Photo from UNIAN
A series of polls by the International Republican Institute (IRI) provide an insight into Ukraine’s public opinion tracking attitudes toward Europe, Russia, NATO and other topics, according to an op-ed by Mark Adomanis published in Forbes.
"You don’t have to agree with the IRI’s institutional views to understand how incredibly important it is to get real data about Ukrainian opinion," says Adomanis.
The expert believes that the latest published poll might be the most interesting because it shows that, despite showing public support for European integration, there are still unresolved tensions between the what has to be done in the process and what Ukrainians actually think.
Ukrainian attitudes towards privatization is one of the most glaring examples. Universally acknowledged to be a cornerstone of the integration process, privatization is something that Ukraine desperately needs to do. Indeed, in the West privatization genuinely isn’t an issue: almost everyone in the US and Europe agrees that it’s just a really bad idea for the state to actively run companies.
The problem is that the Ukrainian public thinks differently. This is what Ukrainians want to happen with four thousand state-owned enterprises:
It appears that Ukrainians are just not ready for liberalizing shock-therapy as almost half of respondents doesn’t want any liberalization whatsoever, rather preferring the state to continue running a major chunk of the economy.
The author notes that he is not personally supporting or defending this point of view. However, he believes that that the state is not a particularly effective steward of commercial enterprises.
Yet, it seems worth pointing out that most Ukrainians do not support the supposedly “obvious” choice of privatization.