Emerging Identities: Political Action between Protest and War in Ukraine

Ukraine has entered a critical stage of its democratic transition in 2013/14 when the state’s authority was challenged by protests, which led to profound transformations of the political system in a span of four months. The Euromaidan revolution started as a protest against the decision of Ukraine's then government to seek closer ties to Russia rather than sign a negotiated free-trade deal with the European Union. This presented a unique opportunity for social psychological researchers to examine the factors determining both individual-level behavioural intentions to engage in collective action and their intergroup consequences. Focusing on the political events in Ukraine, this dissertation politically contextualizes, historically traces, and empirically investigates the antecedents and consequences of politicized group consciousness and proposes a theoretical framework for the systematic understanding of identity-driven collective behaviour. I develop five interdependent lines of investigation on the social psychology of collective action by answering the following questions: 1) What predicts collective action for social change via aspirational group identity? 2) Under which conditions are people more likely to express their aspirational identities through persuasive rather than confrontational (direct, potentially violent) collective action? 3) What social psychological mechanisms govern a synchronized expression of multiple aspirational identities when social protest is outlawed? 4) What drives people to engage in political solidarity action with another group presumed to be socially and/or politically oppressed (i.e. Crimean Tatars)? 5) How do people explain the legality and morality of their own collective behaviour when evaluating the political outcomes of ingroup activism? The studies presented in this dissertation are based on several large scale surveys, collected in the immediate aftermath of the political events in Ukraine (January – February, 2014; March – April, 2014; and March – April, 2017). The research contributes to an increasing body of research examining how intergroup disputes over realistic and symbolic resources may pertain to intractable conflicts between social groups and discusses the mechanisms behind their resolution. I argue that the Ukrainian case substantiates the claim that socially constructed and instrumentally politicized aspirational group identities play a crucial role in both conflict spiral and conflict prevention.