Borders, Constituency Politics, and “Our Man” Voting in Electoral Geography of Ukraine

The electoral geography of Ukraine is predominantly based on compositional effect studies, which consider nationality, language, and foreign policy orientations as main cleavage lines in Ukrainian society. Alternatively, scholars admit statistical significance of the regional factor and often interpret it as a historically constituted political culture. Both approaches are based on census and state statistics data (most often at oblast (regional) level) and construct artificial regions for research purposes. We assume that such approaches neglect underlying territorial configurations of electoral behavior in Ukraine. The paper is based on data at polling stations level for 2002-2014 parliamentary elections. The thorough cartographic analysis was conducted to clarify in what cases phantom borders are manifested in electoral maps and to reveal other territorial configurations of electoral behavior in Ukraine. We found that historical borders influence is limited to voting for nationalists, communists, and parties which are perceived as pro-Russian, their manifestations are dependent on each elections context and parties’ electoral strategies, and they are complicated by the overlapping effects of the other factors of electoral behavior (including administrative borders). The paper reveals that constituency campaigning in single-member districts (SMD) can influence parties’ results at the national level PR vote and that scaling of “our man” voting is essential for parties’ electoral success and is used in electoral strategies. We also accentuate the role of administrative borders, local-national and regional-national alliances in electoral geography of Ukraine. frontières administratives). L’article montre que mener une campagne électorale dans des districts à candidat unique peut influencer les résultats des partis au niveau national, et que l’effet d’échelle du vote pour “notre représentant” est essentiel pour le succès des partis, et utilisé dans leurs stratégies. Nous mettons aussi l’accent sur le rôle des frontières administratives, des alliances local-national et régional-national dans cette géographie.


Introduction 1
A common approach to electoral geography studies of Ukraine is based either on a compositional effect, which is often interpreted in terms of cleavages or regional factor, which continues to influence electoral behavior when compositional variables are controlled. After the independence of Ukraine in 1991 and the first competitive elections, scholars started to investigate national unity and nation-building as essential for stability and absence of conflicts in the country. Electoral studies of Ukraine resulted in statements about democratic development in divided societies and the role of ethnic (nationality according to Ukrainian census categories) and language cleavages, which are also manifested in identity issues (Barrington, 1997(Barrington, , 2002Barrington & Herron, 2004;Birch & Wilson, 1999;Birch, 1995;Clem & Craumer, 2005;Clem & Craumer, 2008;Craumer & Clem, 1999;Hesli, 1995;Hesli, Reisinger, & Miller, 1998;Hinich, Khmelko & Ordeshook, 1999;Holdar, 1995;Kubicek, 2000;Kuzio, 1996Kuzio, , 1998. The tradition to study prognostic value of different compositional characteristics with special emphasis on language and ethnic divisions in Ukraine is dominant in electoral research of the country for the last decade. It resulted in the assumption that the structure of society influences regional polarization and electoral divisions and geography of voting is only about territorial differences in population structure or socioeconomic characteristics. For instance, it means that being Russian-speaking Russian, Ukrainian-speaking Russian, Russian-speaking Ukrainian or Ukrainianspeaking Ukrainian is a crucial factor for political beliefs and geopolitical orientations and regions are only about differences in ethnic and language compositions. However, language and nationality questions in Ukraine are not so vividly following division lines. In the case of language, while the whole society could be viewed as bilingual because of the understanding both Russian and Ukrainian, it has more than mentioned above categories of people based on language use and perception of the language question (for example, existence of 'surzhyk' -as a mix of Russian and Ukrainian, perception of only one language as native (some people even perceive surzhyk as their native language), using Ukrainian at public and Russian at home, people who understand but can't speak well one of the languages, etc.). In case of nationality, it is complicated by a high share of mixed marriages, Soviet identity, conflicts and overlapping of ethnic belonging and national identification with Ukrainian civic nation. It raises a question about the interpretative value of census categories of native language and nationality in studies of electoral behavior. Moreover, in surveys and interviews, answers to language and ethnicity questions are dependent on how questions are asked (Osipian & Osipian, 2012).

3
The alternative interpretation of territorial differences in political beliefs in Ukraine suggests that regional factor is about contextual influences on political behavior, which might be interpreted as differences in historically constituted political cultures (Barrington, 2002;Barrington & Herron, 2004;Birch, 2000b;Katchanovski, 2006Katchanovski, , 2014Kubicek, 2000). Moreover, region might be understood as a context where the composition of the population might have different effects because of the pressure of the dominating social norms. For instance, interviews conducted by Rodgers (2006) in Eastern Ukraine reveals that some citizens in Russian speaking cities in the East of the country feel social pressure using Ukrainian language in public.

