Ukraine proves the point made by Brender and Drazen

Adi Brender and Allan Drazen in AER 2009, "Consolidation of New Democracy, Mass Attitudes, and Clientelism":

"We found that in new democracies annual government expenditure reported immediately after the election year was significantly lower than finalized data; in nonelection years, it was unchanged. (In contrast, in established democracies initial and final reports were similar for election an nonelection years.) This comparison is not conclusive, but suggests that new democracies provide a lowe quality of data to their citizens in election years.

...In Brender and Drazen (2007), we found that democracy is almost three times more likely to collapse in election years than in nonelection years in new democracies, while in olde democracies the probability of a collapse of the democratic regime is very small, with similar values in election and nonelection years."