Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Preface(2020) Meleshevych, Andriy; Zvieriev, IevgenIntroduction article to Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal, No. 6. - 2020.Item Responding to Hybridity in an Unstable Neighborhood : The Efficiency of the EU State-centric Approach to the Crisis in Libya and Ukraine(2020) Raineri, Luca; Ivashchenko-Stadnik, Kateryna; Petrov, RomanThis article investigates the complex problems arising from the discrepancy of traditional liberal crisis response approaches in the new type of complex emergencies. Based on the in-depth empirical analysis, it examines the EU role in addressing security sector reforms, humanitarian assistance and warfare in Libya and Ukraine, two key EU neighboring countries with ongoing military conflicts. It is argued that the observed over-emphasis on state-centric stabilization measures, with its main focus on formal state structures, fails to deal with the hybrid dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding in both countries. It is suggested that to shape comprehensive crisis response in an unstable neighborhood a multi-layered perspectives approach to security, sensitive to plural agencies and informal rules, should be developed both outside and within EU borders.Item Legal Complexities in the Service of Hybrid Warfare(2020) Värk, RenéHybrid warfare is about using military and non-military measures in a non-linear and complimentary fashion. Different means and methods are not necessarily effective separately, but it is their synergy that leads to the desired outcome. Law has also become a method of warfare. States exploit deliberately legal complexities to strengthen their own positions and to undermine the positions of their opponents. They may wish to keep the intensity of the employed measures below the threshold of the use or threat of force in order to argue that international law has not been breached and that the opponents may not exercise self-defense. States may equally try to avoid the application of the rules of warfare by claiming that the situation has not crossed the threshold of an armed conflict. Because the rules governing the resort to armed force and the conduct of hostilities were drafted for conventional warfare, the ambiguities, loopholes and thresholds in these rules provide opportunities, for better or for worse, in the era of modern warfare.Item EU Enlargement, Conditionality, and the Protection of Christian Minorities in Turkey(2020) Andakian, IsaacTurkey has had aspirations to join the European Union (EU) and be part of Europe since 1958. The most recent three EU enlargement rounds in 2004, 2007, and 2013 included most Eastern European countries and kept Turkey aside. Turkey has to comply with numerous enlargement conditionalities imposed by the EU to obtain the status of potential membership eligibility. Among these conditionalities are the Copenhagen criteria, which include but are not limited to the respect of minority rights as an inseparable part of Copenhagen’s political criterion. This essay discusses the respect of minority rights in Turkey as a conditionality for its EU accession and focuses on the non-Muslim Christian minorities, namely Armenian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox minorities. The findings of this essay present and demonstrate the persecutions and intolerance these minorities have encountered and still encounter in their everyday life within Turkish society by the current Turkish government and its predecessors. As a result, this essay argues that Turkey does not comply with the ‘respect of minority rights’ requirement as prescribed by the Copenhagen criteria, a prerequisite for its EU accession. Consequently, Turkey is not eligible for EU accession from the ‘respect of minority rights’ perspective as it does not fulfill the latter condition.Item Ukraine's National Policy on Aquaculture : Reality or Myth?(2020) Kononov, OleksiyAquaculture is a promising sector in Ukraine’s agricultural economy and could contribute to the nation’s food security and assist in overcoming some of the challenges posed by the COVID‑19 pandemic. For years, Ukrainian government’s policy towards aquaculture has been less than supportive, in part because the government’s management of the sector has been tossed between different ministries. Legal regulation of the sector is overcomplicated, and producers face numerous difficulties with permits, rent of waterbodies, inspections, customs, and feed importation. There are no specific approximation obligations related to aquaculture in the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. State aid to struggling aquaculture producers remains insignificant and difficult to get compared to the aid available to other agricultural businesses. This article analyzes the main policy and legal problems faced by aquaculture businesses in Ukraine and concludes with solutions that can improve the situation.Item Participatory Governance in Ukraine : A Case Study of Anti-corruption Policy in the Period 2014-2018(2020) Marchevska, DenitsaThe 2013–2014 Euromaidan Revolution, which culminated in the fall of the authoritarian and notoriously corrupt regime of President Victor Yanukovych has become a symbol of the triumph of civic activism in Ukraine. Although those events have attracted significant scholarly attention, the question whether the Ukrainian civil society’s capacity for protest mobilization has successfully been channeled into sustained, formalized and productive forms of civic participation in the process of public policy making has remained largely unaddressed. Therefore, this paper sets out to examine whether civil society organizations (CSOs) have become more integrated into the Ukrainian public policy making process since the Euromaidan and whether the Revolution has led to a meaningful shift towards a more open and inclusive style of