Title of Research

The Puzzle of Ukrainian Democracy: Presidents, Oligarchs and Informal Politics after the Euromaidan Revolution

Abstract

This project examines the Ukrainian political system after the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. Although new democratic elites came to power during Poroshenko and Zelensky's presidencies, informal institutions continue to dominate the formal ones and patron-client ties, personal loyalty, and clan “membership” persist as organizing principles of the system. I intend to explore the decisive role of informal politics and patron-client networks in Ukraine that have long remained an under-researched topic and investigate how a neopatrimonial democracy in which state capture is the primary gain unexpectedly stimulates competitive politics.

I argue that the internal durability/fragility of the post-Euromaidan system is determined by several key variables, namely the success or failure in establishing a presidential “party of power”, the extent to which the economic/bureaucratic/regional elites are autonomous and resource-independent, and the depth and scope of the informal patronage networks set up by the state ruler and/or its competitors.

This project fills a substantial gap in the current literature on Ukrainian politics and directly addresses the current public agenda and debate on Ukrainian reforms after the Euromaidan. It may help shed light on the future of Ukraine’s political trajectory from domestic, regional, and global perspectives.

Short Biography

Oleksandr Fisun is a professor of political science and the department head at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine (B.A. with Highest Honors in Political Economy, 1987; C.Sc. in Philosophical Sciences, 1990). He has taught comparative politics, democratic theory, East European, post-Soviet and Ukrainian politics for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students. His research mainly concentrates on Ukrainian politics. During the past ten years, he has held visiting fellowships at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute; the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto;  the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington (Seattle); the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta (Edmonton); the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam); and the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Warsaw). His publications include “Democracy, Neopatrimonialism, and Global Transformations” (Kharkiv, 2006), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on comparative democratization, neopatrimonialism, regime change in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and post-Soviet Eurasia. He serves as President at the Observatory of Democracy policy research center, which he founded with a group of political experts in 2016 to improve democratic accountability, civic activism, free and fair elections, and citizen awareness in eastern frontline Ukrainian regions.