Political Institutions and Public Policies: The Effect of Institutional Choices on Legislative Decision-Making Practices in Ukraine and Russia

This paper consists of the two parts. The first one, which is based on extensive research on the usage of presidential decrees in Russia and Ukraine, summarizes those threats that the specific patterns of decree usage cause for the process of democratic consolidation and for the efforts to increase government administrative efficiency. It offers some general recommendations that can help the think tank community and non-government organizations (NGOs0 dealing with the issues of democracy and governance to counteract the negative tendencies in presidential decree making. These societal actors can affect the transparency, accountability and efficiency of the executive by exposing the different forms of presidential power abuses, advocating good governance practices, and building a broad societal coalition in partnership with political parties and professional associations against closeness, secrecy, and wide-spread patronage and clientelism in the executive branch of government. Since most problems and solutions are common to both countries, this paper focuses on the conceptual issues and recommendations applicable to both countries. At the same time, the comparative approach adopted both in the research project and thi