Bohdan Harasymiw

Ukraine is a misfit among post-communist states, being neither a respectable, stable democracy nor an autocracy. Nor does it sit well as a patronal political system, like other post-Soviet regimes, since the Euromaidan Revolution. This study examines the presidencies of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy focusing on their common tendency to subordinate the legal system and use it as a political instrument. It finds that this pattern of power struggle concentrated in the president’s office was, contrary to the theory of patronal politics, more dominant than clientelism. The second theme of this book is each president’s handling of relations—largely meaning the war—with Russia, in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and culminating in the invasion of 2022, as the key challenge to the nation’s survival. One way or another, unable to reform itself or to withstand the Russian assault, post-Euromaidan Ukraine will have come to an end. "An important contribution to the literature!  There is a lot of interest in Ukraine, and the focus . . . on the past decade or so is so important.” —Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Professor of Political Science, University of Alberta

Dr. Bohdan Harasymiw is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Calgary and formerly (2013–2016) coordinator of the Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the University of Alberta. In 1980–1981, he was President of the Canadian Association of Slavists. His previous books include Leadership Selection and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia (with T.H. Rigby; Unwin Hyman 1983), Political Elite Recruitment in the Soviet Union (Palgrave Macmillan 1984), Soviet Communist Party Officials (Nova Science 1996), Post-Communist Ukraine (CIUS Press 2002), and Aspects of the Orange Revolution II (co-edited with O.S. Ilnytzkyj; ibidem-Verlag 2007). Harasymiw’s articles have been published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Studies in Comparative Communism, Journal of Communist Studies, Canadian Slavonic Papers, American Review of Canadian Studies, Nationalities Papers as well as in other periodicals.

"An important contribution to the literature!  There is a lot of interest in Ukraine, and the focus . . . on the past decade or so is so important.”

—Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Professor of Political Science, University of Alberta