On 25 October, Ukraine held local elections across the country, heralding the final stage of a much-lauded decentralisation of administrative power - and a serious loss for president Zelenskyi’s Servant of the People party.
While 11 cities are scheduled to hold a second round in their mayoral elections later this month, it is already clear from the results of the first round who the winners are in this contest: old local political elites who have been monopolising power in Ukraine’s regions since the 1990s. With these local political machines freshly legitimised, Ukraine is entering a new era - one with a new dual-leveled political system and questions over the future of the old “power vertical”.
This situation has been prompted by decentralisation reform, which over the past five years has devolved power and resources to new, amalgamated regional units. But the results beg the question: how come a reform that was supposed to strengthen democracy at the local level instead cemented power in the hands of local political groups?
