Ukraine's peculiar bureaucracy

This New York Times article is about the election turmoil in the Ukraine. Recently, the Ukraine Supreme Court voted to redo a run off election because it determined that the previous run off election was corrupted by the current government. This article interested me because I related it to our recent discussions about bureaucracies and the Principal-Agent relationship. For my analysis I am considering the Ukraine Supreme Court as a bureaucracy. Their Supreme Court is selected much like ours. The President nominates certain individuals with the Ukrainian parliament having some say in the final appointment. I am considering the Supreme Court to be the Agent and the President to be the Principal. In the Ukrainian system of government the President holds more of the decision making power than the Parliament. This means that essentially he controls the three incentives that keep the Agent acting according to the Principal. (Appropriations, oversight and confirmation) In the Ukraine the president nominated Supreme Court has voted to redo the previous runoff that would have left the current president in power. How did we have an outcome where the wants of the Principal (President) and the Agent (Supreme Court) differed so much? In class we called the outcome shirking. My assumption that the Supreme Court is an agency or bureaucracy may be incorrect, but I think in the situation of the Ukraine system where the parliament has limited power it is reasonable to treat the Supreme Court like an agency of Public Policy. In this situation the Ukraine Supreme Court falls into the rational set forth by Weingast and Moran. So, why did the Supreme Court not act in accordance with the president with whom they had been loyal for so long? I would argue that it came down to the basics of money and power. It was suggested in class that the best way to influence a bureaucracy is to control its funding. At the current point in Ukrainian politics, the president was under intense pressure and it seems likely he will be replaced. His opponent champions a stronger democracy, parliament and Supreme Court. I believed that the Supreme Court realized that it stood to gain if the opponent was elected president. The president's challenger gives the Supreme Court more incentives and that is why they voted to allow him another chance to win despite going against what their current Principal would want. This reaffirms the idea that decisions in the Principal-Agent relationship are all about the incentives. Link: <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/international/europe/05cnd-ukra.html?8br>