The institutionalisation of factions in Ukraine's parliament has proceeded in a patchy, uneven manner as a consequence of cross-cutting incentives created by the constitution, lower order rules and the actions of the president. Although factions became more organisationally complex and disciplined, membership instability significantly undermined these developments so that factions remained weakly institutionalised. Despite this, factions came to exercise greater influence over the parliamentary

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... leadership and the legislative process, largely due to the formation of Ukraine's first parliamentary majority in 2000. However, as this majority was orchestrated by President Kuchma, Ukraine's parliament remains vulnerable to external pressure. Internal parliamentary institutions are central to the capacity of a parliament to perform roles essential to the functioning of a modern state, including law-making, oversight of the executive and representation. As parliaments are nested institutions, where key functions are devolved to internal institutions, scholars have singled out the roles played by parliamentary parties (factions) as key to institutional efficacy. 1 A strong party system (within and beyond parliament) is seen as crucial for accountable governance and democratic stability. 2 Therefore, parliamentary parties can carry out a wide variety of tasks, including: structuring and organising parliament; channeling interests for parliamentarians and the electorate; articulating alternative policy proposals; simplifying voting decisions for parliamentarians; and requiring the executive to confront parliamentarians as groups not individuals, making executive co-option of a parliament more difficult. 3 However, it is intuitively obvious that in order to perform any of these 1