Authors

Svitlana Kononchuk¹;  ¹ Academy in Exile, TU-Dortmund, Germany

Discussion

Since independence in 1991, Ukraine’s democratic development has been marked by weak political parties, while cabinets often depend on non-party channels to recruit members. Although the constitution assigns roles to both the president and parliament in forming cabinets under a semi-presidential system, which has changed over time, political parties rarely serve as stable vehicles for government formation in practice. Instead, cabinet members are often recruited through presidential offices, oligarchic business groups, and other informal networks, which diminishes the influence of party institutions and strengthens neo-patrimonial policies. The proposed paper explores channels for cabinet formation, analysing the evolution of ministerial appointment patterns since 1991. It identifies four key periods: early independence cabinets led by former Soviet bureaucrats; the rise of oligarchic-party hybrids under Kuchma, Yushchenko, and Yanukovych; post-Maidan (2014) governments under Petro Poroshenko influenced to some extent by civil society and international actors; and, finally, the Zelenskyy era, characterized by reliance on technocratic elites, the presidential office network, and wartime power consolidation. Particular attention is given to the wartime reshuffles, which demonstrate how the Presidential Office has supplanted party organizations as the primary gatekeeper for ministerial appointments. Methodologically, the study utilizes a biographical dataset of all cabinet members from 1991 to 2025, analysing all appointments along with major government transitions and their links to political parties or the presidential administration. The study reveals that in each of the four conditional periods, a single pattern of government formation is employed, where the presidential office assumes the lead in appointing cabinet members, even though initially, after the parliamentary elections, cabinets of ministers are formed through political parties and parliamentary coalitions. During wartime, government formation in Ukraine has clearly shifted to the platform of the presidential administration, indicating a weakening of the role of parliament and political parties within the parliament in relation to the executive branch, thereby reducing democratic accountability. By examining Ukraine's case, the paper provides both theoretical and empirical insights into broader debates on the role of political parties in a semi-presidential system and hybrid institutional development in the post-Soviet region. Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
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