February 11, 2009, 20:02.
" Segodnia, October 17,2008, 3; Kommersant Ukraiina, November 24,2008.
8 UkraiinskaPravda, October 17, 2008, 15:55.
90 Kommersant Ukraina, October 15, 2008.
91 UkraiinskaPravda, October 16, 2008, 14:49.

9 UkraiinskaPravda, October 11, 2008,16:08; Segodnia, October 17,2008,3; Kommersant Ukrai-

ina, November 24,2008.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 603

erendum on the issue or even force early direct presidential elections

before the change could be effected, and the plan was shelved during
2009 as the regularly scheduled presidential elections took their course
in early 2010.93 This division of executive authority, importantly, went
on to ensure that Ukraine's 2010 presidential elections were widely de-
termined to be free and fair, the best evidence of which may be that
Yanukovych managed to win them while the sitting president, Viktor
Yushchenko, came in a distant fifth place. 94
The constitutionally underpinned expectations that there were two
independent centers of executive power rather than just one, along with
the constitutionally provided alternative focal point for elites dissatis-
fied with either center, gave elite networks of various kinds a great deal
of latitude to pursue their own games by switching sides at opportune
moments or playing one side against the other, as Moroz did in 2006.
This is quite evident in the behavior of major business groupings. Ihor
Kolomoisky and his Pryvat group, for example, went from being key
Tymoshenko supporters to Yushchenko supporters over the course of
2005-10, while Petro Poroshenko began as a fiercely anti-Tymoshenko
backer of Yushchenko but by 2009 had joined the prime minister. Do-
netsk businessman Vitaly Haiduk had been Yanukovych's deputy prime
minister in 2002-3 and backed him for president in the 2004 election
but switched to become Yushchenko's national security and defense
council secretary afterward, only to leave Yushchenko after a policy
dispute and ultimately wind up supporting Tymoshenko's 2010 presi-
dential campaign.95 The Party of Regions, when occupying neither the
presidency nor the prime ministership, also played both sides against
each other. Thus while it joined Tymoshenko to block Yushchenko's
2008 early election decree, it initiated a no-confidence vote against Ty-
moshenko earlier that same year. Tellingly, this no-confidence move
was undermined by the formerly pro-Kuchma-and-Yanukovych Com-
munist Party's delegation shortly before news emerged that two people
connected to the party had received potentially lucrative posts in Ty-
moshenko's government. 96 This opportunity for business and political
elites to switch sides and find new political cover when one side ceased
to be useful to them was precisely what was missing in Kyrgyzstan,
forcing "oligarchs" either to toe the official line or to surrender key

3 UkraiinsaPravda, May 27,2009, 15:26; Segodnia, June 7, 2009, 12:30.

94 Herron 2011.
9 KyivPost, January22,2010,6-7; RAndr Newsline, May 14,2007; UkraiinskaPravda, October 10,
2006, 11:55; Wagstyl and Oleachyk 2010.
96 Korduban 2008b; Kommersant Ukraina,July 25, 2008, 2.
604 WORLD POLITICS

assets to the president's circle-just recall the contrast between the

fates of Kyrgyz big businessmen Salymbekov and Baibolov discussed
above.97 Ukraine's divided-executive constitution, therefore, not only
underpinned the existence of two centers of executive power but also
created opportunities for a plurality of smaller "pyramids" to compete
openly and fiercely using all the clientelistic means at their disposal.
The course of events since Yanukovych's 2010 election indicate that
he may succeed as president where he failed as prime minister, creating
a single-pyramid arrangement of clientelistic networks and practices.
Yanukovych defeated Prime Minister Tymoshenko's network head-to-
head in a highly competitive clientelistic election, signaling his net-
work's raw political superiority. This enabled him to maneuver his close
associate (Nikolai Azarov) into the prime ministership in early 2010
by inducing a series of defections of deputies from demoralized losing
camps to his side. With the capture of the presidency and prime minis-
tership, a single network thus established itself as unrivaled. Observers
quickly noted a reorientation of business-based elites, including key
figures controlling television, around Yanukovych.9" Before any split
could emerge between him and his prime minister, Yanukovych sought
a reversal of the 2004 reform that had created the divided-executive
constitution in Ukraine in the first place by having the Constitutional
Court invalidate it. With no branch of executive power in the control
of a rival network, he was able to pack the court in September 2010
by getting four justices replaced. Just days after the replacements were
sworn in, the court found that the 2004 reform had been improperly
established and was thus null and void, restoring the presidentialist
constitution of 1996.99
These events call attention to the importance of formal constitutions
at the same time that they establish some of the limits of their effects.
The fact that Yanukovych felt it desirable to change the constitution
indicates he himself saw the divided-executive constitution as poten-
tially complicating his consolidation of power. And here it is important
to keep in mind that this study's central claim is not that divided-ex-
ecutive constitutions automatically produce two separate clientelistic
networks that will always compete and produce political openness.
Indeed, the point is precisely that this is not what happens. Instead,
the argument is that divided-executive constitutions produce incen-
tives that (unlike presidentialist constitutions) significantly complicate
97 As documented in Spector 2008; Ozcan 2010.
9 E.g., Segodnia, May 15, 2010, 08:04; TelekrytykaJuly 12,2010.
9 Trochev 2011; Ukraiins'ka Pravda, September 21,2011, 11:01.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 605

the coordination of clientelistic networks around a single power pyra-

mid. In this light, even if Yanukovych proves successful in his apparent
new bid to reestablish single-pyramid politics in Ukraine, the effects
of the divided-executive constitution remain significant: the very same
Yanukovych tried twice to create his own power vertikal rooted in state
executive power, once in 2006-7 and once starting in 2010, but was
successful only once. And the pages above showed how it also thwarted
similar attempts by both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. This stands in
stark contrast to the record of post-Soviet presidentialist constitutions,
which underpin single-pyramid systems not only in the Kyrgyzstan of
2005-10 but also in every other post-Soviet country that has one.100
Of course, country specialists have ventured a variety of interpreta-
tions of Ukraine's 2005-10 political opening, but analysis summarized
in the following subsections finds that they (as well as other prominent
theories one might consider relevant) do not provide better accounts of
the difference between Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine during this particular
period than does the institutionalist argument just presented.
INSTITUTIONS VERSUS IDENTITY

Observers frequently cite Ukraine's East-West identity divide as having

sustained its free, competitive politics during 2005-10.101 But as noted
above, Kyrgyzstan also featured a significant geographic identity divide
with major political implications, and even though Kulov and Bakiev
represented different sides of it, Bakiev had little difficulty prevail-
ing. 102 Indeed, Ukrainian history resembles Kyrgyzstan's in revealing
that identity divides are little match for a single-pyramid presidency
underpinned by a presidentialist constitution. For example, using his
formal and informal powers as president, Kuchma was first elected in
1994 with an eastern base of support but was able to shift his base to
Ukraine's West to win reelection in 1999, only to play to the East again
by backing the Donetsk native Yanukovych in 2004.103 The fact that
both Tymoshenko and Yushchenko (western-based) cooperated with
the eastern-based Yanukovych (and vice versa) when it was politically
expedient to do so also demonstrates that regional divides are subject
to political manipulation and compromise and therefore are not the
primary cause of Ukraine's opening.

100 Fish 2005; Hale 2005.

101 Gel'rnan 2005; Kuzio 2008a; Way 2005.
102 Huskey and Iskakova 2010, esp. 251; Jones Luong 2002, 74-82.
13 D'Anieri 2007, chap. 5.
606 WORLD POLITICS

INSTITUTIONS VERSUS LEADERS' VALUES

Some theorists find evidence that exceptionally committed democratic
leaders make democratic transitions,104 but one does not find much evi-
dence that Ukrainian leaders were different from Kyrgyz ones when it
came to resisting temptations to amass power and defeat one's opposi-
tion in 2005-10. This is evidenced most clearly in the process-tracing
analysis presented above, where no major Ukrainian leader proved to
be above using nefarious tactics to advance his or her power. A com-
parison of professional backgrounds also casts doubt on any account
positing a clear-cut difference between a "democratic" Yushchenko
and an "authoritarian" Bakiev. Bakiev, like Yushchenko, was initially
reported to have a reputation as a "clean" former prime minister with
"strong respect for the rule of law."105 Moreover, while Bakiev resigned
as prime minister in protest after the regime's deadly 2002 crackdown
in Aksy, Prime Minister Yushchenko not only stayed in office as Ty-
moshenko was arrested launching the "Ukraine without Kuchma" pro-
tests in 2000-1, but on that very day signed a public appeal along with
Kuchma that compared the protesters to fascists and called on them to
support the legitimate authorities.1 0 6

