Ukraine’s decentralization reform, which began in 2014, is praised as a success story. The first communities who decided to amalgamate were moving into “unexplored territory”, and could not be sure that the reform would not be reversed. The rapid pace that the process manifested since the beginning, evidenced a large level of demand for bottom-up transformation. Considering the first two cohorts of the amalgamation process in 2015-16, we find that wealth of communities, as well as previous historical experiences with local self-governance in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland, were particularly important drivers of the pioneering first movers of decentralization.
Reform Watch
OP-ED
Vox Ukraine: Understanding Ukraine’s decentralisation reform
Ukrainian lawmaker enters Verkhovna Rada building between the emergency parliament sessions on March 30, 2020.
