Like many post-Soviet societies, Ukraine has experienced over the past decade the emergence of an oligarchic system. Political and economic elites have become locked into a 'partial reform equilibrium'. Unfinished political and economic reforms have fostered the exchange of economic resources against political support, weakened the state capacity and opened the way to undemocratic outcomes. President Kuchma has become the centre of a 'personal rulership', in which rent-seekers and rent-givers have forged an alliance aimed at preserving the current state of affairs. The consequent situation of stall has benefited both economic actors, allowing them access to the redistribution of national wealth, and political actors, allowing them to consolidate unchallenged their position of power. The systematic plunder of economic resources, perpetrated under the oligarchic system, has imposed great costs upon Ukrainian society, condemning it to a vicious circle of underdevelopment, administrative weakness and inability to implement change.
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