Michael Mcfaul
Biographic Data
| ID | 273576 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Mcfaul |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcfaul |
| SIGNATURE | MCFAUL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 869 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 74 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
What Putin Fears Most
Russian president Vladimir Putin wants you to believe that NATO is responsible for his February 24 invasion of Ukraine—that rounds of NATO enlargement made Russia insecure, forcing Putin to lash out. This argument has two key flaws. First, NATO has been a variable and not a constant source of tension between Russia and the West. Moscow has in the past acknowledged Ukraine's right to join NATO; the Kremlin's complaints about the alliance spike in …
The Power of Putin in Russian Foreign Policy
Michael McFaul's article “Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy” is well timed and likely to play a big role in shaping the debate about contemporary Russian foreign policy.1 The core argument is straightforward: President Vladimir Putin's illiberal worldviews are a major driver of Russia's international behavior. To be clear, McFaul acknowledges that other factors influence Russian behavior as well. In particul…
Russia’s Road to Autocracy
Cold War Lessons and Fallacies for US-China Relations Today
After a 30-year interregnum, the Cold War is back, or at least that’s what many now argue. 1 The 2017 Trump administration National Security Strategy portrayed China squarely as a “revisionist” pow
Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy
Why did Russia's relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Some explanations focus narrowly on changes in the balance of power in the international system, or trace historic parallels and cultural continuities in Russian international behavior. For a complete understanding of Russian foreign policy today, individuals, ideas, and institutions—President Vladimir Putin, Putinism, and autocr…
Is Putinism the Russian Norm or an Aberration
Policies chosen by Putin, not innate forces of history, culture, or tradition, pushed Russia in a more autocratic direction
Choosing Autocracy: Actors, Institutions, and Revolution in the Erosion of Russian Democracy
Reading Reagan in Tehran: A Strategy of Realistic Engagement
On January 21, 2017, President Donald Trump and his new national security team will launch their foreign policy reviews. Along with China, Russia, and the Islamic State (IS), a review of U.S. polic
Who Lost Russia (This Time)? Vladimir Putin
In the late 1990s, as Russia’s economy descended into a death spiral—eventually culminating in the August 1998 crash of the ruble and the government’s default on its international loan commitments
Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough
Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective
"As demonstrated by current events in Tunisia and Egypt, oppressive regimes are rarely immune to their citizens' desire for democratic government. Of course, desire is always tempered by reality; therefore how democratic demands are made manifest is a critical source of study for both political scientists and foreign policy makers. What issues and consequences surround the fall of a government, what type of regime replaces it, and to what extent …
Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World
Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World examines three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven different former Communist nations. It draws important conclusions about the rise, development, and breakdown of both democracy and dictatorship in each country, providing a comparative perspective on the post-Communist world. The first democratic wave to sweep this region encompasses the rapid rise of democratic regimes f…
Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted
Additional informationNotes on contributorsFrancis FukuyamaFrancis Fukuyama is a professor of international political economy and director of the International Development Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He may be reached at [email protected] McfaulMichael McFaul is a Hoover Senior Fellow, a professor of political science, and director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and …
Morocco's Elections: The Limits of Limited Reforms
Morocco’s experience suggests that expanded political liberty, especially freedom of association, can facilitate the emergence of multiple versions of political Islam, reducing the salience of a large, undifferentiated Islamist movement as an umbrella for oppositionist sentiment. The best means for containing potentially destabilizing discontent and promoting moderation among potentially antidemocratic forces are a pluralized political space and …
A Win-Win U.S. Strategy for Dealing with Iran
Additional informationNotes on contributorsLarry DiamondLarry Diamond, Michael McFaul, and Abbas Milani are fellows and coordinators of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. McFaul is a member of The Washington Quarterly's editorial board
Ukraine Imports Democracy: External Influences on the Orange Revolution
Can the West promote democracy? An examination of one critical case, the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, offers a unique method for generating answers to this important theoretical and policy question. Tracing the causal impact of external influences first requires a theory of democratization composed exclusively of domestic factors, specifically the changing distribution of power between the autocratic regime and democratic challengers. Once …
