More than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, countries like Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine seem stuck in the in-between. Despite several institutional changes, all three seem stuck between the EU and Russia, as well as between democracy and autocracy. To this day, comparative studies on the formal dimensions of political institutions have rarely included insights from informal political structures. Therefore, there is a knowledge gap in how the formal political institutions of these countries, changing from regimes of concentrated presidential powers into regimes with diffused executive-legislative powers, actually function in relation to democracy.
This project aims to fill this gap by studying the combined role of formal and informal political structures on democracy in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Zooming in on the party system as the arena connecting formal and informal political structures, we trace the parliamentary parties’ development, organisation, and role as connected to its financial underpinnings and formal framework. Through our comparative mixed-methods approach, we aim to gain improved empirical knowledge and develop a theoretical framework of essence to studies of both regional studies and studies of democratisation and autocratisation.