INSTITUTIONS VERSUS CIVIL SOCIETY

There also appears to be no difference in civil society strength or form

capable of explaining the contrast between Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan
during 2005-10.107 Just before our period of interest, 2005-10, Ukraine
and Kyrgyzstan were only three-quarters of a point apart in Freedom
House's civil society evaluations on a 7-point scale.10 While Ukraine's
civil society ratings dramatically improved after the Orange Revolu-
tion and Kyrgyzstan's stayed the same, this could be interpreted as an
effect of the postrevolution situation rather than a fundamental cause
of it. The above process tracing of what actually thwarted autocratiz-
ing tendencies in postrevolution Ukraine confirms this interpretation.
The power grabs made by each of Ukraine's top politicians were in
all major instances stopped not by autonomous civil society uprisings
that might have forced overreaching presidents and prime ministers to
step back but by the raw political machinery countermobilized in the
main by the opposing branch of state power. Indeed, the very fact that

104 McFaul 2002.

.o. Marat 2006, 16.
106 Marat 2006, 16; Kas'ianov 2008, 259.
17 On civil society in the revolution, see Diuk
2006.
10s Freedom House 2009.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 607

each of Ukraine's three major officeholders during 2005-10 undertook

such power grabs suggests civil society strength was not a major deter-
rent. As D'Anieri writes, "whatever progress in democratization that
Ukraine has experienced since 2004 has been accompanied not by a
flourishing of civil society groups but by a reemergence of apathy." 109
INSTITUTIONS VERSUS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Based on the well known worldwide correlation between economic de-
velopment and democracy, one might suppose Ukraine's higher level
of development might account for its greater openness relative to Kyr-
gyzstan during 2005-10.110 Aslund, considering only Ukraine, indeed
cites economic development as driving Ukraine's post-2005 democra-
tization.1 11 But even setting aside major debates on whether the rela-
tionship between democracy and development is causal, 112 the differ-
ence between the countries we are talking about in the year before the
first of their revolutions (that is, in 2003, $4,500 GDP per capita PPP in
Ukraine compared with $2,800 in Kyrgyzstan) 113 is hardly substantial
enough to justify attributing cause to economic development without
more evidence. 114 Tracing the details of how single-pyramid tenden-
cies were thwarted in Ukraine confirms that development was not the
mechanism producing its divergence from Kyrgyzstan's path. No broad
business association emerged to stand up and prevent political closure
and no large business-funded social movement played any significant
role counterbalancing state authority independently of another branch
of state executive power. Big business and the state, in fact, remained
highly interwoven in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution.115 Eco-
nomic actors did matter in providing different sides in the political
struggle with resources, frequently switching camps to suit their inter-
ests, as in the numerous examples given above. But their ability to play
this role, as the case of Kyrgyzstan's business testifies, hinged crucially
on the availability of competing pyramids of power that afforded big
businesses cover under one chief state patron when they found their
interests were not adequately pursued under the other.

109 D'Anieri 2010,2.

110 E.g., Przeworski and Limongi 1997.
. Aslund 2009.
112 See Dunning 2010.
113 Figures are from the CIA World Factbook as reported by Index Mundi. At http://indexmundi.

com/en/facts/2006/ukraine/gdpper-capita_.(ppp).html; http://indexmundi.com/en/facts/2006/kyr
gyzstan/gdp.per-capita_(ppp).html, accessed March 28, 2009.
114 See, for example, calculations by Boix and Stokes 2003, 531-32.
11. Kuzio 2008b.
608 WORLD POLITICS

INSTITUTIONS VERSUS GEOGRAPHY

Because Ukraine is closer to the European Union than Kyrgyzstan, one

might expect this to have complicated the reconstruction of a single
dominant presidential pyramid in Ukraine more than in Kyrgyzstan
after an electoral revolution due to processes such as diffusion or pros-
pects for European Union membership.116 A closer look at what was
actually happening during 2000-2005, however, shows that "Europe"
played little causal role in producing the divergence in postrevolutionary
regimes in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. For one thing, it quickly became
clear after the Orange Revolution that Ukraine's prospects for joining
the EU were virtually nil due as much to the latter's own reluctance
to expand further as to Ukraine's own problems.1 7 NATO aspirations
also faded as domestic public opinion continued to oppose accession. 1 s
Most importantly, the preceding pages amply show that the most
European-oriented and most European-supported politicians (Yush-
chenko and Tymoshenko) manifested virtually the same tendencies to
use clientelistic methods to augment their own power and subvert their
rivals during 2005-10 as did those oriented more toward Russia. And
in each case these machine tendencies were thwarted not by European
ideals, incentives, or warnings but rather by a counterbalancing branch
of formal executive power applying the levers of machine politics. And
we should also not forget that European influence did not stop Kuchma
from building his single-pyramid system in the 1990s.

