DPIR’s Katerina Tertytchnaya scoops two APSA Awards for book and paper

Dr Katerina Tertytchnaya, Associate Professor in Comparative Politics, has won two awards from the American Political Science Association for a co-authored book and paper respectively.

The book, co-authored with DPIR's Head of Department and Professor of Politics David Doyle, Catherine de Vries, and Hector Solaz,  Money Flows: The Political Consequences of Migrant Remittances (Oxford University Press, 2024) won the Best Book Award from APSA's Migration and Citizenship Section. 

The book explores how remittances shape the relationship between remittance recipients and the authorities in migrant-sending countries by providing a comprehensive study of the political effects of remittances on the attitudes of their recipients. 

The authors argue that - far from being an exclusively economic risk-sharing mechanism between poorer, migrant-sending, and richer, migrant-receiving economies - remittances may compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world. 

To research the book, the authors conducted original surveys in Central Asia, relied on rich survey data from Central-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia and also conducted original focus groups from Kyrgyzstan. 

Commenting on the book, the award committee remarked: ‘Despite the vast literature on the political consequences of migrant remittances, this book stands out for providing a fresh dynamic take on how these money flows shape political outcomes in migrant-sending countries…..

‘…….In sum, Money Flows is a smart, original, and genuinely innovative contribution to our understanding of the effects of migration on home-country politics and to the field of migration and citizenship.’

Katerina said: “We aimed to show how remittances—and fluctuations in their volume—shape recipients’ economic evaluations, influence their perceptions of corruption, and alter how they interact with and view the state. 

“Ultimately, these dynamics affect the approval function of political authorities. We were also proud to centre the voices of ordinary citizens throughout the book. The discussion includes many direct quotes from remittance recipients, allowing their perspectives to be heard and integrated into the broader narrative.

“I am delighted to have won this award – it is great to see research on Central Asia being recognised."

Additionally, Katerina’s paper, ‘Functionaries of Repression: Autocratic Control through Bureaucratic Supervision in Russia’ (with Emily Ritter) won the 2025 award for the Best Paper presented in the Human Rights Section of the Annual APSA Meeting. 

The paper examines the ways in which autocrats incentivise bureaucrats to repress populations, and the ways in which bureaucrats may disobey autocrats’ orders. The paper presents a formal model and rich empirical data from Russia. 

Katerina said: “This project is among the first to link bureaucracy to repressive processes. It advances the study of repression by moving beyond a narrow focus on violent coercion. 

“Bureaucratic repression, which the paper examines in the context of Russia, is of course neither peripheral nor exceptional: it has long been central to governance in democracies and autocracies, from Jim Crow in the United States to service provision in India and Kenya, identity administration in South Africa, and land rights regulation in Peru and Australia.”

Several of Katerina’s ongoing projects examine the origins and consequences of nonviolent forms of repression. She is currently completing a book on Nonviolent Repression in Russia, with funding from the ESRC.