4
Regional differences in political beliefs in Ukraine are also understood as differences in the territorial distribution of different types of identities. It includes territorial differences in the distribution of Soviet and post-Soviet identities (Liber, 1998), modern and premodern identities (Kuzio, 2001;Riabchuk, 2012) or different visions of national identity (Rodgers, 2006). Differences in identities are also manifested in different visions of the Other and enemies. For instance, Korostelina (2013) reveals that for dualidentity and pro-soviet identity respondents Ukrainian nationalists are the main Other. Hrytsak (in Hann & Magocsi, 2005) states that in Lviv main enemy are communists, while in Donetsk -Ukrainian nationalists. Kuzio (2001) accentuates that geopolitical enemies are crucial for identity divisions in Ukraine -Russia as an enemy or Europe and the USA as enemies. Ukraine's location in the periphery makes it vulnerable to foreign policy orientations. For example, Gentile (2015) suggests that geopolitical identity is dominant over national and class identities in Ukraine. However, the problem is that identities are often studied as compositional characteristics of regions and not as constituted in particular places and influenced by processes at different geographical scales.

5
Economic and class voting studies of electoral geography in Ukraine are also based on approaches were geographical units are containers of socioeconomic characteristics and state statistics data for administrative units is used to reveal patterns of voting (f. ex. Kravchuk & Chudowksky, 2005;Mykhnenko, 2009). For instance, Kravchuk and Chudowsky (2005) reveal higher rates of state sector job losses in South and Eastern Ukraine at the beginning of the 1990s, which might have an influence on electoral behavior, but it should be understood in relation to other territorial patterns of electoral behavior and electoral strategies of political parties. 6 We assume that most of the studies neglect territorial configurations of electoral behavior in Ukraine. Even those studies which suggest regional effect on electoral behavior are proposing artificial divisions of the country in different numbers of regions: Colton (2011) uses framework of four regions, Birch (2000) suggests that five historical regions are essential for the understanding of electoral behavior in Ukraine, Harasymiw (2005) is generalizing results of the two regions model, Barrington (2002) tests two, four, and eight regions models, other scholars propose their own divisions. In our mind, such approaches neglect the way different territorial configurations are manifested in electoral outcomes and try to put electoral behavior into artificial territorial shapes. Dominant in academic discourse about spatial differences in political beliefs in Ukraine ideas about ethnic and language cleavages, foreign policy orientations cleavage and identity issues are also often studied as compositional effects using artificially constructed regions or following contemporary administrative divisions as containers and not as the factors of electoral behavior. 7 We assume the importance of the territorial organization of electoral campaigns, strategic use of scale, and places bounded by different types of borders for the understanding of the electoral geography of Ukraine. The paper is based on data at polling stations level for the 2002-2014 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, which was obtained from the Central Electoral Office of Ukraine and geocoded. We use cartographic analysis at polling stations level to clarify cases when phantom borders appear on electoral maps of Ukraine and to reveal other territorial shapes of electoral behavior in Ukraine. A QGIS software was used as an exploratory tool. We suggest that knowledge of territorial shapes of voting in Ukraine is essential for further research on the topic because they are specific manifestations of different contexts, factors, and electoral strategies, which influence electoral behavior.

Historical borders 8
One of the underlying assumptions about the electoral geography of Ukraine is that political beliefs follow lines of previous political borders within which different political cultures were constituted. However, most of the studies use simplified historical divisions without precision to the exact demarcation line of the historical borders on contemporary electoral maps. Consequently, such important facts that the northern part of Ternopil oblast, which is one of three Galician oblasts in Ukraine, was not part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and is not historical Galicia or that contemporary Chernivtsi oblast was also divided between Austria-Hungary and Russian empire are missed. Moreover, the divide of electoral preferences between South-Eastern Ukraine and North-West of the country follows contemporary administrative divisions with higher accuracy than historical borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in different historical periods. Therefore, aggregated at oblast level data has no great explanatory value for persistent historical legacies. Peisakhin's (2013a, 2013b) study of the area along the border between Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires reveals that the main issue, which is dividing people along that line is the Russian question. People living on different sides of that historical border have different beliefs about Russia as a political and economic partner or political enemy and distinct perceptions of cultural distance between Ukrainians and Russians. The cartographic analysis reveals that the Austrian-Russian historical border Borders, Constituency Politics, and "Our Man" Voting in Electoral Geography o...

