Regionalism in Ukraine: rethinking through the prism of social identities and group loyalties

Author carries out the empirical testing of the model of contemporary Ukraine regionalization, which was proposed by O. Stehnii and M. Churylov (1998), based on the criterion of social identities and group loyalties interaction. This model is constructed taking into account a number of regional factors, in particular, the subjective experience of Ukrainian citizens, and includes ten macroregions and the city of Kyiv. Author used the database of three waves of the international research “Region, Nation and Beyond. An Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Reconceptualization of Ukraine (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland (2013, 2015, 2017))”. Taking into account this data, the matrixes of grouping into the regions and zones of areas (oblasts) of respondents’ permanent residence (including the Crimea, Sevastopol city and Kyiv city (factor variable)) were constructed in accordance with the distribution of certain indicator variables of local, regional, national, religious social identities and group loyalties. Based on the information, contained in the matrixes, the number of cases where the regions belonging to a certain region in the structure of O. Stehnii and M. Churylov were also present in a particular region identified by author according to the variation of social identities and group loyalties. Based on these calculations for each region from the scheme of O. Stehnii and M. Churylov within the limits of 2013, 2015, 2017, the probability of the integrity of these regions was determined, with the subsequent conclusion of the map of the Ukrainian regional structure. As a result, the highest level of integrity was demonstrated by the West region (Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk obl.) and South-East region (Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia obl.), while the Central region (Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Cherkasy obl.) was the least integral.