Decentralization in Ukraine: Reorganizing Core–Periphery Relations?

Abstract

This article seeks to determine whether (and how) Ukraine’s Decentralization Reform is reorganizing core-periphery relations. Involving a profound rescaling and reterritorialization of the nation-state, the reform is widely considered one of the most transformational policies of the three decades of the country’s independence and is credited with fostering local self-governance and motivating resistance in the war with Russia. However, such emancipatory ideals promoted by Western institutions and reflected in urbanist literature are contradicted by ongoing economic restructuring—austerity, privatization, and deregulation— where the devolvement of responsibility has placed Ukrainian localities into the competitive environment of place entrepreneurialism. The article outlines how the Decentralization Reform’s attempts to address uneven geographical development are instead reproducing unevenness across local, national, and global scales and advancing the (re)production of neoliberal capitalist space. The global philanthropic project of rebuilding Ukrainian cities in the face of imperial war is intensifying this dynamic, making Ukrainian (sub)urban space an important site for exploring alternatives within and beyond the post-Soviet condition.