Democracy and security in Ukraine: Unpacking local resilience and prospects for reconstruction

Local democracy Talks

Conventional security discourses did not predict the magnitude and endurance of resistance efforts in Ukraine, considering the asymmetry between Russia and Ukraine in terms of military capacity. Based on our own research on local democracy in Ukraine, we propose that sweeping decentralization reforms combined with widespread multipronged democratic innovations, including a digital transformation of the state, in recent years has significantly contributed to Ukraine’s resilience. The purpose of the event is to revisit the state of Ukrainian local democracy before the war and discuss how this has contributed to the resilience and problem-solving capacity that we see today.

 In this event, we aim to identify major underlying factors that account for the support for and engagement with the state, civil society, and business in Ukraine, with a specific eye to previous achievements and practices on the local level of governance, much of which has continued to function even through the war.