governance. Drawing on legal texts, external reports and semi-structured interviews with Kyiv-based anticorruption activists, the study finds both a clear trend towards increased openness of the policy making process to CSO input in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution as well as the insufficient consolidation and institutionalization of such participatory mechanisms, which ultimately makes them vulnerable to the preferences of individual players and to broader changes in political attitudes.Item Characteristics of Advocacy under Different Freedom Regimes : Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania(2020) Batsyukova, SvitlanaThis article presents a comparative analysis of the characteristics of advocacy in three countries with different levels of political and civil freedom. This analysis correlates each country’s freedom level with the characteristics of its advocacy activities. The analysis’s results are based on interviews of experts conducted from 2015 through 2017 in unfree Belarus, partly free Ukraine, and free Lithuania. The analysis focuses on the following advocacy characteristics: its scale; its agents and targets; its goals; the extent to which it sought to protect rights, freedoms, and other interests, its promotion of ideas; and its results.Item Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism : A Critique of the Effectiveness of the International Refugee Regime(2020) Ng Yan Chao, IvanThe past few years have seen the issue of refugees rise in prominence, particularly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. It has been almost seven decades since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was set up and the first international treaty regulating the issue of refugees signed. This article examines the international legal framework governing the issue of refugees and argues that it is ineffectual because refugees are inherently a matter of high politics—refugees are fundamentally a political issue subject to the vicissitudes of politics. The moral and economic justifications for the international refugee regime are also highly contested, and this contestation plays out in the political realm. The international refugee regime and legal regulation of the issue is unlikely to be effective for as long as the nation-state continues to be the primary actor in the international world order. This is because the international refugee regime requires enforcement by states to be effective—however, political, moral and economic vicissitudes across the states involved impede its ability to function in its ideal conception.Item The Correlation of Constitutional and International Law : The Ukrainian Case(2020) Koziubra, Mykola; Zvieriev, IevgenConstitutional and international law often interrelate and regulate certain areas differently. The legal scholar’s viewpoint significantly determines his or her approach to the role of international and constitutional law in certain legal circumstances. This article focuses on the issue of determining the place of international treaties and generally recognized international law principles and norms in Ukraine’s domestic legal system. Ukraine has a well-established practice of automatically recognizing international treaties’ priority over its norms of domestic legislation, but this priority cannot be regarded as absolute. This article argues that legal scholars advance different arguments on this because they apply different approaches—approaches that originate either in constitutional or international law.Item Polish Administrative Court's Dissenting Opinions in Excise Duty Cases(2020) Kowalski, PatrykThis article presents the results of the examination dissenting opinions submitted by judges of administrative courts in excise duty cases in the years 2004–2018. The analysis covers the judgments of all sixteen administrative courts in Poland issued in the abovementioned period. These criteria led to the selection of research material covering a votum separatum from 78 judgments issued by administrative courts on excise duty and 60 judgements issued by the Supreme Administrative Court as a result of filing a cassation appeal against administrative court judgments. By using quantitative analysis in the performed case studies, it has been determined that, for example, administrative court judges extremely rarely submit in cases of excise duty votum separatum—about five times per year. Between 2004 and 2018 out of 19,172 judgments issued only to 78 of them issued a dissenting opinion, which is more or less 0.5% of the total. In the course of case studies using qualitative analysis it has been observed, for example, that in the constituent part of the justification—the legal basis of the decision and its explanation—the SAC referred to the arguments expressed in a separate opinion in 41% of judgments.Item The EU and the Reform of the Investment Protection Regime(2020) Svoboda, OndřejThe enlargement of the European Union’s (EU) exclusive competence in foreign direct investment (FDI) through the Lisbon Treaty has had profound implications. The EU has become an actor in the global investment regime and has begun to develop its own investment policy, including by negotiating international investment and comprehensive trade and investment agreements with third parties. Considering the magnitude of the EU economy and the fact that the EU Member States have concluded almost 1,400 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) out of the roughly 3,300 BITs in force worldwide, Europe’s potential influence over the international investment system is enormous. Consequently, an increasing number of lawyers and political scientists have become interested in the EU’s role in FDI. Three studies published by Routledge during the last three years reflect this trend. And each study offers different and valuable perspectives on the EU’s role in FDI.