FROM NEOPATRIMONIAL SCIENCE TO CONSUMPTION OF ACADEMIC DEGREES: THE CASE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN UKRAINE
Introduction
One of the recent Economist articles on the education of elected politicians stated that “Ukraine had the highest proportion of legislators with postgraduate credentials” and that in principle “academic titles have long been helpful in Ukraine’s politics” [7]. This information is unexpected for the Western audience, but in Ukraine it can be seen as a part of a stable pattern of power/knowledge – mass obtaining of academic degrees by representatives of the Ukrainian “executive”, “legislative”, and “judicial” branches of power. This report is devoted to the evolution of the practices of obtaining academic degrees in the specific field of study – public administration – by ever-increasing and heterogeneous groups of applicants from outside the Ukrainian Academy.
The paper is written within the framework which can conditionally be called the politics of knowledge, and the purpose of which was and still is to trace the influence of socio-political factors on the development of social sciences and the knowledge they produce. The viability of this and similar approaches depends largely on comparative analysis, which involves mastering various experiences of interaction between power and knowledge. The post-Soviet Academy provides an opportunity to systematically investigate the specific patterns of power/knowledge, which are different from those identified and studied in the Western Academy.
Research hypotheses
One of the works [10] defines “neopatrimonial science” as a system of meaningful and performative interactions of academics with businessmen and officials determined by neopatrimonial political regime. It includes the special selection of [leading] actors who possess a special type of [practical] motivation derived from the patrimonial character of their position. This creates the potential for accumulating academic capital by means of getting control over administering it. Consequently, the stress is placed not on preparation and competence, but on belonging to the most successful political and/or business regional elite. It should be noted that neopatrimonial science is not identical to Ukrainian (social) science, and neopatrimonial political science is not equal to all political science in Ukraine.
The most obvious feature of neopatrimonialism is “private appropriation of a governmental sphere by those who hold political power, and also the indivisibility of the public and private spheres of society… the ruling groups regard society as their own private domain, and the fulfillment of public functions as a legitimate means to their own personal enrichment” [3, p.90]. It assumes an unclear division into the public and private spheres, when “private appropriation by the ruling elite of the public realm” [3, p.91] presupposes the consideration of almost all social and political institutions as their own fiefdom, the nature of operations with which is not limited by agreements or arrangements. A certain rank in the power hierarchy opens access to several subordinate institutions, including higher education, the control over which is equal to their ownership. To be an official under neopatrimonialism is, in essence, to privatize many “public functions and institutions”, the exact number and completeness of control over which is determined by the rank of the position.
My first hypothesis is that the neopatrimonial science, political regime, and credentialism have generated consumption of academic degrees in Ukraine.
The influence of credentialism on mass acquirement of the academic degrees is due to the high level of prestige of science and scholars in Ukraine. For instance, in the mid-2000s, “more than 70% of Ukrainians were ready to approve the choice of their relatives if they decided to become a scientist” [8, p. 140], and this situation was up to 2014 when “the share of those who would support a decision of their relatives to become a scientist dropped from 71% in 2014 to 55% in 2017” [6, p. 396]. At the same time, “citizens rank of this profession is… high. In a list of 31 different occupations, ‘scientist’ as a profession was ranked fifth (the same went for a lawyer)” [6, pp. 384–385]. Such attractiveness of science implies interest to academic degrees from many social groups, which leads to the situation when the number of academic degrees no longer correlates with processes within the Academy, primarily with the growth in the number of students and professors [5]. Figure 1 presents the ratio of an academic degree (DSc. and PhD degrees) per 1,000 undergraduates, postgraduates and doctoral students (1993–2015). I took the data on the number of students from the website of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, while the number of academic degrees was provided by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine upon my special request.
Since 2005, the number of academic degrees has grown faster than the number of Academy citizens. Moreover, the Ukrainian dissertation machine does not create jobs outside the Academy: the large number of PhD holders and doctors of sciences carrying out scientific research in the public sector are in scientific organizations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 3862 doctors out of 4159 (92.85%) and 10304 PhD candidates out of 11,156 (92.36%) [9, pp. 39, 55]. In general, these data fit well into the theory of credential society with its emphasis on educational credential inflation caused by the very fact that “technological change is not the driving force in rising credential requirements” [2, p.X].
