News
Kendziorski Wins PLS/IR Outstanding Paper Award
March 19, 2015
Chelsea Kendziorski's paper, "The Politics of Exclusion in Georgia and Moldova" was selected by the PLS/IR Student Awards Committee as the Political Science and International Relations Outstanding Paper written for a PLS/IR course in 2014. Chelsea wrote her research paper last winter while taking PLS 385 Russian and Post-Soviet Politics. There were a total of fifteen submissions, and Chelsea will receive a $200 monetary award. Thanks to those students who submitted their papers for consideration, and congratulations, Chelsea!
Here is the abstract to Chelsea's excellent paper:
This paper investigates the struggles with democratization in Georgia and Moldova. These countries have developed formal democratic institutions, but continue to be plagued by political corruption, judicial inefficiency, and human rights abuses. This paper expands upon previous insights in democratization research that focus on either structural elements or agency factors to explain democratic outcomes by showing how elite actors respond to structural conditions and shape governance trajectories. Furthermore, research on competitive authoritarian regimes considers the impact of an uneven balance of power between regime incumbents and opposition forces. This analysis shows how elite choices have been instrumental in taking advantage of this uneven playing field in a manner that promotes exclusionary politics. I argue that while structural factors in Georgia and Moldova have posed difficulties for democratization, the decisions elites have made with regards to these conditions have played the bigger role in influencing the democratic trajectories of these countries.