Explaining Ukraine's resilience to Russia's invasion: The role of local governance

Abstract

Resilience of local communities (territorial hromadas) is an increasingly salient matter in the academic and policy debate on the factors which have determined Ukraine's resilience to Russia's 2022 invasion. Building on existing literature on institutional resilience and its predictors, this article explains the ability of Ukrainian self-governed municipalities to withstand the threats to institutional stability stemming from the invasion. First, it uses an exploratory qualitative design to operationalize the concept of resilience and its predictors with an account of varying experiences of Ukrainian hromadas during the full-scale invasion (e.g., hromadas near the frontline and in the rear). Next, it presents data from open sources and the results of a regression analysis to test the impact of various groups of predictors on hromadas' resilience to the full-scale invasion. Our models show a significant relationship between hromadas' resilience and geographical, politico-administrative and economic predictors influenced by the outcomes of the decentralization reform conducted in Ukraine since 2014.