"Soviet Legacy in Ukrainian Post-Soviet Politics: Continuity and Discontinuity of Political Institutions in Ukraine between 1917 and 1996"
This project examines the question, ‘Why is Ukraine not authoritarian?’ from a historical perspective and assesses the continuity of political institutions. In particular, the project analyses the origins of the regional fragmentation of political elites and of consensus-seeking politics in Ukraine. It explores the effect of party and state reforms that had been devised by the Soviet leadership in the 1920s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s and tests the hypothesis that regional political fragmentation in post-Soviet Ukraine, as well as the tendency towards consensus-seeking politics, is a legacy of the Soviet political system.