Elections and Democratization in Ukraine

Annotation. Elections and Democratization in Ukraine analyses the role of competitive elections in Ukraine's crucial democratic transition period of 1989 to 1998. The series of four parliamentary elections, two presidential elections and three referendums which punctuated Ukraine's road to democracy provide important insights into the social and political forces shaping the new state's identity. Two specific research questions are addressed: - How do Ukranian voters make vote choices? - Which electoral cleavages are the most important? Contrary to those who claim that the Soviet Union left in its wake an atomized society with weak social divisions, this study argues that the Ukrainian electorate has, from the advent of competitive elections, exhibited relatively stable patterns of voting behaviour which can be explained to a great extent in terms of social divisions that developed in Soviet Ukraine and were made politically salient by the events of the transition period.