Political Networks and Leaders of Elite Groups in Georgia and Ukraine

Political regime changes and economic reforms which took place in former Soviet republics during the last two decades attracted attention of various scholars, although they were mostly focused on political elites as agents of changes, patterns of elite circulation and recruitment, questions of informality and corruption mechanisms in governing structures. However, it is still a gap in understanding what networks bind elite members together giving opportunities or setting constraints to particular actors on political arena. The paper seeks to analyze the role of ties that bind members of political elites together in two post-Soviet countries – Georgia and Ukraine – that experienced non-violent ‘revolutions’ with political crisis afterwards during the last decade. Specifically, the impact of social (network) capital on elite continuity and on long-lasting political leadership in two aforementioned states is evaluated. For this purpose the approach of social network analysis (SNA) is applied with the research tasks listed as follows: i) tracing connections between political actors basing on the common past of political elite members; ii) identifying beneficial network positions of individual actors for evaluation of opportunities for leadership; iii) defining clusters and position of leaders with this respect in two in-country networks. Two network datasets were compiled with individuals and their affiliations detecting common biographical experiences among the elite members. Attributes of sex, age, party affiliation and regional origin were used for the analysis of the homogeneity of the networks. Finally, the impact of network embeddedness is assessed with regard to the opportunities for the old and new political actors to stay in power for years.