INSTITUTIONS VERSUS STATE STRENGTH/WEAKNESS

Following Way's insight that political openness may often reflect not
democratic success but authoritarian failure, one might attribute the
failure of single-pyramid politics in Ukraine to state weakness, gen-
erating "pluralism by default." 119 Kyrgyzstan, however, is frequently
considered one of the weakest states in the postcommunist region, 120
and one does not encounter claims in the literature that Ukraine's state
institutions were somehow weaker than Kyrgyzstan's. If state weakness
were the primary source of variation in levels of pluralism, then surely
"pluralism by default" would be seen in Kyrgyzstan before Ukraine.
The fact that Bakiev's single pyramid collapsed in April 2010 would
seem to confirm this interpretation: state weakness does not necessar-
116 Kalandadze and Orenstein 2009.
117 Kuzio 2008a, 365.
s Arel 2008-9.
119
Way 2005.
120 McGlinchey 2010.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 609

ily involve pluralism. Kyrgyzstan's formal presidentialist constitution

provided for a single dominating pyramid but not a lasting one and not
a strong state.121

INSTITUTIONS VERSUS LEADERSHIP

Citing comparative evidence that leadership skill and other personal

resources matter in constructing political machines,12 2 still others
might posit that Yushchenko failed to build a power pyramid because
he was a weak president, unable to control the situation in the country.
The counterfactual claim that a different leader could have produced
a different outcome is almost impossible to falsify, but recalling the
carefully focused process-tracing comparison presented above reveals
its inferiority to the institutional explanation. The Yushchenko-Bakiev
comparison is particularly enlightening, with Bakiev's overthrow in
April 2010 providing the starkest testimony. In retrospect, analysts
have portrayed the Kyrgyz leader as an incompetent clientelistic pa-
tron. 123 Yet he was still successful at squeezing out political rivals and
closing the political space straight through his 2009 reelection, making
Kyrgyzstan a much less free place than Ukraine for half a decade, as
documented above. Yushchenko, by contrast, was not regarded as weak
when he successfully led the massive successful campaign to topple the
Kuchma-Yanukovych team in 2004. Both Bakiev and Yushchenko had
experience as prime ministers for about two years under their old re-
gimes between late 1999 and early 2002, and initially both had clean
reputations and power bases on one side of their countries' primary
regional divides. While Bakiev was first elected with an overwhelming
majority and Yushchenko was not, Bakiev's victory was initially seen
as the victory of the "tandem" formed by himself and Kulov, who was
widely credited with bringing the support of the northern half of the
country.124
There would therefore seem to be precious little basis for consider-
ing Yushchenko to have been decisively more lacking in the skills and
resources of clientelistic politics than Bakiev without courting the tau-
tology of judging Yushchenko weak because he failed to build a single-
pyramid system. Moreover, an argument that personality is paramount

121 Explaining why single pyramids collapse is beyond the scope of this article, which is about the
influence of formal constitutions on why they (fail to) rise in the first place. The author's explanation
for the collapse of single-pyramid systems in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, in terms fully consistent with
the present article's logic, can be found in Hale 2005.
122 Hale 2003; Way 2008.
123 E.g., International Crisis Group 2010.
124 Saidazimova 2005.
610 WORLD POLITICS

must also explain why both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych-both widely

regarded as strong leaders-also failed during 2005-10. Yanukovych,
in fact, was widely expected to succeed in building his own dominant
"power vertikal" around the prime minister's office during 2006-7.125
Indeed, it was he who was rated Ukraine's most powerful politician
by at least two prominent expert surveys during this period. 126 But he
ultimately failed just as did the others, and process tracing reveals that
each of the failures was due primarilyto countervailing informal politi-
cal force mobilized by the occupants of the rival formal institution of
power under the divided-executive constitution, as described above.
It is possible that another (more contingent) form of leadership
strength-popularity-factored into the outcome during 2005-10 in
interaction with the divided-executive constitution, in that a much
more popular Yushchenko might have won a stronger parliamentary
position in the free and fair 2006 or 2007 parliamentary elections (Our
Ukraine) and thereby been able to unify both presidency and premier-
ship within his narrow personal network. Of course, the divided-exec-
utive constitution also appears to have been a contributing factor to his
lack of popularity, as voters, perceiving no reduction in corruption, pun-
ished him for what were widely seen as illegitimate attempts to amass
personal power at Tymoshenko's expense (especially during 2005 and
2007-9).127 Few observers other than Bakiev loyalists attribute Bakiev's
single-pyramid system to any overwhelming popularity, and corruption
there was also unchecked. 128

