PECULIARITIES OF THE INTERRELATION OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL PRECONDITIONS OF A RECONSTRUCTIVE DEVELOPMENT OF UKRAINE’S ECONOMY

Abstract

This article is a continuation of the discussion on the questions of successes and faults of the reforms executed in Ukraine for 25 years of its sovereignty, which was started in the journal “Economy of Ukraine” (No. 8, 2016). Here, we have analyzed the interrelation of economic and political preconditions, which became a prolog of transformational changes during the formation of our market economy. Basic was the political expediency, which was directed to the fracture of the political and economic system of the past by the market forces and reached a success. But the permissiveness from the side of the state and public society, which exists in parallel, created a possibility for the market forces to attain a political control over the state and to minimize, “to a certain extent,” the influence of the so-called “collective choice,” which has significantly reduced, eventually, the participation of the population in the elections of the President and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
In turn, this has formed the profound contradiction between the ensuring of a stability and the development of the economy and the society and the domination of interests of the business in the formation of state’s policy. The spontaneity of transformational changes allowed the “market power” to prevail not only over the “power of collective choice”, but, in many aspects, over the “state’s power”. This is really manifested, first of all, in the redistribution of country’s resources, including the financial ones, in interests of the business without any control from the side of the society. As a result, the country entered a series of continuous crises, which covered the economy, other sides of society’s life, political power, and political forces. The latter were periodically changed in the power, not seeking the balance of interests and the mechanisms of interaction between the state, market, and society. The domination of a political expediency and the political transformation corresponding to it became defining in many aspects.
As a result of transformational changes, the electorate started to lose the trust in democratic elections, which was revealed in a decrease in the activity of its participation against the background of the marginalization of impoverished masses and the spread of protest moods. Now, it is urgent to fill the reforms by a new content, which will allow one to consolidate the society by means of the reconstructive development of Ukraine’s economy. These questions will be the object of author’s further studies and relevant publications.