Legislative Oversight in the UkrainianRada: Assessing the Effectiveness of Parliamentary Committees

Abstract

This study analyses factors associated with the perceived effectiveness of committee oversight in the Ukrainian Rada. Based on two waves of original survey data, it attempts to discern whether Ukrainian MPs view the committee oversight process primarily as an extension of partisan politics, a forum for constituency representation and resource distribution, or a politically independent process of information acquisition and regulation. The findings of the analysis suggest that partisan political considerations do not play a significant role in shaping MP attitudes towards committee oversight. Rather, deputy evaluations of the oversight process are influenced mainly by distributional and informational factors, suggesting that committee oversight is one area in which legislative institutionalisation appears to be taking root in post-communist Ukraine.

Disrupted Democracy in Ukraine? Protest, Performance and Contention in theVerkhovna Rada

“…It has tended to focus on formal institutional development (e.g. Wise and Brown 1996;Whitmore 2004;Khmelko and Beers, 2011) with an emphasis on decision-making (e.g. Herron 2002; Whitmore 2004; Chaisty and Chernykh 2015), though this is often not the main function of a modern legislature (Packenham, 1990).…”