DIVIDED-EXECUTIVE CONSTITUTION VERSUS PARLIAMENTARY POWER

One might surmise that Ukraine's democratization resulted not from

the information and focal effects of the divided-executive constitu-
tion but simply from the fact that the 2004 reform made the parlia-
ment stronger. 129 This study concurs in the specific sense that what was
stronger about parliament was that it gained the ability to indepen-
dently select a prime minister whose power formally rivaled that of the
president. But a careful analysis of events demonstrates that stronger
parliaments do not necessarily result in more democracy. Indeed, when
Yanukovych controlled the parliamentary majority and consequently
the government in 2006-7, it was he and his parliamentary base that

125 Korrespondent,January 20, 2007, 20.

126 Vlast'-Deneg, January 19-25, 2007, 19; Ukraiins'ka Pravda,August 21, 2008, 15:18.
127 Maksymiuk 2005.
128 On one role of presidential popularity in single-pyramid systems, see Hale 2005.
129 Fish 2006.
 FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS IN INFORMAL POLITICS 611

were considered the primary threat to democracy, as documented above.

Accordingly, in that case it was the presidentwho successfully blocked
this autocratizing gambit by forcing early elections and a new govern-
ment; a weaker presidency would not have been able to do so and an
even stronger parliament would not have succumbed to this obstacle.
It was thus precisely the balance of informal authority that the divided-
executive constitution induced that protected political contestation in
Ukraine from a parliament-based threat.

CONCLUSION

The preceding discussion has shown, through a process-tracing paired

comparison of Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine after their color revolutions
during 2005-10, that formal constitutions can have an important im-
pact even in societies where rules are not reliably followed and where
institutions are routinely corrupted-that is, in highly clientelistic so-
cieties. They matter in different ways than they do in other countries,
however. Presidentialist constitutions have their effect not so much be-
cause they are "obeyed" or "followed" as because (all other things equal)
they signal that whichever clientelistic network captures this office is
likely to be the most powerful one in the country and make the occu-
pant of the presidency a singular focal point for elite coordination. Such
signals enable the president to set informal rules and practices and to
selectively give life to formal rules that other networks must acknowl-
edge or risk political or economic isolation, creating a strong tendency
to single-pyramid politics. Conversely, divided-executive constitutions
complicate this process, creating uncertainty as to which network will
be dominant and incentivizing rivalry among networks based in top
state executive offices, primarily the premiership and the presidency, a
process that tends to promote political opening.13 0
These findings have significant implications for debates about the
role of constitutions in regime change. For one thing, the paired com-
parison successfully isolates an important effect of presidentialist consti-
tutions on the degree of democracy. In two countries emerging from an
electoral revolution with a standoff between two regionally based net-
works with roughly equal informal power, the one that retained a presi-
dentialist constitution experienced a reconsolidation of single-pyramid
politics while the other-for essentially exogenous reasons-wound up

130 This rivalry can play out in ways that may or may not coincide with or reinforce formal consti-

tutional rules. See Grzymala-Busse 2010.

612 WORLD POLITICS

adopting a new divided-executive constitution that significantly com-

plicated attempts by all major players to reestablish single-pyramid pol-
itics through the processes described here. This should caution us not
to take too far arguments that constitutions are often epiphenomenal,
having no independent impact on democratization.13 1 Further compar-
ative process-tracing research and large-N research designs carefully
tailored to test for specific causal mechanisms will be required to know
for sure how far such arguments travel.
The findings also reveal a democracy-promoting side to divided-
executive constitutions even under the condition of "cohabitation"
(control over different executive posts by rival factions), usually cited
for negative effects like political infighting, policy paralysis, and re-
gime instability. 13 2 We do in fact find these negative effects in Ukraine
during 2005-10, and it may be that observers ultimately judge them
to outweigh the positive effects. While such judgment is beyond the
scope of this analysis, we can conclude that the democratizing effects of
divided-executive constitutions in highly clientelistic societies should
be taken into consideration. Indeed, a divided-executive constitution
sustained a period of political openness in Ukraine that lasted half a
decade-the post-Soviet region's only such sustained opening, apart
from the Baltic countries, during twenty years of postcommunism. And
it may be that future research will help us identify conditions under
which divided executive power can function effectively even in highly
clientelistic societies, making the democracy it promotes more stable
and attractive. This study is intended as a step toward better under-
standing how constitutions actually and potentially matter in highly
clientelistic societies.

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