Research

I am a comparative politics scholar interested in women’s representation and political participation, political parties, post-Communist states, and authoritarian politics. My research focuses on exploring the intricate relationships between gender, authoritarian institutions, and political economy. I employ a diverse array of qualitative and quantitative methods in my work, including archival research, interviews, survey experiments, and econometric analysis of large panel and longitudinal datasets. My current book project delves into the connections between authoritarianism and women’s representation. Additionally, I am motivated by questions related to institutions that facilitate authoritarian transitions, gendered violence, and political parties.

Book Project

Political Participation of Women in the Soviet Union and Russia

Why do authoritarian political elites recruit women? I examine the political engagement of women in the Soviet local councils from the 1950s until the collapse of the USSR and also their Russian municipal representation today. I argue that in both the USSR and contemporary Russia, women’s representation is instrumental in the regime’s survival. First, women have a sense of responsibility to their municipal constituencies’ everyday needs that motivates them to participate. Second, it is more challenging for women to get a private job as private employers prefer to avoid hiring women due to pregnancy and childcare discrimination. As a result, they are more reliant on public employment, making them disproportionately dependent on the state. For these reasons, women are critical for an authoritarian regime’s survival because they are responsive at the municipal level and their compliance can be ensured through their employment dependence.
My research challenges existing explanations of why authoritarian states implement policies that engage women, such as such as attempts to enhance their international reputation or the willingness of autocrats to compromise their stance on women’s rights to receive international aid and inducements. Instead, I propose an argument based on the domestic needs. By using extensive and unique Soviet archival data, interviews with former Soviet and Russian representatives, and contemporary Russian electoral data, I show that in contrast to the national level, women are widely represented at the municipal level. Moreover, they show consistent and reliable responsiveness to the tasks related to everyday issues relevant to municipal politics. Thus, by examining these dynamics in both historical and contemporary contexts, my book project sheds light on the crucial role of women in maintaining political stability within authoritarian regimes.

Publications

Proportional Representation and Party Fragmentation in Electoral Autocracies. Democratization (2024): 1-21.

What is the relationship between the type of electoral system and the degree of party fragmentation in electoral autocracies? According to Duverger’s hypothesis, proportional representation (PR) is positively associated with party fragmentation. This study investigates whether this hypothesis holds true in non-democratic political systems that hold elections. I propose that, unlike in democracies, PR is negatively correlated with the level of party fragmentation in electoral autocracies. To test this hypothesis, I utilize panel data encompassing 37 non-democratic nations that held elections from 1975 to 2010. The effective number of parties (ENP) is employed as a measure of party fragmentation, estimating the weighted size and quantity of political parties. My findings suggest that PR has a consistent significant negative correlation with the effective number of political parties across all models and samples. It shows that in contrast to democracies, in electoral authoritarian regimes, PR systems do not create electoral conditions that stimulate the development of many effective political parties. These findings contribute to the future research in uncovering what may or may not help parties to occupy the entire “playing field.”

Russia: Muddling Through Populism and the Pandemic. In: Renno, Lucio, and Nils Ringe (eds.). Populists and the Pandemic: How Populists Around the World Respond to COVID-19. Routledge, 2022. With Anton Shirikov and Yoshiko M. Herrera.

The pandemic did not change the regime trajectory in Russia. It was and remains an authoritarian regime in which political opponents are violently repressed. To some extent, Vladimir Putin took advantage of the pandemic to strengthen his rule, but the general institutional context did not change. In addition, the media manipulation with regard to COVID-19, that is, highlighting successes and downplaying or hiding problems, has been a consistent tactic of the Putin regime for some time. Populist tactics appeared to some extent in the promotion of the idea that Putin and the central government were responsible for successes, while regions or others, namely the “collective West”, were responsible for the problems.

Other

Book Review (2025). Erasing History by Jason Stanley.

Work in Progress

Playing Electoral Rules by Ear: Autocratic Decision-Making

This study draws attention from the idea of the existence of a ‘grand authoritarian plan’ in Russia to the role of small and incremental changes in transitional states. By comparing electoral reforms in the 1990s and the 2000-2010s, I show that the ‘self-enforcing’ democratic equilibrium was disturbed not by a long-term grand authoritarian plan, but a series of small broken rules lead to the incremental slipping into authoritarianism. In this paper, I trace how various gradual electoral reforms and Putin’s ability to be flexible and adjust the rules ‘by ear’ enabled him to erase electoral competition in Russia.

The Puzzle of Women’s Quotas in Eurasia

This project about female labor participation in transitional market economies of authoritarian regimes aims to investigate the consequences of implementing women’s electoral quotas and the gap in the female labor force participation rate in former Soviet authoritarian states. It compares the cases that implemented women’s quotas and used the topic of gender equality to improve its international reputation (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) with the case of Russia that actively resisted the implementation of women’s quotas and did not pursue tactics to improve its international reputation in terms of gender equality since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

When Silence Creates Violence: Understanding the Role of Identity-Based Dynamics and Highly Visible Events in Assessing Domestic Violence (with Yulia Khalikova, Marcy Shieh, and Alisher Juzgenbayev)

Various forms of gendered violence remain global issues. Research suggests that high-profile cases can influence public opinion on domestic violence, but outcomes vary depending on in-group and out-group dynamics tied to salient identities such as race and ethnicity. Kazakhstan presents an opportunity to test this idea. This year, former Kazakh Economy Minister Quandyq Bishimbaev received a 24-year sentence for the murder of his partner, Saltanat Nukenova. The trial, broadcast live for the first time, sparked unprecedented public outcry, leading to President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev signing a new law in April 2024 that criminalizes domestic violence. We argue that highly visible events involving in-group members can prompt greater support for victims. Additionally, we hypothesize that policy responses to victims will vary based on in-group and out-group dynamics. To test this, we plan to conduct a vignette survey experiment in Kazakhstan that presents a scenario varying the hypothetical victim’s identity and the range of available policy-oriented actions.

In the Shadow of Communism: Political Responsiveness in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan (with Dima Kortukov, Dmitrii Kofanov, and Raushan Zhandayeva)

This project explores political responsiveness in non-democratic settings, particularly in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Building on existing literature on responsiveness in democratic contexts, we hypothesize that in authoritarian regimes, constituencies may struggle to distinguish between different levels of governance and between “programmatic” and “clientelistic/personalistic” requests. Our research aims to test this hypothesis using a vignette experiment in Kazakhstan. Respondents will be asked to identify the appropriate level of governance to address issues such as a high-level state-imposed ban or a local shortage of essential medicine. This design will allow us to assess how well citizens can differentiate between problems with personal relevance and those without, as well as their understanding of different governance levels.