The last parliamentary election in Ukraine exposed strong authoritarian proclivities of the country’s rulers, but also demonstrated a striking competitiveness of its party system and a growing discontent of the society. This talk will address key factors that enabled a rollback of Ukraine’s earlier democratic gains, but prevented the ruling elite from establishing a full-fledged authoritarian regime. It will also examine various indicators of regime stability or lack thereof including cohesiveness of the ruling elite, strength of the party of power, loyalty of the oligarchs, viability of opposition forces and mobilization capacity of the civil society. In conclusion the talk will assess near-term prospects of democratic change in Ukraine and the conditions of its further slide towards authoritarianism.

Serhiy Kudelia is an assistant professor of political science at Baylor University. In 2009-10 he was Petro Jacyk post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. He also held teaching and research position at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine). His most recent articles appeared in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Politics and Societies and Problems of Post-Communism.