ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the domestic problems of the neo-patrimonial defective democracies of Europe countries of wider Europe. All countries of the post-Soviet space are characterised by neo-patrimonialism, political corruption and façade democracies. The triple transition was a political transition from a communist dictatorship to liberal democracy, an economic transition from a planning economy to a liberal market economy, and a social transition from a communist welfare state to a social democratic/liberal workfare state. In terms of political systems, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Russia are defective semi-presidential democracies, while Belarus is a dictatorship with regular elections. The geopolitical territorial price that the Ukraine had to pay was high, leading to the illegal occupation of Crimea by Russia and the indirect support for separatists in the eastern regions of Donetzk and Luhansk. Between 1992 and 1994, the political leadership under Viacheslaw Kebich kept a close relationship with Russia’s Yeltsin.
