Quality of Parliamentary Processes Depends on People’s Political Culture

September 15, 2017

Ukraine currently has approximately 350 political parties and the concern is that the Ministry of Justice lacks resources to check whether all registered political parties comply with legal requirements.

Parties have a way of getting around the law. This is the reason for the great number of parties that exist only on paper. The situation was evolving for years, as prior to each election we saw a wave, a surge in registration numbers of new parties. We need some conceptual changes in the system of control over parties’ compliance with legal requirements.

Today, the quality of parliamentary processes is often associated with the inadequate election system. However, the law carries only an instrumental function, it is a mechanism to slightly improve or devalue the situation. Most important is the level of political culture of communities and elites. Quality of parliamentary processes will be  determined by the level of people’s awareness, candidates’ hidden motives. Society must ask questions: who is the candidate, what does he seek, does he represent a particular person, or is he an independent law-maker? We have to ask ourselves as well. Because after the election campaign of 2014, many new deputies emerged, but they did not turn out to be who they positioned themselves as. The issue of the quality of parliamentarism is a deep one, it cannot be associated with a certain law, — it is connected with political culture that needs to be developed.


Source:

Yuriy Yakymenko

President, Editor-in-Chief of "National Security and Defence" Journal


Born in 1967 in Cherkasy

Education:

National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Faculty of Philosophy (1991)

University of Manchester (the UK), Department of Government, post-graduate course in Political Theory, MA (Econ) (1994)

National Academy of Sciences Institute of Philosophy, post-graduate course in Social Philosophy (1995). The author of about 200 publications

Ph.D. in Political Science (2013). The author of about 40 research papers and more than 200 publications in media

Employment:

1991 – 1995 — Expert in Public Relations of the Ukrainian Union of Afghan War Veterans

1995 – 2002 — Senior Consultant, Chief Consultant, Head of Division, Deputy Head of the Main Department of Domestic Policy of the Administration of the President of Ukraine

Most recent position at State Service — Deputy Head of the Department for Analysis and Prognosis of Home Policy of the Administration of the President of Ukraine. State Servant of the 4th rank

April 2002 – May 2005  — Razumkov Centre Leading Expert, Political and Legal Programmes

May 2005 – November 2011 — Director of Political and Legal Programmes

November 2011 – June 2020 — Deputy Director General, Director of Political and Legal Programmes

June 2020 — ongoing — President of the Razumkov Centre

(044) 201-11-92

yuri@razumkov.org.ua

yuri.yakimenko