SUMMARY:

The article surveys the practices of receiving academic degrees by different groups of state officials and by other representatives of nonacademic spheres in Ukraine and Moldova. To conceptualize them, the author suggests the model of neopatrimonial science. He traces neopatrimonial patterns of power/knowledge to the Soviet past. The social aspect of neopatrimonial science is explained by the credential nature of post-Soviet societies, while its political aspect derives from the existing type of political regime.
The largest case analyzed in the article deals with heads of the regional administrative units in Ukraine who received their academic degrees between 1991 and 2013. The author establishes a connection between gender, science, and the political regime and makes sense of this connection by analyzing 7,000 Candidate of Sciences and Doctor of Sciences dissertations defended in Ukraine and Moldova in fields such as history, political science, sociology, and government administration. Ultimately, he defines “neopatrimonial science” as a system of meaningful and perfomative interactions of academic scholars with representatives of business and power. This interaction is determined by the basic characteristics of the neopatrimonial political regime. As a system, it is defined by (a) the special selection of [leading] actors who possess (b) a special type of [practical] motivation derived from (c) the patrimonial character of their position. This creates the potential for (d) accumulating academic capital by means of getting control over administering it. As a consequence, (e) the stress is placed not on preparation and competence, but on belonging to the most successful political/business regional elite.