Barbara Junisbai, Ph.D. (Indiana University, 2009), is a visiting assistant professor in political studies at Pitzer College, a highly ranked and selective liberal arts college located in southern California. Prior to starting at Pitzer in the fall of 2010, she held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Barbara's research in post-Soviet political economy has been well received, as evinced by recent publications, an R&R from Perspectives on Politics, recognition at national conferences, and funding awards. An article based on her fieldwork was published in the March 2010 issue of Europe-Asia Studies, and a piece on post-Soviet oligarchs and media is forthcoming in an edited volume entitled After the Czars and Commissars: The Press in Authoritarian Post-Soviet Central Asia (Michigan State University Press, 2011). In 2009, Barbara received best doctoral student paper awards at the Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society and the World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. She has also won number of competitive grants, most recently a 2010-2011 Hoffman Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship at The George Washington University. Other grants include a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad, a World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a Mellon Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship, and several Title VIII grants from the U.S. Department of State.

Barbara’s research on elite-led political opposition movements in the post-Soviet autocracies speaks to theoretical debates central to the study of comparative politics, such as the link between economic liberalization and democratization, sources of contestation under authoritarian rule, and the role of formal and informal institutions in structuring political outcomes. Broadly trained in qualitative and quantitative methods, she has designed, secured funding for, and carried out 15 months of fieldwork and nearly 200 interviews with post-Soviet elites in the ruling coalition and the opposition, political observers, and civil society activists.

Evidence drawn from all 12 of the post-Soviet autocracies (Central Asia, the Caucasus, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine prior to the orange revolution) challenges standard accounts that link economic liberalization to eventual political liberalization (and, ultimately, democratization) in authoritarian regimes. Privatization is thought to disperse economic resources to a wider range of actors, thus creating a class of wily, self-interested business and political elites (also called oligarchs). This process inadvertently promotes more political contestation than market-reforming autocrats bargained for, and empowered elites begin demanding political power commensurate with their economic clout. In the end, autocrats fall victim to their own economic policies, as oligarchs split from the regime to challenge their former patron’s right to rule. In support of this interpretation, elite defectors from the ruling coalition have successfully combined financial and political resources to topple their former patrons in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.

Challenging this account of the political consequences of market reforms, Barbara argues that the defection of business elites cannot be explained solely by privatization and elite economic autonomy. Instead, such defections are rooted in the tension between privatization and personalist rule. While privatization disperses economic resources, thus expanding the pool of elite beneficiaries, over time the most desired resources tend to fall in the hands of a small group of elites closest to the post-Soviet president. The relative dispersion of assets—a byproduct of privatization—in the context of a patronage system that is designed primarily to benefit the president and elites in his inner circle—a practice endogenous to personalist rule—fosters intra-elite conflict over how power and resources are allocated. Conflict over who gets what has forced some elites into opposition politics, but only when the less risky options of loyalty to the regime and exit from the system fail to secure their economic interests. Significantly, the defection of business elites has the potential to overturn the personalist president; however, this requires that two key conditions be met. Disaffection among business elites must (1) already be pervasive and (2) be articulated and mobilized around a focal point, such as fraudulent elections, when opportunities for mobilizing popular support are already primed.