Maria Popova, McGill University, maria.popova@mcgill.ca
In 2013, thousands of Bulgarians and Ukrainians took to the streets in protest. Both protests were massive and protracted, but the outcomes differed dramatically-- eventually Bulgarian protestors went home and the coalition government held on, whereas in Ukraine the protests escalated into a violent standoff and the eventual ouster of President Yanukovych. The paper will attempt to explain the divergent outcomes by examining the protestors' strategies, the government's response, as well as the structural conditions that shaped the behavior of both actors. The working hypothesis is that the intense politicization of justice in Ukraine raised the stakes of victory both for Maidan and for Yanukovych.