Are New Democracies War-Prone
Are New Democracies War-Prone? Michael McFaul (bio) Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. By Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. MIT Press, 2005. 300 pp. Electing to Fight seeks to explain an alleged paradox: Democracies do not fight each other, but "the beginning stages of transitions to democracy often give rise to war rather than peace. Since the end of the Cold War, this causal connection between democratization and war has …
International Democracy and the West: The Role of Governments, Civil Society, and Multinational Business
International Democracy and the West: The Role of Governments, Civil Society, and Multinational Business. By Richard Youngs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 232p. $99.00. In his seminal article published nearly 30 years ago, cleverly called “Second Image Reversed,” Peter Gourevitch outlined a set of arguments for why and how to study the international causes of domestic outcomes. This framework had a profound effect on several literature…
Russian Resilience as a Great Power: A Response to Ambrosio
Two political scientists comment on Thomas Ambrosio's "The Geopolitics of Demographic Decay: HIV/AIDS and Russia's Great-Power Status" (Post-Soviet Affairs, 22, 1, January-March 2006). Ambrosio's three indicators of great-power capacity—Russia's society, military, and economy—are reviewed in terms of his argument about how the projected effects of HIV/AIDS weakens each factor
Engaging autocratic allies to promote democracy
Diplomacy, particularly with dictatorships friendly toward the United States, is often overlooked as a means to promote democratic regime change. Yet, a closer look at three forgotten cases from the late 1980s yields several lessons for today's efforts to engage but reform autocratic allies
Engaging Autocratic Allies to Promote Democracy
Russia and the West: A Dangerous Drift
Should Western leaders try to stop this perilous drift of disengagement? Yes. Can they stop it anytime in the foreseeable future? Not likely
A transatlantic strategy to promote democratic development in the broader Middle East
Western governments have thus far struggled to translate bold rhetoric into a realistic and plausible strategy that can help promote democracy and human development in the broader Middle East. Such a strategy should be based on these three pillars
Iran’s Peculiar Election: Chinese Dreams, Persian Realities
Iran’s Peculiar ElectionChinese Dreams, Persian Realities Michael McFaul (bio) The mid-2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as Iran's new president left those committed to democratic change in the country feeling shocked and disappointed. At first glance, his victory seemed to signal not only the consolidation of Iran's ruling Islamist autocracy, but also the rejection in principle of democracy and the revival of the ideas and goals of the revolu…
Transitions from Postcommunism
The years since 2000 have seen a surprising new wave of democratic breakthroughs in the postcommunist countries of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. This article compares and contrasts these three cases, naming seven common factors which made the breakthroughs in these countries possible: 1) a semi-autocratic rather than fully autocratic regime; 2) an unpopular incumbent; 3) a united and organized opposition; 4) an ability quickly to drive home the p…
The Fourth Wave of DemocracyandDictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World
The transition from communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy. Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the twenty-eight new states have abandoned communism, but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies. The remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidat…
Transitions from Postcommunism
The years since 2000 have seen a surprising new wave of democratic breakthroughs in the postcommunist countries of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. This article compares and contrasts these three cases, naming seven common factors which made the breakthroughs in these countries possible: 1) a semi-autocratic rather than fully autocratic regime; 2) an unpopular incumbent; 3) a united and organized opposition; 4) an ability quickly to drive home the p…
A tale of two worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era
As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed an old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great powers or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism—namely, that the international system is characterized by anarchy and that states are unitary actors seeking to survive in this anarchic system—some security analysts are pre…
State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia
This article reviews recent events in Russia and demonstrates that future progress in developing private property rights will require not only sound economic policies but also more robust state institutions capable of carrying out economic transformation. In January 1992 Russia's first postcommunist government launched a comprehensive economic program to transform the Soviet command system into a market economy. Privatization constituted one of t…
Democracy promotion as a world value
Although norms protecting the sovereignty of states still trump norms protecting the rights of individuals, the balance is shifting. Democracy promotion has become increasingly acceptable as a foreign policy goal throughout most of the international community
