"We fight for a better future for our country”: Understanding the Ukrainian Euromaidan movement as the emergence of a social competition strategy

The current research seeks to develop an analysis of Ukraine’s Euromaidan socialmovement in psychological terms. Building on the classic understanding of socialcompetition strategies, we argue that Euromaidan protests can be conceived as anattempt of pro-European Union (EU) Ukrainians to realign the boundaries of theUkrainian national identity by defeating the alternative pro-Russia integration projectchampioned by the government. In particular, building on the encapsulated model of socialidentity in collective action, we suggest that Euromaidan is an emergent opinion-basedgroup identity, formed in response to injustice through two self-categorical processes –group-level self-investment into the shared entity (i.e., Ukrainian national category) anddisidentification from the alternative Russia-led Customs Union. Using a sample of 3,096participants surveyed during the protests, we tested our hypotheses with structuralequation modelling, where the model accounting for the direct and indirect paths of theself-categorical processes was expected to explain collective action intentions to a greatextent than models applying the social identity and encapsulation models of collectiveaction. We found evidence consistent with the proposal that Euromaidan was a pro-EUopinion-based group, formed in response to the government’s decision to suspend theEU–Ukraine agreement and around individuals’ general perception of unfair governmentauthorities.