title: Catching up with 'Europe'? Constitutional Debates on the Territorial-Administrative Model in Independent Ukraine
abstract: At first sight, Ukraine is custom-made for far-reaching regionalization or even federalism. Endowed by history with well-accentuated regional divisions, it also has an indigenous reservoir of political ideas on federalism and decentralization dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet upon emerging as an independent state from the break-up of the Soviet federation in 1991, Ukraine became haunted by the spectre of centrifugal forces. This experience was formative for th