Please join us Thursday November 14th, 2024 at 3:30p for our Democracy Speaker Series featuring Dr. Sarah Wilson Sokhey of the Universty of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Sokhey's talk title, and abstract are below.

Ortega Hall is located on main campus near the Duck Pond and the closest public parking is in the Cornell parking structure on Central Ave or metered parking along Central Ave. Please see the UNM Campus map for more detailed information. This series is free and open to the public. 

This event will be broadcast live via Zoom, details below - you will need both the meeting ID and passcode listed below to join:

Topic: US & Global Democracy Series: Dr. Sarah Sohkey
Time: Nov 14, 2024 03:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting: https://unm.zoom.us/j/92752707955
Meeting ID: 927 5270 7955
Passcode: 201263

Title: Democracy & Decentralization: How Participation Promotes Public Goods in Ukraine

Abstract: Amidst a period of pandemic and wartime, public service provision in Ukraine has been delivered primarily at the local level, especially since the continuation of decentralisation reforms begun in 2014. In this paper, we examine how and why social spending varies across Ukraine at the local hromada-level in 2022. We argue that local level political engagement--as measured by turnout in the politically significant local elections in 2020--plays an important role in boosting local commitments to providing public goods. Using a new dataset created by a research team at the Kyiv School of Economics (Brik et al. 2023) and original regional level data in Ukraine, we estimate OLS regressions using oblast (regional) fixed effects that predict hromada (local) level spending in 2022.

Our analysis shows that higher levels of turnout in the local elections of 2020 resulted in much more spending on healthcare and social protection in 2022 even when controlling for other important local and regional factors including the partisanship and incumbency status of the local leader. Our findings lend insight into how democratic competition and decentralisation can go hand in hand to promote a greater investment in public goods even during periods of crisis.