The post-2014 decentralization policy is consolidating the center-periphery relations in Ukraine. Already before 2014, domestic policymakers had been drafting proposals for local amalgamation and an increase of regional authority. Before the 2020 watershed subnational elections, only the local amalgamation policy was completed, however. A significant repercussion of the post-2014 decentralization reform has been a sharp decrease in congruence of the shares of competing national parties in the parliamentary, regional, and municipal electoral arenas. On the other hand, the party system has, at the municipal level, become less fragmented. Regional councils have, in contrast, remained highly fragmented. The outcomes of the indirect elections of regional councils' heads have benefitted Ukraine's ruling party. Methodologically, the book illustrates the added value of investigating elections from a multilevel perspective. It contributes to the comparative exploration of party systems change over time, and constitutes a case study of more general patterns of interaction between municipal decentralization and political development in democratizing states.

Dr. Valentyna Romanova studied Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the University of Edinburgh. She lives in Tokyo and is a member of the Japanese Association of Russian and East European Studies and the Japanese Association of Ukrainian Studies. Also, she is co-editor of the Annual Reviews of Regional Elections in the UK journal Regional and Federal Studies. Her research has been published in English, German, Russian, and Ukrainian in, among others, Post-Soviet Affairs, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Politics, Survival, Regional & Federal Studies, Vox Ukraine, Democratic Audit Blog, The Ideology and Politics Journal, Politychni doslidzhennia, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal, as well as in reports by Chatham House, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and Wilson Center's Kennan Institute.