The Ukraine crisis represents a clash between a post-Soviet model of governance and one based on the rule of law

The Ukraine crisis has regularly been described in terms of the ethnic and linguistic divisions which exist within Ukraine’s population. Marc P. Berenson writes that while ethnic, linguistic and religious factors have frequently been mentioned in coverage of the crisis, the conflict is a fundamentally political one, framed around a clash between two different governance approaches: a post-Soviet model and a western ‘rule of law’ model with institutional checks and balances. He argues that this conflict between governance approaches ensures that Russia, keen to avoid similar pressures developing over the legitimacy of its own regime, is unlikely to accept any long-term solution that allows Ukraine to become a stable ‘rule of law’ state.