The Power Factor and the Architectonics of Political Choice: Models of Decision-Making in Wartime (the Ukrainian Case, 2019–2024)

Abstract

The article conceptualizes the force-based factor as a structure-forming parameter in the logic of political decision-making during wartime. It demonstrates that the intensification of the force-based factor transforms the rationality of political choice, leading to a shift in dominant decision-making models from rational-analytical and incrementalist approaches toward crisis-mobilizational and coalition-negotiation logics (the Carnegie political model), depending on the intensity of threat, time constraints, and information asymmetry.

The empirical basis of the study consists of a set of political decisions and regulatory legal acts adopted in Ukraine between 2019 and 2024 in the areas of national security, martial law, mobilization, special governance regimes, macrofinancial stability, and responses to strikes against critical infrastructure. Methodologically, the research is grounded in qualitative content analysis, analytical modeling, and the case study method, which determines the priority of an interpretative approach over quantitative verification of findings. Accordingly, the results do not claim statistical representativeness but reflect an analytical generalization of selected empirical material in the form of political decisions and regulatory legal acts. An additional limitation arises from the dependence of model-based identification of political decisions on predefined criteria, including the breadth of the alternatives space, time regime, structure of actors and coalitions, level of centralization, and dominant priorities of political action. While this ensures conceptual clarity of the analysis, it simultaneously constrains the inclusion of alternative interpretations and variables. It should also be noted that the application of the case study method entails contextual anchoring of results to specific decision-making conditions, which complicates their direct extrapolation to other political systems or time periods. At the same time, the clear definition of methodological procedures and analytical criteria ensures the reproducibility of the study and enables verification of the findings within related empirical approaches.

The findings demonstrate that the force-based factor performs the functions of motivator, accelerator, and constraint of political action, narrowing the space of alternatives and shifting decision effectiveness criteria from optimality toward minimally sufficient governability. It is established that strategic and doctrinal decisions are predominantly formed according to an incrementalist logic, decisions made during the acute phase of war tend to follow crisis-mobilizational and bounded rationality models, while wartime budgetary and institutional decisions retain a coalition-negotiation character.

The study concludes that the institutionalization of violence through political decisions contributes to the preservation of state agency while simultaneously actualizing the risk of normalizing emergency governance, the mitigation of which requires procedural safeguards and clearly delineated limits of executive authority.