Particularism in political decision-making: constructive or destructive

Abstract

This paper is aimed at the impact of particularism in political decision-making. It is argued that political decisions are particularistic according to the goal and circumstances, in which they are made. It is still unclear, which consequences – good or bad – particularistic component of political decisions may lead to. The focal question is to what extent the particularism in political decisions can help in resolving social problems or does harm to society. In the framework of the network analysis, the article presents organizational and procedural examples of particularism predominance and political means of its balancing. As an illustration of completely particularistic system by institutional and practical means of decision-making, the case of Ukraine is showed. It is ascertained that the dominance of particularism in political decision-making can lead to ambivalent effects: being highly destructive for stability of the system it can be saving for democratic modes of governance.