From Revolution to Transformation and European Integration: Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution

Abstract

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of post-Maidan Ukraine’s transformation and European integration. It suggests that despite a series of hindrances to post-Maidan Ukraine’s state-building, ranging from separatism to residual oligarchic influence and authoritarian legacy, the country has demonstrated strong resilience and persistence in asserting its European orientation. The paper offers a more dynamic structure - agency interplay approach to account for the dynamics behind post-Maidan Ukraine’s state-building. It contends that despite constraining external conditions, domestic actors remain the key agents to shape the process of country’s transformation and approximation towards Europe. Therefore, the implementation of fundamental economic and political reforms has a great deal to do with the governments’ ability to overcome bureaucratic resistance to change, eliminate systemic corruption and diminish major oligarchs’ considerable influence in Ukraine. This study enquires into the dynamics of post-revolution Ukraine’s democracy consolidation and European integration amid the mounting confrontation in the EU-Russia contested neighborhood.