What Putin Fears Most
Russian president Vladimir Putin wants you to believe that NATO is responsible for his February 24 invasion of Ukraine—that rounds of NATO enlargement made Russia insecure, forcing Putin to lash out. This argument has two key flaws. First, NATO has been a variable and not a constant source of tension between Russia and the West. Moscow has in the past acknowledged Ukraine's right to join NATO; the Kremlin's complaints about the alliance spike in …
Are Russians Undemocratic
Two experts on Russian politics and government assess claims that undemocratic attitudes prevail among the Russian population. Original survey data about perceptions of democratic institutions and values as well as sociodemographic data are analyzed to gauge support for democratic ideas. Surveys comprise a three-stage panel survey in which interviews and reinterviews took place between November 1999 and May 2000, with an initial sample of 1,919 r…
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Russia's March 2000 presidential election represents one step forward and two steps back for Russian democracy. For the first time in Russia's history, power within the Kremlin has changed hands through an electoral process. The election not only took place but was conducted as constitutionally prescribed, no small achievement for a country with Russia's authoritarian history. More than two-thirds of the eligible voters participated, and they app…
Reinventing Russia's Party of Power: Unity” and the 1999 Duma Election
Two specialists on Russian politics chronicle the formation and early development of Unity, the latest version of the “party of power” in Russian politics. Unity's unexpected success in the election of the State Duma in December 1999 helped assure Vladimir Putin's subsequent election as president and gave him a reliable base of support within the Duma itself. The authors draw on extensive interviews with participants to outline the motivations be…
Ukraine Imports Democracy: External Influences on the Orange Revolution
Can the West promote democracy? An examination of one critical case, the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, offers a unique method for generating answers to this important theoretical and policy question. Tracing the causal impact of external influences first requires a theory of democratization composed exclusively of domestic factors, specifically the changing distribution of power between the autocratic regime and democratic challengers. Once …
Explaining Party Formation and Nonformation in Russia: Actors, Institutions, and Chance
A decade after the collapse of communism, Russia still lacks a robust party system. Most institutions of the state are immune from party influence. However parties play a central role in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma. Why? Why have parties been successful in organizing and influencing the work of the State Duma but enjoyed only very limited success elsewhere? This article argues that parties in Russia are weak in general because t…
Russia's 1996 Presidential Elections
1996). Russia's 1996 Presidential Elections. Post-Soviet Affairs: Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 318-350
Russian Democracy in Eclipse: What the Elections Tell Us
The December 2003 parliamentary and the March 2004 presidential elections witnessed worrisomely lopsided victories for incumbent president Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin-backed United Russia party. These victories were assisted by an unlevel electoral playing field. Russiaâ s political system has become less pluralistic on Putinâ s watch. During his first term, Putin did little to strengthen democratic institutions and much to weaken them. These …
Putin and the "Delegative Democracy" Trap: Evidence from Russia's 2003-04 Elections
Three experts on Russian elections analyze the surprising degree to which Russian voters supported their leaders, especially Putin, in the December 2003 Duma elections and the March 2004 presidential election. Drawing on the results of surveys of a nationally representative sample of Russians of voting age made between December 19, 2003, and February 15, 2004, and then between April 4 and May 11, 2004, the authors identify some distinctive trends…
What Went Wrong in Russia? The Perils of a Protracted Transition
What Went Wrong in Russia?The Perils of a Protracted Transition Michael McFaul (bio) On 17 August 1998, the Russian government took emergency measures to avert an economic meltdown, but these did little to halt the crisis. A week later, the ruble had lost two-thirds of its value vis-’a-vis the dollar. In one day, the two major economic achievements of the Boris Yeltsin era—control of inflation and a stable, transferable currency—were wiped out. T…
Choosing Autocracy: Actors, Institutions, and Revolution in the Erosion of Russian Democracy
Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform
Managed Democracy” in Russia: Putin and the Press
Russia Between Elections: The Vanishing Center
Russia Between Elections The Vanishing Center Michael McFaul (bio) On 17 December 1995, Russian voters elected representatives to the Duma, the lower house of parliament. For the first time in the thousand-year history of Russia, these elections were held under law, as scheduled, and without serious fraud or falsification. Though the balloting occurred in the dead of winter, was only for one house of the parliament, did not include a presidential…
