Political Legislation Cycles, Divided Governments, and Institutional Changes in Ukraine ¹

ABSTRACT

This paper tests the political legislation cycle theory on data about Ukraine, from its independence till the completion of the last legislature before the Russian full‐scale invasion (2019), to examine the effects of divided governments and institutional variations on legislative production. It exploits data on parliamentary and presidential elections to verify their impact on the production of laws, a prerogative of the legislative branch, and on presidential decrees promulgated by the president. The estimates (1) show considerable evidence of PLC in the production of both legislative instruments; (2) reveal the presence of cross‐cycles, since both elections also affect the approval of the legislative instrument of the other government branch; (3) point out that the cross‐cycles, especially in the less institutionally bounded presidential decrees, are greater when the government branches are ideologically divided, providing the first application of the divided theory of government to cycles in legislative activity; (4) suggest that the expansion of presidential powers and the adoption of a PR electoral system are associated with legislative cycles of greater magnitude. A battery of robustness checks and placebo tests confirm the main results of the analysis.