Informal Institution in Hybrid Regimes: the Case of Ukraine

This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of hybrid regimes endurance and survival by focusing on informal institutions as they operate in Ukraine’s context. Ukraine is a spectacular example of hybrid regime, where informalrules substitute constitutionalism. Specifically, I am interested in answering the key question – Why has the path of Ukraine’s political regime transformation is not similar to any of the post-soviet states? This theoretical and descriptive question may be reformulated into an empirical one, namely: How did informal rules shape the elite’s behavior?