Russian Centrism and Revolutionary Transitions
An American political scientist documents the evolution of the influence during 1992-93 of the Russian centrist organization, Civic Union, interpreting its dynamics with reference to a suggested theory of “peaceful revolutions.” The study is based on extensive and repeated interviews in Russia with leaders of the organization and directors of state enterprises, and on documentary evidence collected in Russia and elsewhere from mid-1992 through Se…
Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War
Russia, once seen as America's greatest adversary, is now viewed by the United States as a potential partner. This book traces the evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and later Russia, during the tumultuous and uncertain period following the end of the cold war. It examines how American policymakers --particularly in the executive branch --coped with the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Russia. Drawing o…
Bringing the Russian State Back in: Explanations of the Derailed Transition to Market Democracy
Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy
Why did Russia's relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Some explanations focus narrowly on changes in the balance of power in the international system, or trace historic parallels and cultural continuities in Russian international behavior. For a complete understanding of Russian foreign policy today, individuals, ideas, and institutions—President Vladimir Putin, Putinism, and autocr…
Are New Democracies War-Prone
Are New Democracies War-Prone? Michael McFaul (bio) Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. By Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. MIT Press, 2005. 300 pp. Electing to Fight seeks to explain an alleged paradox: Democracies do not fight each other, but "the beginning stages of transitions to democracy often give rise to war rather than peace. Since the end of the Cold War, this causal connection between democratization and war has …
Institutional Design, Uncertainty, and Path Dependency during Transitions: Cases from Russia
Rethinking the "Reagan Doctrine" in Angola
The demise of the world revolutionary process: Soviet-Angolan relations under Gorbachev
Ironically, Brezhnev's observation still holds true today. However, the transformative power of the international communist movement has resulted not from its consolidation, as Brezhnev surmised, but from its disintegration. The 'world revolutionary process' predicted by Marx, initiated by Lenin, and promoted for seventy years by the Soviet Union has come to an abrupt halt. Whether temporary or permanent, its present demise has created one of the…
Russia's Emerging Political Parties
A tale of two worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era
As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed an old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great powers or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism—namely, that the international system is characterized by anarchy and that states are unitary actors seeking to survive in this anarchic system—some security analysts are pre…
Archaeology and Geomorphology of the Clovis-Age Klein Site Near Kersey, Colorado
The Klein site Clovis locality consists oflithic artifacts and mammoth and horse bone that have eroded from a small, low-relief gravel ridge disturbed by agricultural practices. The ridge is on the late Pleistocene Kersey terrace of the South Platte River and is part of a ridge-swale landscape produced by the river as it flowed in a braided pattern across an aggrading floodplain. Two soil types, Ustol and Aquoll, have formed in the fine-grained s…
Russian Centrism and Revolutionary Transitions
An American political scientist documents the evolution of the influence during 1992-93 of the Russian centrist organization, Civic Union, interpreting its dynamics with reference to a suggested theory of “peaceful revolutions.” The study is based on extensive and repeated interviews in Russia with leaders of the organization and directors of state enterprises, and on documentary evidence collected in Russia and elsewhere from mid-1992 through Se…
The Morass in Moscow: The Democrats in Disarray
The Morass in MoscowThe Democrats in Disarray Michael McFaul (bio) Michael McFaul Michael McFaul is a research associate at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, where he co-directs a program on military conversion and privatization in the former Soviet Union. He is" also a research fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution and a consultant to the National Democratic Institute (NDI). He is the author …
Russian Politics
Essay| October 01 1994 Russian Politics: The Calm Before the Storm? Michael McFaul Michael McFaul Michael McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, currently in residence at Carnegie’s Moscow office. He is the author of Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe (Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993); with Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian…
Geoarchaeologic analysis of South Platte River terraces: Kersey, Colorado
Soil‐sediment records and radiometric dating allow the development of environmental histories of three South Platte River alluvial terraces in the vicinity of Kersey, Colorado. These advocate a correlation with Holocene glacial records for the Colorado Front Range (Benedict, 1981, 1985). The archaeological potential of the Kersey fill, the Kuner strath, and the Hardin fill depends upon their age and sediment context. The oldest and most extensive…
