Reformers Become Scarcer Again. MPs’ Efficiency Based On The Results Of The Five Sessions

In the first half of 2021, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine hit its stride once again adopting laws that changed the “rules of the game” in the country. 58 of them were passed during the fifth session*, including 49 reforms, three anti-reforms, and six controversial laws that together received 0 points in the updated “MP Efficiency” rankings. For comparison, the deputies had adopted 25 and 32 reforms in the previous two sessions, respectively. Only during the “turbo mode” (the second session), their number was higher, namely 72. 

 According to the results of the last session, the MPs’ average support for reform was 67%. This figure in the range of ± 1% was stable throughout the whole of Parliament’s ninth convocation.

Top reformers: the same

Servant of the People MPs occupy all the top 3 positions in the rankings. 

The following consistent reformers with a 96% ranking occupied first place: Volodymyr Hevko, Oleksandr Pasichnyi, Ivan Shynkarenko, Serhiy Kalchenko, Vladlen Nekliudov, and Anatoliy Kostiukh. They had also placed first along with six other colleagues based on the previous session’s results.

Placing second by a small margin (95%) are the following ten deputies (also from SoP): Maryana Bezuhla, Serhiy Shtepa, Maksym Zaremskyi, Anna Lichman, Oleh Seminskyi, Pavlo Melnyk, Olena Moshenets, Bohdan Kytsak, Maksym Pavliuk, and Roman Sokha. 

15 MPs qualified in third place with a 94% ranking: Bakumov, Zhupanin, Nehulevskyi, Motovylovets, Mykhailiuk, Fediyenko, Hryshchuk, Zub, Kopytin, Kaptelov, Podhorna, Kultenko, Bezgin, Liubota, and Zdebskyi.

After the 4th session, the MPs placing second and third also appeared in the top rankings (except for Liubota and Zdebskyi that placed fourth).

Since these are the cumulative point rankings, it is clearly hard to rise markedly in the rankings after nearly half of the term has passed. Yet, it is possible to fall. Therefore, the leaders of the rankings can keep their lead only if they continue to work consistently on reforms.

All-time anti-reformers: OPFL

The OPFL faction’s representatives consistently come out at the bottom of the efficiency rankings. They can be called the biggest anti-reformers. 

Serhiy Larin, Vadim Stolar, and Vadym Rabinovich only have a 1-2% ranking. The rest of their colleagues are not doing much better, with 14.6% average support for reform in this faction.

As in the previous session, Rabinovych and Larin did not support a single reform (or anti-reform) law. Also, throughout the fifth session, Yuriy Boyko, Serhiy Liovochkin, Taras Kozak, Renat Kuzmin, Yuriy Solod, Fedir Khrystenko (OPFL), Dmytro Shentsev, Oles Dovhyi (non-partisan MP), and Stepan Ivakhiv (For Future) had not supported changes to the “rules of the game” at all. 

Factions: steady support from SoP, decreased support from Holos and ES

Servant of the People remains the leader in supporting reforms, with the faction deputies’ average efficiency of about 84% (Figure 1). It is followed by Dovira (64%) that surpassed Holos (62%). According to the results of the previous session, Holos had been ahead of Dovira (66% vs. 62%, respectively). 

Holos became significantly less supportive of reform laws. In the 5th session, this faction’s MPs’ average support for reform was only 53% (Figure 2). The overall ranking of over 60% was secured by the votes during the previous sessions.

Among the MPs from Holos, Andriy Osadchuk has the highest overall efficiency ranking (76%), and Kira Rudyk has the lowest (42%).

This year, Holos split up, and some MPs created a separate parliamentary association Spravedlyvist (“Justice”) in June, comprising 11 people’s deputies. Spravedlyvist’s reform support averaged 67%, while the rest of Holos’s support for reform on average stood at 60%. However, both parts of Holos have MPs with relatively low and relatively high efficiency.

See Figure 2 for how the factions’ reform activity changed since 2019. 

Figure 2 shows that Servant of the People MPs’ support for reform consistently stood at 83-85% throughout the sessions.

 Holos’s support for reform kept gradually declining. It fell the most during the 5th session.

In the last three sessions, Dovira‘s support for reform stood at 66-74%, even though their reform efforts were much poorer (46%) initially.

With over 60% efficiency in the two sessions, ES reduced its support for reform to almost the level of the second session, namely 46%.

The For Future faction returned to its reform support levels during the “turbo mode” era (40%) after falling to 27-28% during the third and fourth sessions.

Batkivshchyna remains the second least reform-minded faction after OPFL. The average efficiency of the deputies from this political force in the fifth session is only 30%. In turn, OPFL further reduced its support for reform during the fourth and fifth sessions. 

 Reformers: seven in, eleven out. Anti-reformers: four in, five out.

 Traditionally, we divide MPs into three groups based on their level of support for reform:

• reformers: 100%-89% efficiency,
• moderate reformers: 88.9%-40% efficiency,
• anti-reformers: up to 40%.

