Decentralization and Multilevel Elections in Ukraine: Reform Dynamics and Party Politics in 2010—2021 (Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, 249)

The post-2014 decentralisation policy is consolidating the centre-periphery relations in Ukraine. Already before 2014, domestic policymakers had been drafting proposals for local amalgamation and an increase of regional authority. Before the 2020 watershed subnational elections, only the local amalgamation policy was completed, however. A significant repercussion of the post-2014 decentralisation reform has been a sharp decrease in congruence of the shares of competing national parties in the parliamentary, regional, and municipal electoral arenas. On the other hand, the party system has, at the municipal level, become less fragmented. Methodologically, the book synthesises conceptual tools and theoretical insights from democratisation studies and the field of territorial politics. It applies the subnational comparative method and illustrates the added value of investigating elections from a multilevel perspective. Romanova's innovative monograph provides an important contribution to the comparative exploration of party system change over time and constitutes a case study of more general patterns of interaction bet-ween municipal decentralisation and electoral competition in democratising states.

Dr. Kimitaka Matsuzato is Professor of Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo.