Decentralization in Ukraine and Bottom-Up European Integration

Abstract

Decentralization is one of the most profound reforms undertaken in Ukraine. It includes the voluntary merging of previously independent villages and towns into larger Amalgamated Territorial Communities (ATCs). The European Union strongly supports the reform but does not make Ukraine’s further European integration conditional upon it. In order to study whether decentralization can, nevertheless, contribute to the country’s European integration, this chapter adopts a sociological perspective. It asks whether decentralization has led to an increase in community twinning and participation of Ukrainian communities in transnational municipal networks. It is based on a survey conducted among the leaders of the 159 ATCs founded in 2015, and on publicly available data. The chapter finds that although the respondents generally value international cooperation and new transnational twinning partnerships that emerged after amalgamation, the overall number of such partnerships is relatively low.