DANYLIW RESEARCH SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE

The Institutional Foundations of Ukrainian
Democracy: Power Sharing, Regionalism,
and Authoritarianism

(Grasset 2025)

This is a book on the political history of Ukraine in the 20th century and the behaviour of institutions in Soviet and early post-Soviet Ukraine. It explains why and how Ukraine resists authoritarianism and in which way Ukraine’s political culture differs from Russia’s. The book examines the origins and evolution of regionalism in Ukraine, which is at the foundation of the Ukrainian institutional system. It argues that the fall of the Soviet Union did not cause a fundamental institutional change in Ukraine, but merely revealed and exacerbated the centre-periphery dynamic that was in place all along.  

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Nataliya Kibita is a Visiting Academic at Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford (UK).