Abstract
This chapter looks into citizens’ perceptions of and interactions with local authorities in Ukrainian cities. It is based on results from two local democracy surveys carried out in 20 cities in early 2014 and at the end of 2017—that is, before the decentralization reform was initiated, and some years into the reform. It shows that both in terms of citizens’ perceived responsiveness of local authorities as well as citizens’ political participation, there are signs of progress in most cities. A caution is a negative tendency in citizens’ assessment of their own possibilities for influencing politics locally. Using correspondence analysis, the chapter makes typologies of the interaction between citizens and local authorities and identifies citizen trust to be a core factor affecting perceptions of local authority’s responsiveness. Finally, the chapter discusses the implications of the findings for the ongoing reforms and prospects for stability.
This chapter has benefited from financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway and the Research Council of Norway (NORRUSS Plus program, project no. 287620).
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Notes
- 1.
Since members of the public are not always able to distinguish between appointed officials of local self-government bodies and elected council members at the local level, in this chapter (and in the two surveys that the chapter builds on) we do not make a strict distinction between them. We use the concept of Local Authorities (LA) to combine the two.
- 2.
The surveys were initiated by the Association of Ukrainian Cities (AUC) and organized in collaboration with the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS) and the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research at Oslo Metropolitan University within the framework of the project “Evidence-Based Local Government Policy Development in Ukraine,” financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. The project home page with more details on the project and links to its publication is http://www.ks.no/fagomrader/samfunn-og-demokrati/internasjonalt-samarbeid/prosjekter/cooperation-project-in-ukraine/.
- 3.
In 2014 the survey was carried out by Socio Consulting (based in Kyiv), while in 2017 OperativnaSotsiologia (Dnipro) conducted the survey.
- 4.
Another sign of progress is an answer to the question whether people need to pay under the table for services locally: while 53 percent acknowledged this to be the case in 2014, in 2017 this had fallen to 46 percent.
- 5.
Chronbach’s Alpha of respectively 0.90 (2014) and 0.87 (2017).
- 6.
Only those with at least four valid responses (excluding “Do not know” and “Refuse to answer”) were included in the index.
- 7.
In line with the division made in the survey 2014, which was an operational definition based on election preferences, i.e. whether majority voted for Yanukovych or Tymoshenko in the 2010 presidential elections.
- 8.
The east–west division is a simplification of a more complex regional division which our survey data do not allow us to control for, a consequence of the limited number of cities in different regions of the country.
- 9.
Examples: appeals, inquiries, petitions, public hearings, political speech, local initiatives, public discussions, seminars, internet discussions, meetings with mayor or local deputies.
- 10.
This means that protest activities, which are not correlated with the other items, were not included in the index. Such activities are, however, included in the correspondence analysis presented below. We were left with an index with a Chronbach’s Alpha of 0.85.
- 11.
During the same period (2014–2017) the number of condominiums in Ukraine increased 1.7 times—from 16,200 to 27,400.
- 12.
The three-point scale ranges from 0 (no membership) to 2 (active membership).
- 13.
As part of the project, dissemination researchers visited ten of the cities participating in the survey.
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Aasland, A., Lyska, O. (2020). Signs of Progress: Local Democracy Developments in Ukrainian Cities. In: Shelest, H., Rabinovych, M. (eds) Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict. Federalism and Internal Conflicts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41765-9_10
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