The Elephant in the Room: Ukraine between Decentralization and Conflict

Abstract

Ukraine is a big and diverse country. However, a regionally decentralized territorial setup has never been considered due to the extremely delicate geopolitical situation, to fears of state-capturing and, not least, to a principled approach which sees autonomy as a slope inevitably leading to secession. While the experience with autonomy in independent Ukraine has been indeed negative, this paper argues that the question should at least be considered, as to whether the lack of autonomy and not its supposed presence could be one of the reasons for the present difficult situation. Such a reading, that would have been unthinkable until present, is now being made possible or at least less unrealistic by the limited but overall positive administrative decentralization reforms that took place recently.