Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
2014 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall
Сolumbus, OH
43212-1373
Phone: (614) 292-0511
Fax: (614) 292-1146
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science with a specialization in comparative politics, political economy and the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
In my dissertation, I examine the conditions under which private interests play a determining role in market-oriented reforms. In Russia, private interests played a central role in the formation of pension systems, but were much less involved in the design of healthcare. To explain this puzzle, I draw on 54 personal interviews with private interests in pensions and healthcare, bureaucrats, politicians and other experts in Russia. I also utilize several unique datasets tracking the adoption and implementation of market-oriented reforms in pensions and healthcare across the post-communist countries. In healthcare the government was uncertain about which model to follow, while in pensions the government knew which model it preferred but was challenged with the difficulty of its application. I find that the unique expertise of private interests made them useful in reducing the difficulty of pension design, but not the government’s uncertainty over healthcare models. This dissertation challenges traditional interest group research by explaining how a group’s influence depends on the government’s strategy for addressing particular policy challenges.
This web page was last updated in November 2008.
My dissertation committee consists of the following professors:
Professor Timothy Frye (co-chair)
Professor Sarah Brooks (co-chair)