Explaining the Vote
Is Russian Democracy Doomed?Explaining the Vote Michael McFaul (bio) The future of Russian democracy has never been more uncertain. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's unexpected electoral victory, plus the strong showing of the Communists and their rural counterparts, the Agrarian party, have combined with the dismal performance of Russia's Choice and other proreformist parties to produce a political situation as unstable as before the election. What happene…
Eurasia Letter: Russian Politics after Chechnya
State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia
This article reviews recent events in Russia and demonstrates that future progress in developing private property rights will require not only sound economic policies but also more robust state institutions capable of carrying out economic transformation. In January 1992 Russia's first postcommunist government launched a comprehensive economic program to transform the Soviet command system into a market economy. Privatization constituted one of t…
Why Russia's Politics Matter
The results of Russia's first post-communist election in Decem ber 1993 sent a shock wave through world. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, nationalist demagogue of Liberal Democratic Party, captured almost a quarter of popular vote. The pro-reform bloc, Russia's Choice, came away with only 15 percent. Provoked by this dramatic outcome, Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin promised a new eco nomic course, declaring that election marked the end to market romanti…
Russia's 1996 Presidential Elections
1996). Russia's 1996 Presidential Elections. Post-Soviet Affairs: Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 318-350
Russia Between Elections: The Vanishing Center
Russia Between Elections The Vanishing Center Michael McFaul (bio) On 17 December 1995, Russian voters elected representatives to the Duma, the lower house of parliament. For the first time in the thousand-year history of Russia, these elections were held under law, as scheduled, and without serious fraud or falsification. Though the balloting occurred in the dead of winter, was only for one house of the parliament, did not include a presidential…
The allocation of property rights in Russia: The first round
The first Russian privatization program represented the largest and fastest property reform ever undertaken in the modern world. This article, however, is not concerned with the quantity and speed of Russia's privatization program, but rather with the kind of privatization that occurred in the first round. Drawing on theories of path dependency, this article argues that the institutional legacy regarding property rights in the Soviet era influenc…
A Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian Foreign Policy
Russia's 1996 presidential election: The End of Polarized Politics
How did Boris Yeltsin - judged by most analysts and politicians the obvious underdog going into the 1996 Russian presidential election - emerge as the clear winner? Was Yeltsin's landslide reelection as free and fair as it appeared? In June 1996, for the first time in a thousand years, Russian citizens were given the chance to select their head of state in a democratic election. Yet the reformist incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, seemed poised for certai…
Russia’s Summer of Discontent
Essay| October 01 1998 Russia’s Summer of Discontent Michael McFaul Michael McFaul Michael McFaul, an assistant professor of political science and a Hoover fellow at Stanford University, is also a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His books include Russia’s 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Polarized Politics (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1997) and Privatization, Conversion, and Enterprise Ref…
Russia's `Privatized' State as an Impediment to Democratic Consolidation
Russia's `Privatized' State as an Impediment to Democratic Consolidation
Kersey–Kuner terrace investigations at the Dent and Bernhardt sites, Colorado
A Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian Foreign Policy
January 01 1998 A Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian Foreign Policy Michael McFaul Michael McFaul Michael McFaul is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, where he also has appointments at the Hoover Institution and the Center for International Security and Arms Control. He also is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Search for other works b…
Kersey–Kuner terrace investigations at the Dent and Bernhardt sites, Colorado
The Dent site provided the first association of fluted points with mammoth bones in the New World. However, the stratigraphic integrity of the site has remained in doubt since the original excavations in 1932 and 1933. Core sampling at the Dent Clovis site indicates that the site, on Kersey terrace gravel, extends under railroad tracks adjacent to the original area of excavation. Four hundred meters south the Kuner strath terrace has been exposed…
Institutional Design, Uncertainty, and Path Dependency during Transitions: Cases from Russia
Political science (70 works) · Law (61 works) · Politics (58 works) · Political economy (55 works) · Law (50 works) · Sociology (48 works) · Economics (41 works) · Democracy (39 works) · Russia and Soviet political economy (35 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (26 works)