Public scholarship

Local Democracy and the Anti-War Narrative in Russia (DemocracyParadox blog, June 2023)

Russia’s Administrators: The Weakest Link in a Crisis (PONARS Policy memo, April 2023)

Video: People Behind the Scenes – The Face of the Russian State at the Subnational Level (PONARS Eurasia invited talk, November 2022)

Research interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of authoritarian leadership, political behavior, and subnational level politics in Russia.

I have been working in collaboration with multiple researchers at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (Moscow, Russia) on several projects exploring elite dynamics and institutional effects of leader selection at the subnational level.

My dissertation combines laboratory experiments, which aim to trace the mechanism connecting institutions of elite selection and elite characteristics, and observational data analysis. I build the general theory of political ambition under different institutional conditions and test it in the lab. I also explore the effects of subnational selection and autonomy on policy decisions at the municipal and regional levels in Russia.

Publications

  1. Garifullina, G. The best among the connected (men): promotion in the Russian state apparatus. Post-Soviet Affairs (forthcoming)
  2. Garifullina, G., Kazantcev, K., and Yakovlev, A. (2020) United we stand: the effects of subnational elite structure on succession in two Russian regions. Post-Soviet Affairs, 1-20, DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2020.1785244
  3. Reuter, O. J., Buckley, N., Shubenkova, A., and Garifullina, G. (2016). Local elections in authoritarian regimes: An elite-based theory with evidence from Russian mayoral elections. Comparative Political Studies, 49(5), 662-697.
  4. Buckley, N., Garifullina, G., Reuter, O. J., and Shubenkova, A. (2014). Elections, appointments, and human capital: The case of Russian mayors. Demokratizatsiya, 22(1), 87.
  5. Buckley, N., Frye, T., Garifullina, G., and Reuter, O. J. (2014). The political economy of Russian gubernatorial election and appointment. Europe-Asia Studies, 66(8), 1213-1233