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is relevant in electoral behavior as well as the Interwar border of the USSR ( fig. 1). However, there are some limitations to the effect of historical legacies on voting behavior: (1) overlapping effects of contemporary administrative divisions, (2) they are not relevant for all parties, and (3) they are dependent on the context of elections and political parties' electoral strategies. party, which resulted in 2010 local elections win. Such approaches were not successful only in historical Galicia, while had strategic value in Central and Western Ukraine and penetrated the other side of the Interwar border, which was previously a territorial cleavage for the Party of Regions support. 12 We should admit that Chernivtsi and Zakarpattya oblasts being less supportive for Communists showed higher support for the Party of Regions in 2006-2012 in comparison to other Western Ukraine oblasts. Partially it might be interpreted in terms of ethnopolitical entrepreneurship and better mobilization of rayons and cities of these regions where Hungarian and Romanian minorities constitute the majority of the population. However, analysis of voting behavior in rayons and cities where national minorities constitute a substantial part of the population suggests that voting patterns are following rayons administrative borders instead of the lines of ethnic belonging. However, cases of Gertsaivskyi in Chernivtsi and Beregivskyi rayon in Zakarpattya oblast might be an example of contextual effect and pressure of local social norms. These rayons are the only two territories in those regions where national minorities constitute near three-fourths of the total population, and they have the highest and most stable support for the Party of Regions in 2006-2012. Moreover, regional contexts in those oblasts are also essential, which is evident from their low level of support for right-wing parties without any dependence on ethnic composition or historical divisions, but clearly following administrative border ( .We should admit that the categorization of parties in Ukraine along the ideological lines is debatable; therefore, we use their rhetoric during electoral campaigns as a criteria. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the Galicia province border was framing the highest support for People's Front, which chose more right-wing and pro-NATO political rhetoric than Poroshenko's Block. At the same time, it was also the regional basis for the Samopomich party in 2014, which is center-right and was also broadly supported in cities in other parts of Ukraine. 14 Moreover, the importance of administrative borders is evident in the case of Samopomich territorial patterns of support. The party successfully mobilized Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts in 2012 but was not so successful in Ternopil oblast ( fig. 2)  Administrative borders 15 Administrative borders were essential for electoral strategies in the 1990s (Matsuzato, 2001(Matsuzato, , 2002 and continued to be influential in the 2000s. Matsuzato (2001Matsuzato ( , 2002 was critical about Western approaches to study elections in Ukraine based on public opinion polls and compositional effect because he assumes Ukrainian elections to be semi-competitive and clientelist in their nature. He admitted that in the case when mayors and governors are openly supporting the incumbent president and the president is changing regional governors before elections pursuing electoral effectiveness elections cannot be called free and fair. Matsuzato (2001)  produced by cultural differences as well as produce new cultural differences. The same is true about administrative borders, which are regions of new symbolical and institutional shapes and often are appealing to regional consciousness and interests. Moreover, administrative borders frame information flows, communications and resources redistribution. 20 We found two administrative districts, which were divided between two constituencies and faced intense electoral campaigning at constituency level. One case is the Skvyrskyi rayon of Kyiv oblast. Part of it was in a constituency where a candidate from the UDAR party had intense campaigning during the 2012 elections. As a result, his party won elections at polling stations only in the part of the rayon, which was in his constituency ( fig. 3). The same happened in the Ichnyanskyi rayon of Chernihiv oblast, which was divided by the border of the constituency. In the part of it where Oleh Lyashko (leader of the Radical Party) was canvassing, his party won the majority in many polling stations, while on the other side of constituency border results were not so impressive.
Borders, Constituency Politics, and "Our Man" Voting in Electoral Geography o...
Belgeo, 2 | 2020 Figure 3. Examples of constituencies and administrative borders manifestations on electoral maps of Ukraine (only polling stations where each party won elections). 21 We should admit that it is not apparent that a successful constituency campaign results in higher shares of party support at PR vote. However, in the 2012 elections UDAR party was efficiently using this strategy. Party mobilized six constituencies to vote not only for their candidates at a single-member constituency but also have higher levels of support for the party at the national level. It is a strategy new parties are often using to gain support and win some places in the parliament. For instance, in 1998 elections Yuliya Tymoshenko was elected from a single-member constituency in Kirovograd oblast. As a result, in 2002-2014 her party get higher levels of support in that area in comparison to neighboring territories ( fig. 3). However, cartographic analysis at polling stations level also reveals that the pattern of support was not following the border of the constituency but only two administrative rayons had stable and higher levels of support for Tymoshenko's party. The same is true about two constituencies were the UDAR party received the highest support in 2012 -voters were mobilized not in the whole constituency, but only in one rayon following administrative border ( fig. 3). The cartographic analysis also reveals that higher levels of party support at the national level proportional representation vote are not obviously translated into winning positions in single-member districts. For instance, the Communist party had high support in northern Zhytomyr and Chernihiv oblasts but did not win SMD votes there.
Scaling "our man" voting 22 Friends and neighbors effect is a well-studied voting phenomenon in Western countries, while in Ukrainian electoral geography it is out of attention. We suggest that in Ukraine a better approach is to study not just friends and neighbors effect but "our man" effect and how parties and candidates are trying to scale it. Consequently, it is Borders, Constituency Politics, and "Our Man" Voting in Electoral Geography o...

