6. Regional distribution of protests
7
2010 2011 2012 2013
2013 before
Maidan
(until 20.11)
2013 after
Maidan
(from 21.11)
Centre 389 17% 480 21% 633 17% 929 19% 637 19% 292 21%
Crimea 170 7% 160 7% 199 5% 211 4% 161 5% 50 4%
East 503 22% 573 25% 696 19% 903 19% 683 20% 220 16%
Kyiv 422 18% 406 18% 638 18% 805 17% 582 17% 223 16%
South 284 12% 225 10% 597 16% 774 16% 621 18% 153 11%
West 534 23% 430 19% 867 24% 1187 25% 735 21% 452 33%
Total 2302* 100% 2274 100% 3630 100% 4809 100% 3419 100% 1390 100%
* The “nationwide” events (i.e., those that were impossible to locate in a particular settlement) are not included in the
regional distribution
6
7. The number of protests per 1 million of
de facto population in regions
8
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
2010 2011 2012 2013
Center
Crimea
East
Kyiv
South
West
Ukraine
7
13. Decentralization
• Government decentralization reform
• Academic decentralization initiative, February 24
– call for academic input
– Roger Myerson and Daron Acemoglu, Gerard Roland, Daniel
Treisman, Sergei Guriev, Paul Rodrik Grergory
– signed by more than 100 academics
13
15. Benefits of decentralization
• better local economic decisions
• counterintuitively, lower stakes in secession
• selection and training of national-level politicians
15
16. Focal issue
• Decentralization as means of preventing dictatorship
• Solution to the problem of non-existing institutions
16
20. Recentralization
• Article 118 of the proposed constitution deals with decen-
tralization
– extremely vague
– keeps state administrations and creates local executive
councils
– details to worked out by law
• Financial resources?
20
21. Legitimacy
• The process is as important as substance of the reform
– The reform will not be backrolled only if it is understood
and protected by public
– Lower level politicial leaders, with ability to mobilize sup-
port, should feel ownership over the reform
– Convention and endorsements
21
24. Corruption
• ok if free press (Leesman and Markwardt 2009)
• not ok if more complex governing structure (Fan, Lin, and
Treisman 2009)
• Ukraine benchmark?
24
26. Strong national parties
• strong national parties are the key for
– smaller interregional conflict (Brancati 2006)
– better local public goods (Enikolopov and Zhuravskaya
2007)
• Ukraine - party of regions?
26
27. Decentralization as conflict mitgation strategy
• ethno-federalis works ok (Charron 2009)
• regional level inequality leads to civil conflict (Deiwiks, Ced-
erman, and Gleditsch 2012)
• armed clientilism (Eaton 2006)
• depends on what kind of decentralization (Siegle and O’Mahony
2010)
– increased support of local leaders, local expenditure, and
employment - good
– higher local taxes and higher local bureaucracies - bad
27
