Decentralization and Multilevel Elections in Ukraine

Decentralization and Multilevel Elections in Ukraine - Reform Dynamics and Party Politics in 2010–2021
CBEES Advanced Seminar with Valentyna Romanova, PhD., Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies IDE-JETRO, Tokyo

Speaker: Valentyna Romanova, PhD., Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies IDE-JETRO, Tokyo.

Moderator: Olena Podolian, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), and Project Researcher, School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University

Abstract: 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. Valentyna Romanova studied Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the University of Edinburgh. She lives in Tokyo and is a member of the Japanese Association of Russian and East European Studies and the Japanese Association of Ukrainian Studies. Also, she is co-editor of the Annual Reviews of Regional Elections in the UK journal Regional and Federal Studies. Her research has been published in English, German, Russian, and Ukrainian in, among others, Post-Soviet Affairs, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Politics, Survival, Regional & Federal Studies, Vox Ukraine, Democratic Audit Blog, The Ideology and Politics Journal, Politychni doslidzhennia, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal, as well as in reports by Chatham House, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. She is currently a research fellow at IDE-JETRO, Tokyo.

The seminar will be held via ZOOM:
https://sh-se.zoom.us/j/66533988244?pwd=N25IWVVCUlcxbnVvNFVucGVTdWkwUT09
Meeting ID: 665 3398 8244
Passcode: 919411