I think that the regime-mediated interaction of neopatrimonial science and credentialism leads to consumption, that is, the hierarchically organized mass obtaining of academic degrees by applicants from outside the Academy who are not directly involved in satisfying its basic social needs. I adhere to Jean Baudrillard’s interpretation of consumption, which starts with the following principle: “You never consume the object in itself (in its use-value); you are always manipulating objects (in the broadest sense) as signs which distinguish you either by affiliating you to your own group taken as an ideal reference or by marking you off from your group by reference to a group of higher status” [1, p.61]. Accordingly, on the one hand, consumption is “a process of signification and communication, based on a code into which consumption practices fit and from which they derive their meaning,” and, on the other, it is “a process of classification and social differentiation in which sign / objects are ordered not now merely as significant differences in a code” [1, pp.60–61].
One of the advantages of the concept of consumption is that it makes it possible to realize that the sudden desire of the great number of different people to become certified scholars can neither be accidental, nor unrelated to the applicants themselves, or to the intra- and/or intergroup processes. The interpretation of consumption implies a hierarchical way of distinguishing social groups [1, pp.62–63], where there are applicants responsible for establishing the pattern of consumption, and those who reproduce it. Consumption is influenced by the same factors that influenced the obtainment of academic degrees in neopatrimonial science: the (rank of) position and the region.
The second hypothesis is that the Russian full-scale invasion of 2022 led to massive consumption of degrees by groups whose importance increased after Ukrainian sovereignty was threatened.
In Ukraine, the Academy has been institutionalized to its subaltern status of serving politicians rather than providing them with competent expertise. Article 31 of the Law “On Status of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine” states that “the people’s deputy shall be provided with conditions to improve his/her professional level, namely: professional development, training in educational institutions, including master’s and postgraduate programs... at the expense of budgetary funds to ensure the activities of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine”. In 1995–2014, an even more odious provision was in force: “The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine shall provide the former deputy for the period of his/her employment with the salary received by the people’s deputy of Ukraine, but not more than one year, and in the case of training or requalification – for up to two years”. The point is that covering the costs of obtaining an academic degree at the expense of the state automatically puts deputies in a privileged position in Ukraine. It is equally important to consolidate the inverted model of relations between the Academy and the authorities, and it has no any relation with the academia lost prestige for public administration officials in many other societies: (1) state structures a priori do not seek to recruit experts from the academic community who could contribute to the formation of a “professional and independent administration”; (2) professional expertise represents the “scientific” justification for the (voluntaristic) decisions of political leadership; (3) from officials’ point of view, there is no difference between the “normal” work of legitimate scholars and its final results in the form of competent expertise and the mainly performative obtainment of the academic degrees.
The choice of public administration is determined by the fact that in Ukraine it was initially used mainly to satisfy the demand of officials for obtaining academic degrees. Such rootedness in power allows to trace the dynamics of the political significance of certain groups of neopatrimonial bureaucracy during the war as well as the impact of the war on the processes of academic certification in Ukraine.
From neopatrimonial science and credential society to consumption in public administration before and during wartime
In this part of the paper, I will try to identify patterns of obtaining academic degrees by applicants from outside the Academy using the examples of theses in public administration defended during 1999–2024. The lower temporal limit is 1999 as the first year when the information about the applicant’s place of work was presented in the announcements about the forthcoming defenses. As a result, 2,336 candidate (PhD) theses were considered, among which 1,309 degrees (56,03%) were received by the applicants from outside the Academy. In addition, as there is no reliable and valid data regarding their work (retirees, unemployed, etc.) for some of the applicants in this group, in most calculations I considered 1,145 cases of obtaining an academic degree.
I have identified 7 groups of positions reflecting different degrees of involvement in political, economic, and other significant spheres. These are the “executive” (Prime Minister, ministers, governors, etc.), “legislative” (people’s deputies, heads of the Verkhovna Rada, of its committees and commissions), and “judicial” (judges of various courts) branches of power, “local self-government” (heads and/or deputies of District, City and Regional Councils...), “siloviki” or “law enforcement” (Security Service of Ukraine, Main Directorate of Intelligence, Armed Forces of Ukraine, State Emergency Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc.), “civil society” (non-governmental organizations, community organizations, labor unions, mass media), and “business entities” (representatives of small, medium and large businesses).
