| Summary: | Informed by empirical findings from document analysis, semi-structured qualitative interviewing and participant observation, this Dissertation investigates EU rule of law promotion in a single case: Ukraine. Formally, the EU is committed to promoting the rule of law in Ukraine and Ukraine is committed to the rule of law and European integration. In practice, the state of rule of law application in Ukraine is very poor and hinders further integration of Ukraine with the EU. The main objective of this research is to analyse how the formulation of the EU rule of law promotion policy towards Ukraine is mediated by institutional contexts in the EU and Ukraine. The main argument of this study is that EU rule of law promotion in Ukraine is a product of vertical, horizontal, inter- and intra-institutional coordination of priorities inside the EU and external coordination of EU priorities and activities with those of Ukraine and other rule of law promoters active in the field. This complex interaction mediates both the prioritisation of the rule of law component of EU-Ukraine relations in political dialogue and the substantiation of the rule of law with concrete institutional attributes for the purposes of cooperation between the two. Importantly, the partner state plays a significant role not only at the stage of policy implementation, but also and already at the stage of policy formulation. Partner state stakeholders are involved in the EU policy formulation process for a set of political and practical reasons, dictated by the political context in which the relationship unfoldsnon- accession, and by the peculiarity of t~e task to be accomplished - external assistance to internal legal change. The very approach ofthe EU to rule of law promotion is designed in recognition ofthe effects of interaction between the parties and their institutional contexts: it operates with an abstract ideal of the rule of law at the political level and requires a context-sensitive substantiation of the concept for a particular country and policy area at the practical level. The finding on the inherence of variation in EU rule of law conceptions outside of accession has important implications for the study of coherence in EU external policies. Overall, this Dissertation makes a contribution to the understanding of rule of law promotion as an EU external policy tool in non-accession contexts, the EU as a rule of law promoter and a development actor generally, and Ukraine as a state transforming 'towards' the rule of law and European integration.
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