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not just about local advantage (Lewis-Beck & Rice, 1983) or patterns of the geographical distribution of information about candidates (Bowler, Donovan & Snipp, 1993) but opportunities to use the symbolical capital of being known and even being associated with the places of different scales. It is also about the use of administrative resources and local channels of communication to scale "our man" effect. Because of poverty, lack of resources, weak democratic institutions and low civic engagement in politics it might lead to expressed by Allina-Pisano (2010) effect of corrupting changes in the social contract in society and patron-client relationships. 23 We propose to examine some cases. First, Volodymyr Lytvyn, being a popular politician at the national level, in 2007 parliamentary elections successfully scaled 'our man' effect only to the local level and had low efficiency of using it at oblast level. In 2007, his party, Lytvyn's Block, won representation in the parliament. However, in rayon, where he was born only at polling stations closest to his birthplace and in rayon center his party won a majority of votes ( fig. 4). Contrarily, Viktor Yushchenko's party Our Ukraine won 2002 elections in the rayon he was born and in neighboring rayons and received a high level of support in the whole Sumy oblast (despite northern rayons which were voting for Communists). In 2006-2007 elections, despite the popularity of the party was decreasing, it still had strong support in those areas ( fig. 4). Even in 2012, when Our Ukraine did not reach the PR vote threshold, it has strong support in closest to Yushchenko's home village polling stations. However, these two cases are friends and neighbors effects with different levels of success to scale such voting patterns to the regional level. 24 The third case is a combination of local politics, administrative resources and 'our man' vote in the electoral success of the Communist party in Lubeshivskyi rayon of Volyn oblast. In 2006-2007, the Communist party started to develop its local basis in Lubeshivskyi rayon of Volyn oblast in Western Ukraine. In 2010 they won local elections. In one of the villages in that rayon Adam Martyniuk, one of the leaders of the Communist Party, was born. In such a case, control over local authorities, local information channels, and high-ranking politician as a countryman created a situation when some local infrastructure improvements were presented as Communists achievements and help from the countryman. It also resulted in high support for the Communists at national elections in the rayon of the region where right-wing parties have the second strongest support after Galicia. However, when the Communist party lost its popularity after the 2014 Revolution, in parliamentary elections 2014, it won a majority of votes only in the village where Adam Martyniuk was born.
Borders, Constituency Politics, and "Our Man" Voting in Electoral Geography o...
Belgeo, 2 | 2020  Incorporation of local elites into the party organization was successful in Central and Western Ukraine and failed only within Galician province historical border (without northern part of Ternopil oblasts). In such a context, administrative borders at the oblast level became less important than historical and local administrative borders.
Consequently, a manifestation of historical borders on electoral maps of Ukraine is limited and parties electoral strategies might evoke them. Moreover, the question about the conscious use of historical divisions by political parties (Jańczak, 2015) or  29 We assume that territorial configurations and shapes of electoral behavior in Ukraine should be understood as a result of overlapping effects of different types of borders at different levels as well as other factors of electoral behavior and electoral strategies of political parties. Our analysis reveals that single-member constituencies borders are manifested in PR voting for parties in the cases of successful use of local canvassing and intensity of campaigning. We also propose to pay more attention to 'our man' effect in the electoral geography of Ukraine, especially its scaling, which is accompanied by the use of all available resources and administrative borders as institutional and organizational frameworks. The reasons for the success or failure of 'our man' voting in Ukraine need further examination.

ABSTRACTS
The electoral geography of Ukraine is predominantly based on compositional effect studies, which consider nationality, language, and foreign policy orientations as main cleavage lines in Ukrainian society. Alternatively, scholars admit statistical significance of the regional factor and often interpret it as a historically constituted political culture. Both approaches are based on census and state statistics data (most often at oblast (regional) level) and construct artificial regions for research purposes. We assume that such approaches neglect underlying territorial configurations of electoral behavior in Ukraine. The paper is based on data at polling stations level for 2002-2014 parliamentary elections. The thorough cartographic analysis was conducted to clarify in what cases phantom borders are manifested in electoral maps and to reveal other territorial configurations of electoral behavior in Ukraine. We found that historical borders influence is limited to voting for nationalists, communists, and parties which are perceived as pro-Russian, their manifestations are dependent on each elections context and parties' electoral strategies, and they are complicated by the overlapping effects of the other factors of electoral behavior (including administrative borders). The paper reveals that constituency campaigning in single-member districts (SMD) can influence parties' results at the national level PR vote and that scaling of "our man" voting is essential for parties' electoral success and is used in electoral strategies. We also accentuate the role of administrative borders, local-national and regionalnational alliances in electoral geography of Ukraine.