The regions of Ukraine are at the transitional stage of democratic development – expert opinion
The presentation of the results of measurement of the democratic development index of the regions of Ukraine took place on March 9 at the press center of Ukrinform. As part of the project “Promoting Reforms and Development of Accountability in the Regions of Ukraine”, which was implemented by the Polissya Fund of International and Regional Studies (Chernihiv) in cooperation with the Association of Regional Analytical CentersNationalEndowmentforDemocracy(Ned), a comprehensive study was conducted and as a result, a nationwide rating of democratic development of regions of Ukraine was created.
According to Yevgeny Romanenko, President of the Polissya Fund of International and Regional Research, beforeProject implementation was involved representatives of the Regional Analytical Centers Association(Arats), and experts of the Center for Political and Legal Reforms worked on the methodology. It is based on the original methodology of the International Institute of Democracy and International IDEA and includes an analysis of a wide range of factors at the regional level, which were grouped in 10 blocks. “The main complexity of working on the methodology was that everything that exists in the world is about research at the national level. And, first of all, they relate to the quality of the legislation,-said Igor Koliushko, Director of the Center for Political and Legal Reforms. “As for this index, you do not come up with many criteria here, because the laws work equally for all regions.”
That is why the study conducted an expert survey, which was supplemented and revised on the basis of numerical data and analysis of national and regional sources of secondary data (analytical reports, results of sociological research, statistics, etc.). The study was performed during November 2016 – January 2017 in 24 regions of Ukraine with the exception of temporarily occupied territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“According to the results of 2016 in top-up‘Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Khmelnitskaya, Sumy, Lviv region included Yat,-said Mr. Romanenko. – The latter in the rating were Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv and Odesa. The data obtained indicate that all regions are mixed/transitional with the average integral value in Ukraine at 3.05 on a five -point scale. In particular, the expert voiced the ratings through the prism of blocks, the highest expert evaluation of which received: “socio-economic status” (3.25 points); “Public Activity and Self -Organization of Citizens” (3,11); “Interethnic and confessional relations” (3,69); “Decentralization and activity of local self -government bodies” (3,13). Low estimates were set by the Safety blocks. Law Enforcement: Police and Prosecutor’s Office (2,63) and Corruption (2,60).
Project expert Alexander Neberikut believes that the power of this project is that it has a huge number of experts that are relevant to the topics that were measured. “It is important that not the regulatory documents and the actual state were evaluated, namely practice”,Said Mr. Neberikut.
“For many, it was a surprise that Kharkiv region took 21st place in the development of democracy,– said Viktor Kozoriz, expert of the local democracy fund. – However, there is a big difference in the policy that is pursued in the region and in the city itself. Such a mix creates more negative trends in the field of democracy. “In addition, Araz representative noted that Kharkiv experts are very critical of certain processes, so correlation with sociological research was important.
The analysis of the results, in addition, showed that all administrative units of the Ukrainian state have advanced enough on the path of constructing a competitive and pluralistic political regime, but to approach the level of development of countries with liberal democracy, even the leaders’ regions need to solve a number of problems in most areas.
The results of the study made it possible to formulate recommendations on further directions of strengthening democracy at the local level. Among the main ones at the national level is the continuation of the chosen course of reforms (justice, prosecutor’s office, law enforcement system and decentralization) with simultaneous provision of institutional support in the most problematic areas; Improvement of party and electoral legislation, as well as conducting a national anti -corruption campaign. At the local level, the main tasks are the development of regional social capital focused on democratic development,improving the quality of information space,activation of the use of e-democracy tools and more.
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https://public.tableau.com/views/2016_pf/story1? : imbed = y &: display_count = yes
The event is held within the framework of the project “Promoting Reforms and Accountability in Regions of Ukraine”, which is implemented by the Polissya Fund of International and Regional Studies (Chernihiv) with the support of National Endowment for Democracy (NED).