This has been a rough year for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in terms of governance, with neighbours Poland and Ukraine seeing the biggest challenges.
In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS in Polish) has attempted nothing less than an entire overhaul of the post-communist institutional order, a process which has sparked massive controversy and brought rebukes from the European Union. In next-door Ukraine, institutional reform is also underway but in a more beneficial direction. Here the country is attempting to emerge from underneath the corrupt post-communist edifice that was built by former Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych and which remains a drain on growth.
