The Lords of Misrule in Georgia
(PONARS Eurasia Commentary) Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia and de facto leader of the opposition United National Movement (UNM), is not a saint. But after seven weeks on…
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Focusing on extremism won’t counter far-Right violence
(openDemocracy) Far-Right violence is on the rise in Europe. In fact, far-Right terror is one of the most important rising threats in the West, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace,…
Mutual Images of Russia and America as Part of Their Domestic Culture Wars
(RAD) Over the past few years, U.S.–Russian relations have cooled almost to freezing, putting them at a level comparable to the worst days of the Cold War. Indeed, “new Cold…
Revealing schemes: The politics of conspiracy in Russia and the post-Soviet region
(LSE Blogs) What motivates governments and other political actors to promote conspiracy theories? And what impact do these theories have on society? Drawing on a new book covering Russia and…
Relevant Past Policy Memo | The Coming Fall of Kabul
(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo by Charles J. Sullivan, 2015) The city of Kabul has fallen on three occasions over the past generation: to the mujahedin in 1992, the Taliban in 1996, and the Northern Alliance…
Understanding Putinism | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
Authored by Brian Taylor, professor of political science at Syracuse University and author of The Code of Putinism (2018), Understanding Putinism explains the style and system of President Vladimir Putin’s…
Did the Internet Bring Down the Soviet Union?
(Transitions) Tim Berners Lee, on 6 August 1991, put up the first world wide website on a computer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. Two weeks later, Soviet hardliners…
Are Elections Bad for Georgia’s Democracy?
(PONARS Eurasia Commentary) Georgia’s politics has always been operatic, a blend of comedy and tragedy. Like opera, it is a performance for and by elites. The latest drama was the…
The Russian Orthodox Church | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
Orthodox Christianity plays an important role in contemporary Russian identity beyond serving strictly as a religious faith. In this video, we unpack the interactions between the Russian Orthodox Church and…
How Russian Economic Policy is Made | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
In the latest PONARS Eurasia video, Christopher Miller (Tufts University) provides a succinct overview of Russian economic policy. The video is accompanied by a list of additional sources for those…
Authoritarian Rallying as Reputational Cascade? Evidence from Putin’s Popularity Surge after Crimea
(American Political Science Review) When international conflict causes an authoritarian leader’s popularity to soar, extant theories lead us to treat such “rallying” as sincere preference change, the product of surging…
Russia’s Military Interventions: Patterns, Drivers, and Signposts
(RAND Corporation) Moscow’s use of its military abroad in recent years has radically reshaped perceptions of Russia as an international actor. With the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the invasion of…