Weapons Transfers as a Soft Security Issue in Eastern Europe: Legal and Illicit Aspects

The article looks into the problem of weapons transfers in Europe from the perspective of soft security. While the military security dimension of the issue has traditionally received sufficient coverage, weapons transfers also have important implications for soft security of the European states, both in terms of the issues they are linked to, and policy measures designed to control the proliferation of weapons. The soft security aspects of arms transfers are outlined in the introduction, while the subsequent sections look into the trends of both legal and illegal movement of weapons in and from Europe, and policy measures controlling the spread of both major conventional weapons, and light weapons and small arms at the global, regional (European), and national levels. The conclusion assesses the effectiveness of these measures, and implications thereof for European security.     

The founders of the association for the study of nationalities: the case of Stepan Horak (1920–1986) and the Shevchenko Scientific Society,USA

The present article critically evaluates the contribution of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA, and the founder of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), Stepan Horak, to the genesis and development of the ASN.     

Property rights and farm efficiency: evidence from Ukraine

This paper studies the effect of property rights regime on farm efficiency, using a high-quality representative sample from Ukraine??s agricultural sector. At the farm level, I find that a fully delineated and secure system of property rights leads to large positive gains in efficiency. In Ukraine, farms with a well-defined and enforced governance system have 20% higher level of productive efficiency and 9% higher level of technical efficiency as compared to farms with a contractual incompleteness. The ownership arrangement has profound effect on agricultural production in Ukraine.     

Illegal Migration: Ukraine

Illegal migration poses a threat to the national security of all countries of Central and Eastern Europe, but as a measure of its parameters, Ukraine’s case is quite representative. This is due to Ukraine’s size and its geographically important positioning from the northern shores of the Black Sea deep into the Central European heartland—along one of the three main routes of illegal migration from Asia to Western Europe and its national policies, which significantly affect the problem.

Three factors highlight its importance: first, Ukraine itself is a source of illegal migration; second, it is a barrier to its spread from Asia and Middle East to Europe and the West; and third, it is a potential target for illegal migration. Though currently Ukraine is considered first of all as an origin and as a transit country, there is a growing tendency for it to become a destination country too.

This article examines the state of the illegal migration threat for Ukraine, as well as measures to respond to it and perspectives for future development. Conclusions are drawn about the complexity of the problem and the necessity of a multi-faceted approach to solve it.     

Electoral Effects of Biased Media: Russian Television in Ukraine

We use plausibly exogenous variation in the availability of the Russian analog television signal in Ukraine to study how a media source with a conspicuous political agenda impacts political behavior and attitudes. Using highly disaggregated election data and an original survey, we estimate that Russian television substantially increased average electoral support for parties and candidates with a “pro‐Russian” agenda in the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections. Evidence suggests that this effect is attributable to persuasion rather than differential mobilization. The effectiveness of biased media varied in a politically consequential way: Its impact was largest on voters with strong pro‐Russian priors but was less effective, and to some degree even counter‐effective, in persuading those with strong pro‐Western priors. Our finding suggests that exposing an already polarized society to a biased media source can result in even deeper polarization.