Pre-War Government and Party Networks in the Rebel Political Institutions: Individual Co-Optation in Eastern Ukraine
Pre-War Government and Party Networks in the Rebel Political Institutions: Individual Co-Optation in Eastern Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: The extant literature on rebel governance takes the political institutions that rebels develop to rule a civilian population as an indivisible entity. As a result, it cannot answer the question, why do those at the top of the power hierarchy in the pre-war period leave the rebel-controlled territories while mid-level officials are individually co-opted into the rebel political institutions? The argument is that rebels may co-opt not entire pre-existing institutions but selected individuals from these institutions, presumably mid-level officials with the experience of running the administrative affairs, into the new patronage system built by rebels. That claim will be tested against the preexisting political and government institutions in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces dominated by the Party of Regions in the pre-war period.

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