Comment: A constitution is not enough for legal democracy in Ukraine

  KYIV -- Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction will require more than money, infrastructure and another cycle of institutional amendments. Since independence, governments of different political orientations have repeatedly promised judicial reform, anti-corruption enforcement and a more effective executive. Important institutions have been created, yet familiar pathologies have repeatedly returned: divided executive responsibility, selective legality, political influence over enforcement, weak public trust and the capture of reform mechanisms by those they were meant to restrain.

 This recurrence suggests that Ukraine’s problem is not simply the quality of individual laws or office-holders. It is architectural. Replacing constitutional wording without changing the incentives, safeguards and operating mechanisms of power risks reproducing the same outcomes under new names. A durable transition must therefore answer a harder question: how can the state be designed so that legality is not merely proclaimed, but made structurally enforceable?

 Legal Democracy as an Institutional Proposition

 Petro Myronenko’s concept of Legal Democracy begins from the primacy of law over political discretion. Elections remain indispensable, but electoral legitimacy alone cannot guarantee equal application of law, independent justice or accountable government. Legal Democracy therefore treats the rule of law as the organising principle of the entire constitutional system, not as one policy objective among many.

 The proposed model combines a parliamentary republic with a President–Head of Government, clear political responsibility, a constitutionally protected system of checks, a time-limited transition mechanism, external rule-of-law assurance by an international partner, digital administration designed to remove corrupt intermediation, independent strategic analysis, transparent regional measurement and a professional reserve of reform personnel. These elements are presented as one architecture because isolated reforms can be neutralised when the surrounding system remains unchanged.

 The proposition is deliberately demanding. It should not be accepted on assertion, and it should not be confused with a ready-made constitution awaiting political adoption. Its value lies in making institutional claims explicit enough to be examined, modelled, challenged and improved. That is precisely why a practical pilot is both possible and necessary.

 Why Ukraine Can Become a Site of Institutional Innovation

Post-war Ukraine will face an unusual convergence of pressures: reconstruction at unprecedented scale, European integration, security exposure, demographic strain, public demand for justice and intense scrutiny from international partners. These pressures create danger, but also a rare opening for institutional redesign. Restoring pre-war administrative routines would be inadequate; importing a foreign constitutional model wholesale would ignore Ukraine’s own historical and security conditions.

Ukraine can instead become a European site for responsible institutional innovation: not a laboratory in which citizens are subjected to untested power, but a jurisdiction in which alternative designs are evaluated transparently before any constitutional decision is taken. The standard should be democratic consent, Ukrainian sovereignty, human rights, legal compatibility and measurable public benefit. International participation should provide expertise and assurance, never substitute external administration for Ukrainian constituent authority.

 What Can Be Tested Before Constitutional Transformation

A constitutional transition is not the first experiment. A great deal can be tested without changing the Constitution or transferring public powers. Decision pathways can be mapped; conflicts of competence can be simulated; anti-capture safeguards can be stress-tested; administrative processes can be redesigned around transparent rules; regional indicators can be validated; and the practical consequences of alternative executive structures can be compared.

This allows the concept to move from doctrine to evidence. It also permits critics, practitioners and citizens to identify unintended consequences at low cost and without legal disruption. A pilot should therefore be understood as a research, design and simulation programme with controlled field testing of selected non-sovereign mechanisms—not as an attempt to bypass Parliament, elections or constitutional procedure.

 A Three-Strand Pilot

The proposed initial pilot would contain three mutually reinforcing strands.

First, an Institutional Design Lab would bring together Ukrainian constitutional lawyers, public-administration specialists, economists, security experts, technologists, civil-society representatives and international peers. The Lab would convert the doctrine into testable institutional specifications, map legal dependencies, establish evaluation criteria and run adversarial reviews. Its purpose would be to expose weaknesses before political implementation, not to produce consensus by excluding disagreement.

Second, the pilot would model a new architecture of executive power. Competing institutional configurations would be tested against realistic scenarios: coalition instability, emergency decision-making, reconstruction procurement, corruption pressure, centre–region coordination, European accession requirements and hostile interference. Agent-based modelling, system dynamics and scenario planning could help compare how authority, accountability and information move through each configuration. The output would be evidence about trade-offs—not a predetermined endorsement of a single design.

Third, selected mechanisms could undergo limited territorial testing. This would involve only measures that can lawfully be piloted within the existing constitutional order, for example transparent administrative workflows, public performance dashboards, elements of a Political Passport, structured citizen feedback, or decision-support protocols for local and regional authorities. Participation would require clear legal authority, local consent, independent ethics and rights review, published metrics and a reversible design. No territorial pilot should test sovereign constitutional powers outside lawful democratic procedure.

 The Partnership Required

The pilot cannot be credible as a closed authorial initiative. It requires an international consortium with distinct responsibilities. Academic partners can provide comparative constitutional research and peer review. Legal partners can test compatibility with Ukrainian law, European standards and human-rights obligations. Technology partners can build secure simulation, evidence and public-accountability tools. Ukrainian institutions and municipalities can define practical constraints. Civil society can test legitimacy and guard against elite capture. Financial partners can support independent work packages under transparent governance.

The United Kingdom could be a particularly relevant partner because of its long constitutional experience, strong institutions, security partnership with Ukraine and expertise in public administration, digital government and rule-of-law assistance. British participation, however, should be exploratory and jointly designed. It would not imply endorsement of every doctrinal proposition, nor any right to govern Ukrainian institutions.

 From Debate to a Verifiable Project

The immediate task is not to persuade the world that Legal Democracy is already the final answer. It is to determine whether its diagnosis is sound, which mechanisms are viable, what safeguards they require and where the model must change. A twelve- to eighteen-month design-and-validation phase could produce an institutional requirements map, comparative legal opinions, simulation results, pilot protocols, a rights-and-risks assessment, costed implementation options and a public evidence report.

Ukraine’s partners frequently ask for projects that are both innovative and implementable. Legal Democracy offers a response at the level most reconstruction programmes leave untouched: the architecture that converts resources, laws and democratic mandates into trustworthy public outcomes. The concept now needs disciplined scrutiny, not ceremonial support.

We therefore invite universities, constitutional and public-law institutes, technology organisations, public bodies, foundations and responsible investors to explore the formation of an International Pilot Consortium for Legal Democracy. Its mandate would be narrow but consequential: to test institutional design before constitutional commitment, publish the evidence and give Ukraine better choices for its post-war future.

 Petro Myronenko is a Ukrainian political scientist and Doctor of Political Sciences. He is President and a founding member of the Academy of Political and Legal Sciences of Ukraine and Rector of the Politeia Academy. His professional career spans public administration, defence policy, academic research and institutional analysis, including senior advisory positions within the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and the Administration of the President of Ukraine. He is the author of more than eighty scholarly publications on political processes, public administration, domestic policy and military-political conflict.