Transnational Polycentricity and Political Prefiguration of Ukraine’s Social Resistance

• In Event: Infrastructures of Liberation I: Resistance, Reconstruction, and De-Occupation in the Ukrainian Commons

Abstract

Decades of socio-economic difficulties, waves of diasporic migration, and more than 10 years of russian invasion have presented Ukrainians with overlaying challenges which were insufficiently met by the state and market alike. Formal and informal networks and initiatives of support and survival that emerged out of necessity transcend Ukraine’s borders and conventional institutional state and market functions nest and intersect with them in an essentially polycentric manner. Such structures proved vital in scaffolding the famous Ukrainian resilience and, as I will show, constitute a political prefiguration for a polycentric state fitting to the fluid needs of a fast-changing social, economic, and political reality. The paper utilises conceptual frameworks of Ostroms and empirics of Ukraine’s foundational economy provision to explore and historicise strengths and vulnerabilities of these polycentric structures since Feb 2022 thus testing their fitness for the (post)war recovery of Ukraine/-ians.

Author

• Yuliya Yurchenko, U of Greenwich (UK)