Graduates of the Comparative Politics of Eurasia program discuss their master's thesis research and the process of defending it.
This summer 12 students from our program successfully defended their master's theses. We spoke with graduates of the Comparative Politics of Eurasia program about their projects, the reasons behind their choice of topics, the process of working on a research design, and the defense process. Read more about this in our our new material.
Borna Ardehi, Graduate of the program "Comparative Politics of Eurasia" 2024
Discursive Pattern Changes of the Iranian Opposition during the 'Woman Life Freedom' protests
The events of the protests were temporally relevant, and there was no academic work studying the phenomena surrounding the protests. Various groups conducted surveys to study the political behavior of Iranians, yet the questions of "how" the movement evolved and "why" it didn't achieve its objectives were not answered. The limited academic exposure to these protests was either confined to essays with a strongly normative approach or politically biased manifestos rather than academic research. I conducted this research with the aspiration to set the foundation for future empirical studies on these protests. The work is not published yet, but I trust it will be and will become integral in studying future political mobilization in Iran.
The empirical approach was quite sophisticated as it sought to capture the realities of these protests from a previously unapproached paradigm. The tripartite method included Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), one of the most used qualitative methods of discourse analysis; Statistical Discourse Analysis (SDA) for discourse pattern analysis, which was adapted from methodologies used in pedagogical and psychiatric studies; and Episodic Discourse Analysis (EDA) or Episodic phenomenology, which was adopted from the 1990 study of the discourse of the Islamic revolution of 1979 by Prof. Dr. Mansoor Moaddel. All three methods were complementary. CDA identified the actors and contextualized the emergence of various discourse patterns by analyzing historical events surrounding the opposition. SDA identified the patterns of discourse, their fluctuations over time, and identified the temporal turning points of the discourse. EDA was then employed to study these identified periods of fluctuation as episodes. The episodic nature of the approach reiterated the importance of contextualizing each event as one phenomenon within a series of interconnected events with a transversal continuum. Together, these methods studied the chronology of the discourse, representing the institution of oppositionality.
A wake-up call to the reality of unfolding events in the Iranian opposition movement. The biggest contributor to the emergence of solidarity among the opposition was the actions of the incumbent government in quelling the protests, and the most significant contributor to the fragmentation of solidarity and emergence of hostilities was the opposition itself. Had the violent crackdowns continued, the opposition solidarity would've only gained momentum, and if they were stopped, the existing momentum would exhaust the government. Whether by infiltration, patience or strategies the the government had to take a lean to allow the animosity of opposition groups resurface. The opposition to the incumbent government is poised to fail as its foundations are built upon historical grudges, dysfunctional agonism, and the contention for hegemonization of the identity of political oppositionality. My work is a double-edged sword – it is both a guide for incumbent governments dealing with strong political mobilization, and one for opposition groups dealing with polarity and lack of cohesive mobilization.
Lakshmi Panicker, Graduate of the program "Comparative Politics of Eurasia" 2024
Peaceful Nuclear Assistance as a Form of Great Power Competition: The cases of Indo-US and Russia-India Nuclear Deals
Nuclear non-proliferation norms are one of the most important international norms and for India, one of the early norm breakers to continue to receive nuclear assistance for nuclear states, I wanted to research what is the appeal of peaceful nuclear assistance for supplier states. There is traditional understanding of nuclear assistance as bargain between nuclear-haves and have-nots but assistance to India is contrary to the traditional understanding of nuclear assistance. As we have “oil diplomacy”, nuclear assistance is not widely written about as a form of statecraft or diplomacy due to the assistance itself being a cornerstone of the nuclear non-proliferation norms, the traditional knowledge restricts it as “global justice”. If nuclear assistance is a form of “assistance” that is provided to nations that forego nuclear weapons and nuclear development, assistance to India breaks this agreement as it tested Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) in 1974 going against the nuclear non-proliferation norm. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to research peaceful nuclear assistance and how great powers in competition may utilise it as a tool for statecraft.
The study was conducted through a comparative case study using the cases of the U.S-India civil nuclear agreement of 2008 and India-Russia nuclear agreement of 2008. A qualitative case study method approach benefits research where complex phenomena cannot be tested statistically.
The results of the study were that great powers are more likely to provide peaceful nuclear assistance during times of great power competition as they seek to increase strategic alliances and compete in the nuclear marketplace for dominance. During times of unipolarity, there is no competition in the global nuclear marketplace but during times of great power competition, supplier-states are more inclined to provide assistance. More interestingly, supplier states during times of unipolarity wherein competition in the nuclear market is low, emphasis on safeguards are high and favourable deals to recipient states are less likely. During times of great power competition, supplier-states do not emphasize on safeguards and are more likely to provide favourable deals.
Mark Gajardo, Graduate of the program "Comparative Politics of Eurasia" 2024
Political Determinants of Monetary Policy during Economic Transitions: A Study of Exchange Rate Regime Preferences in Post-Soviet States
My research focuses on the political determinants of Exchange Rate Regimes of Post-Soviet states, specifically in terms of the de-facto exchange rate regime. In this research I decided to analyze how various political factors affect the choice of exchange rate regime in 13 post-Soviet states from 1992 to 2012, what set of factors are present in each ER regime and what changes in these factors explains the shift of regime preference.
I decided to delve on this topic mainly because political economy has been one of my areas of interest since my undergraduate years and I think that the post-Soviet transition period, especially during the early years, greatly shows the dynamic interplay of politics and economy. Since the region underwent major economic reforms following the dissolution of the USSR, I would like to explore the link between political conditions and monetary exchange rate policy which also significantly influenced the countries’ integration with the global economy.
For this research I decided to employ Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), specifically fuzzy-set QCA which is a departure from the usual quantitative methods that other studies under this area use. This methodological approach combines elements of both qualitative and quantitative research in order to uncover how different combinations of factors contribute to the outcome. I determined six political factors and the outcome variable, which is the de-facto exchange rate regime, from previous studies and used QCA to determine the specific configurations of these political factors that are consistently associated with different types of exchange rate regimes.
Based on this study there are two major results that I obtained, first one would be there is no specific set of factors that determines the choice of exchange rate among post-Soviet states, and the second would be that low coverage score suggests that other factors beyond political ones may also significantly affect the choice of exchange-rate regime. These results mean that the determinants of Post-Soviet exchange-rate regime preference exhibit significant diversity, and that this complexity implies that policy decisions regarding exchange-rate regimes in post-Soviet states cannot be solely attributed to political considerations but must also take into account various other influences that may not be immediately apparent .