 During the fifth session, the number of reformers went down from 97 to 93. These changes are due to the “Servants”: Vasyl Virastiuk, a deputy for the Prykarpattia constituency, joined the reformers’ group, and 11 SoP MPs moved from reformers to moderate reformers (Taras Tarasenko, Serhiy Hryvko, Mykola Zadorozhniy, Olena Khomenko, Mykhailo Ananchenko, Oleksiy Kovaliov, Yuriy Koriavchenkov, Bohdan Torokhtiy, Anna Purtova, Dmytro Razumkov (officially non-partisan but elected from SoP) and Oleksandr Skichko). Oleksandr did not directly participate in the fifth session due to his appointment as head of the regional state administration. Still, some of the laws he had voted for were signed in this period (read more about it in our methodology).

Instead, six deputies began supporting reform more actively, moving from moderate reformers to reformers (Vadym Halaychuk, Maksym Dyrdin, Yuriy Kuzbyt, Iryna Borzova, Rostyslav Tistyk, and Serhiy Koleboshyn). 

Thus, the group of reformers includes only MPs from SoP (Figure 3).

The moderate reformers’ group includes Holos (in its entirety), Dovira (except for Hennadiy Vatsak, an anti-reformer), and ES (except for the two anti-reformers Petro Poroshenko and Mustafa Dzhemilev). 

The number of anti-reformers in the fifth session decreased by one (to 88). Volynets and Ivchenko returned to anti-reformers (although they had moved up from the lowest to the moderate category in the previous session). Also, the anti-reformers’ group was joined by non-partisan MPs Mahera and Aksyonov. Instead, Chaikivskyi, Yurchyshyn, and Molotok from For Future moved up from anti-reformers to the moderate reformers’ group.

Also, two MPs, Trebushkin and Vakarchuk, who had been among the anti-reformers at the end of the previous session, left office. The latter had a similar situation to Skichko’s, i.e., Sviatoslav did not participate in the fourth session, but the laws he had voted for were signed in that period. Therefore, he also received a support-for-reform ranking for the session.

Accordingly, the moderate reformers’ group got four more members after the fifth session, amounting to 244.

Support for reform by area

In terms of average efficiency, out of the 20 reform areas, Servant of the People was the leader in 19 (Figure 4). Only in “Energy independence” do the two factions – Holos and ES – surpass the “Servants.”

In some other areas, parliamentary factions and groups have nearly the same reform support index as SoP:

• in “Public debt management,” Holos has 95% versus the “Servants’” 96%,

• the Law on Financial Leasing as the only law in “Other in the monetary system” was mainly supported by SoP (89%) and Dovira (85%),
• the creation of the Public Debt Management Agency of Ukraine (Debt Agency) in “Public debt management” saw equal support from SoP and Holos (95%), as did the laws on a ban on the continuous felling in the Carpathians and on road traffic safety (90% SoP, 85% Holos, in ”Other business environment”).

Talking about the factions’ most unpopular areas, for Holos, these are “Public service” (2 laws) and “Competition policy” (3 laws). ES, too, did not support public service laws or the creation of the Debt Agency to manage public debt more effectively. 

The Dovira group has the lowest average efficiency in “Public debt management” (24%) because the majority of its MPs did not support the only law in this category. Tax and energy reforms also received low support from the faction.

For Future is largely an anti-reform group. Rather than reforms in other areas, this political force’ MPs supported reforms related to decentralization (58%, on average) and social protection. They also largely supported the creation of the Debt Agency (68%), but not the law on financial leasing.

The Batkivshchyna MPs’ support for most reform areas stood at less than 50%. They voted a little better for various social initiatives and gave most of their support to the laws On the introduction of the ban on the continuous felling of fir and beech forests on the slopes of the mountains of the Carpathian region and On road traffic safety falling under the “Other in the business environment” category.

Overall, OPFL had little support for reform. But the faction’s representatives paid a little more attention to legislation aimed at improving administrative services and social protection; they also supported changes in the banking sector and business regulation.

Finally, it is possible to see with the help of reform voting data how unanimous the factions were in supporting change in a given area. To do it, we calculated the coefficient of variation showing how different the MPs of the same faction were in supporting reform in each area. The coefficients are presented in Table 1.

The “greener” the cell, the less differently the MPs of a given faction voted for laws in this area. The table thus shows that the MPs from Servant of the People, ES, and Holos were the most unanimous, while Batkivshchyna’s and non-partisan MPs’ votes differed the most.

Conclusions

Despite periodic reports on a “breakup in mono-majority” and the fact that the ruling party passes some laws only with the help of other factions or groups, overall, SoP remains the most reform-oriented and unanimous faction. Its support for reform remains consistently high. Despite the stated opposition, Holos and ES show good support for reform (and we welcome the fact that, despite the political struggle, these factions vote for the changes that the country needs). After the 5th session, Dovira came in second in supporting reform.

Batkivshchyna and OPFL traditionally show weak support for reform. However, they still vote for initiatives directly affecting the citizens’ lives, such as increasing social support and improving administrative services, since failure to vote for such laws is not likely to be understood by their constituents.

In turn, the voters’ responsibility lies in taking an interest in politics – not just once every five years to mark the ballot but at least twice a year when our updates on how MPs voted for reform are published. Rather, it is better to do it every day to understand whether the representatives elected by you and the ministers appointed by you are working well.

 Please read, share and inquire of your MP about the results of their work.