ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Ukraine profiles of longstanding democracies and of the European Union, and provides essential detail on history, electoral system, political parties and cleavages, and governments. Democracy versus electoral autocracy in Ukraine has revolved more around presidential elections and presidents than parliamentary ones. Ukraine was under Polish rule in the sixteenth century and then was briefly independent in the seventeenth century. It came under Russian control in the eighteenth century. The electoral system used in the 1994 Ukrainian election involved the 450 deputies all being elected in single-member constituencies on a majority basis with an “against all” option and a second, run-off ballot of the top two candidates. The Communist Party of Ukraine was founded in 1993 with no legal claims to the Communist party which ruled Soviet Ukraine and which was banned in 1991 for allegedly supporting the anti-Mikhail Gorbachev coup in August 1991. The social-national party of Ukraine had neo-Nazi elements and would establish a paramilitary organization.
