Protest and Electoral Authoritarian Regimes
This research focuses on state-society relations within electoral authoritarian regimes (EARs). Assisted by Anton Sobolev (HSE, UCLA) and Irina Soboleva (HSE, Columbia University), Smyth directed the collection of individual level data on participants in anti-regime protests and pro-regime rallies in 2011-2012 and a survey of non-participants. These data were supplemented with focus groups, regional event counts, and a follow-up study of campaign volunteers in the Alexei Navalny campaign. Smyth has also written on the role of symbolic politics in Putin’s Russia and the role of social media and political leadership in protest and rally participation. With funding from the Ostrom Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis, she has extended this framework to study Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution, Ukraine’s Euromaidan, and protests in Romania.
Studying Russia’s Authoritarian Turn: New Directions in Political Research on Russia, Russian Politics, 2016 (Special Issue Editor)
Navalny’s Gamesters: Protest, Opposition Innovation, and Authoritarian Stability in Russia (with Irina Soboleva), Russian Politics, 2016
Mind the Gaps: Media Use and Mass Action in Russia (with Sarah Oates), Europe-Asia Studies, 2015
The Putin Factor: Personalism, Protest, and Regime Stability in Russia, Politics and Policy, 2014.
Outreach/Popular Writing
The Potential for Discrediting Putin, Washington Post – The Monkey Cage, March 2017
Popular Engagement and Protest Potential, PONARS Memo, August 2016
The Complexity that is Current Russian Politics, Washington Post – The Monkey Cage, December 2011
Putin in 2012, —Washington Post – The Monkey Cage, September 2011
The Art of the Possible: Institutions and Policy Outcomes
This research, with William Bianco, Christopher Kam, and Itai Sened, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), examines the influence of legislator and party preferences on political outcomes from regime transition to policy bundles. Relying on the uncovered set (UCS), this work models the potential outcome of majority rule decision making in democracies, autocracies, and electoral authoritarian regimes from the US, to the UK, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary and Hong Kong.
Political Parties and Regime Change
Funded by IREX, NSF, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, this work analyzes party development through the lens of relationships among voters, candidates, and party elites. Smyth’s 2006 book, Democracy Without Foundation, explores how the lack of information and resources in the context of electoral institutions designed to preclude Communist resurgence provided disincentives for investment in party organizations. In 2013, Smyth began a follow up study on the evolution of Russian political parties and electoral politics in collaboration with Rostislav Turovsky (HSE).
Political Preferences and Party Development in Post-Communist States, Demokratizatsia, 2012