Figure 2 represents the results of the distribution of 1,145 cases of academic degrees obtained by former or current officials in seven groups of positions. Reference to the Presidents of Ukraine (“Leonid Kravchuk”, “Leonid Kuchma I”, “Leonid Kuchma II”, etc.) means the relevant period when these academic degrees were obtained. Periodization is based on the (not always equal) terms of office of presidents, rather than on the allocation of equal periods or their linking to Ministers of Education responsible for establishing the “rules of the game” for acquiring academic degrees, determined by the neopatrimonialism. The latter is a hierarchy of various patronages regulated by the President, due to which the renewal of the neo-patrimonial bureaucracy, including governors and/or heads of Regional Councils and, as a consequence, the acquirement of academic degrees by its (new) members depends primarily on the change of Presidents (or the relevant patron-client networks) rather than on the figure of the Minister of Education or some natural course of time.
First, the process of obtaining the academic degree in Ukraine largely depends on the Presidents, and the starting point was the second term (November 30, 1999–January 23, 2005) of Leonid Kuchma, under whom 5,67% of applicants outside the Academy of the total number of cases obtained the academic degrees. Under Viktor Yushchenko (January 23, 2005–February 25, 2010) there was a significant increase (18,43%), which continued during the presidency of the odious and corrupt Viktor Yanukovych (February 25, 2010–February 22, 2014) – 25,76%. The presidency of Petro Poroshenko (June 07, 2014–May 20, 2019) is notable for the small increase in the number of applicants outside the Academy with academic degrees (26,28%), while under the incumbent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, there is a slight decrease of those (23,84%) who obtained them due to their official positions.
The correlation between the President and the obtainment of the academic degrees can be explained by using the idea of Henry E. Hale [4, p. 87]: “[P]atronal presidential systems, so long as they include contested national elections, tend to produce regime cycles”. It means back-and-forth changes at the level of institutions (“strong authoritarian features… emerges, then appear to be democratizing…, then revert to more authoritarian features… and so on and so on”) [4, p. 88], which do not affect the structures of personal networks and therefore do not change the regime itself fundamentally. I consider that the relative stability of the political elite, which was formed under Kuchma and largely satisfied its academic claims during his presidency, turns into a relative decline in the rate of obtaining the academic degrees under Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and even Poroshenko (it should be kept in mind that his presidency was marked by the loss of the Crimea and Donbas – the latter regularly provided a huge number of defenses of top officials), while maintaining the neopatrimonial nature of the regime.
Second, the regime-mediated interaction of neopatrimonial science and credentialism leads to consumption – it is a socially and politically selective process, where the initial pattern is established by the reference groups of top officials. Based on Jean Baudrillard’s ideas, I distinguish, analytically rather than empirically, three stages through which the process of academic degree consumption takes place.
1. The pattern establishment is based on the crossing of (symbolic) boundaries being previously relatively closed to power and commodity-money relations. This stage is directly related to the activities of the neopatrimonial science actors (prime ministers, ministers, deputies, etc.) up to early 2000s. The significance of the actors of neopatrimonial science is that their status allows to (finally) break down the boundaries between power and science, and, as a result, they lay the foundation for the consumption pattern showing the very possibility of consuming an academic degree and turning it into one of the symbols of their status.
2. Commodification is the transformation of an academic degree into goods, so that all stages of its obtaining get the monetary value. Its significance goes beyond the mere fact of paying for an academic degree; it is rather a matter of making the applicants’ money visible at every stage, thus keeping the dissertation machine running at an acceptable (for reproduction) level. The money of hundreds of neopatrimonial science actors was not enough, while the arrival of (tens of) thousands of new applicants finally transformed the academic degree from a symbolic award in a very narrow field into goods available to all members / consumers of society.
3. The pattern reproduction is the involvement of new social group members as well as less ranked members who have already begun to obtain degrees into the process of consumption.
