Abstract

This article analyses, in a comparative manner, the situation of democratization in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. The analysis is based on nine variables/ criteria: the effective number of political parties, the electoral system, institutional corruption, the legal background, the political freedom and civil rights, civil society, economic freedom, economic growth and the quality of democracy. The study shows that the two countries have a fragile democracy, emphasizing the main factor affecting their democratic consolidation: the fact that their Soviet past determines in the collective psychology the recurrence of communist values and practices. Democratic fragility is, therefore, both the product of a common communist history and of a civic model of the parish type, dominated by authoritarianism, political apathy and lack of ‘rule of law.’