In general, relatively few actors of neopatrimonial science, closely associated with the political sphere (“core” of consumption), are apparently responsible for establishing the pattern, while reproduction is ensured by a wider range of social groups. This pattern is subsequently copied and reproduced by lower ranks, especially by female applicants. The least ranked members of the primary group that carries out the obtaining of academic degrees (“core”) are the most susceptible. Members of other groups assimilate this signal with a certain delay. In general, the farther a particular group is distant from the power, the later the consumption will be observed within its framework. Then, the signal assimilation and, therefore, commodification with pattern reproduction proceeds from top to bottom, so the lower ranks will consume academic degrees later than higher (and/or middle) ones. Finally, the growth in consumption should be accompanied by an intensive increase in the number of female applicants, especially in the lower ranks, as well as by a greater concentration of applicants in higher and middle ranks.
Thirdly, since 2015, the largest increase in the group of applicants from outside the Academy has been observed among representatives of the siloviki” (law enforcement such as Security Service of Ukraine, Main Directorate of Intelligence, Armed Forces of Ukraine, State Emergency Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc.). These data reflect the general militarization of Ukrainian society at least after the annexation of the Crimea and the strengthening of the political positions of groups responsible for national security.
Conclusion
This paper explored the transformation of the practices of obtaining academic degrees in Ukraine by applicants from outside the Academy. My hypotheses were that (A) neopatrimonial science, political regime, and credentialism have generated consumption of academic degrees in Ukraine and (B) the Russian full-scale invasion of 2022 led to massive consumption of degrees by groups whose importance increased after Ukrainian sovereignty was threatened. Neopatrimonial science and consumption both have common features due to influence of the political regime and the actors’ behavior in the space of the symbolic economy. Firstly, they are hierarchical and involve the introduction of a pattern by higher social groups; secondly, they are not egalitarian, since the obtainment of academic degrees is evidence of power, status, or authority. The differences between them lie primarily in the number and nature of the social groups involved. Consumption is oriented towards the mass reproduction of a pattern by the maximum possible number of professional groups making the whole society an arena of exchange, communication, and differentiation.
Consumption of academic degrees is a socially and politically selective process, where the initial pattern is established by the reference groups of top officials. Within the neopatrimonial science, the obtainment of academic degree is considered a manifestation of inter- and intra-elite competition at the regional and/or central levels. Accordingly, the processes of status differentiation are limited to the groups close to power, which are distinguished by their ability to control the administrative means of accumulating academic capital and thereby extracting prebendal income. This pattern is subsequently copied and reproduced by lower ranks. Despite the significant symbolic component of obtaining the academic degree, pattern reproduction is related to (economically) favorable conditions contributing to the transfer of academic regalia from the category of luxury goods to objects of consumption. This process itself has its own specific features for different groups of applicants from outside the Academy, where the significant factors are the applicant’s position and its rank, the regional structure of the political regime, and gender.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to International Research Fellowship Programme in Regensburg, a part of the project “Denkraum Ukraine / Think Space Ukraine” (DU), funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Federal Foreign Office for the support and assistance in gathering the necessary material and all the facilities provided in the course of the research.
References
Baudrillard, Jean. 1998. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. London: Sage Publications.
Collins, Randall. 2019. The Credential Society: A Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fisun, Oleksandr. 2012. “Rethinking Post-Soviet Politics from a Neopatrimonial Perspective.” Demokratizatsiya 20.2: 87–96.
Hale, Henry E. 2014. Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kohler, Robert E. 1990. “The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base.” Isis 81: 639–662.
Petrushyna, Tetiana. 2017. “Public Views on Science in Ukraine.” Українське суспільство: моніторинг соціальнихзмін 4 (18): 384–399.
Which countries have the most-educated politicians? The Economist. URL: https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/2024/11/14/which-countries-have-the-most-educated-politicians (date of access: 02.01.2025).
Мартынюк, Игорь, Соболева, Наталья. 2006. “Академическая наука в общественном мнении и в оценках экспертов.”[Academic science in public opinion and expert assessment]. Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг 1: 134–152.
Наукова та інноваційна діяльність в Україні. Статистичний збірник. 2017 [Science and Innovation Activity in Ukraine. Statistics Collection]. Київ: Державна служба статистики України.
Осин, Вадим. 2014. “Академия и Политический Режим: Неопатримониальная Наука в Украине (и Молдове).” [Academy and Political Regime: Neopatrimonial Science in Ukraine (and Moldova)]. Ab Imperio. Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space 3: 295–360. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2014.0091.