Paul Chaisty is Professor of Russian and East European Politics and Head of the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA). He joined the Department of Politics and International Relations and OSGA in 2005, following a three-year appointment in Politics at Pembroke College, Oxford. His research interests cover legislative, party and interest group politics in post-communist Russia; political attitudes in Russia; nationalism in Russia and Ukraine; and comparative presidentialism. His current book project with Stephen Whitefield is entitled How Russians Understand the New Russia: Consolidation and Contestation.
Media
Contemporary Russian Politics
Teaching
- The Politics of Russia and the Former Soviet Union;
- Comparative Government;
- Comparative Presidentialism;
- The Political Sociology of Post-Communist Societies
Publications
Books
(2025) (with Stephen Whitefield) How Russians Understand the New Russia: Consolidation
and Contestation. Princeton. Princeton University Press. Pre-order a copy via How Russians Understand the New Russia | Princeton University Press
(2018) (with Nicholas Cheeseman and Timothy Power) Coalitional Presidentialism in
Comparative Perspective: Minority Presidents in Multiparty Systems. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
(2006) Legislative Politics and Economic Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave
(1999) (with Jeffrey Gleisner) Rossiiskaya Gosudarstvennaya Duma: struktura, deyatel'nost'
i evolyutsiya v period 1993-1998 godov. Moskva: Tsentr konstitutsionnykh
issledovanii, MOHF
Journal Articles
(2024) (with Timothy J. Power), 'Gamson Going Global? Cabinet Proportionality in
Comparative Perspective', European Political Science Review (online first)
(2023) (with Stephen Whitefield), 'Building Voting Coalitions in Electoral Authoritarian
Regimes: A Case Study of the 2020 Constitutional Reform in Russia', Post-Soviet
Affairs, 39:4, 273-290
(2023) (with Timothy J. Power), 'Does Power Always Flow to the Executive? Interbranch
Oscillations in Legislative Authority, 1976–2014'. Government and Opposition, 58: 1, 61-83
(2022) (with Christopher J. Gerry and Stephen Whitefield (2021), The buck stops elsewhere:
authoritarian resilience and the politics of responsibility for COVID-19 in Russia, Post-Soviet Affairs, 38:5, 366-385
(2022) (with Stephen Whitefield), 'How Challenger Parties Can Win Big with Frozen
Cleavages: Explaining the Landslide Victory of the Servant of the People Party in the 2019 Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections', Party Politics, 28(1), 115–126
(2019) (with Stephen Whitefield) 'The Political Implications of Popular Support for
Presidential Term Limits in Russia', Post-Soviet Affairs, 35:4
(2019) (with Timothy J. Power) 'Flying solo: Explaining Single-Party Cabinets under
Minority Presidentialism', European Journal of Political Research, 58:1
(2018) (with Stephen Whitefield) 'Critical Election or Frozen Cleavages? How Voters Chose
Parties in the 2014 Ukrainian Parliamentary Election', Electoral Studies, 56
(2017) (with Svitlana Chernykh) ‘How Do Minority Presidents Manage Multiparty
Coalitions? Identifying and Analyzing the Payoffs to Coalition Parties in Presidential
Systems, Political Research Quarterly 70, no. 4: 762 –777
(2017) (with Stephen Whitefield) ‘Citizens’ Attitudes towards Institutional Change in
Contexts of Political Turbulence: Support for Regional Decentralisation in Ukraine’,
Political Studies, published “online first” 28 March 2017
(2017) (with Stephen Whitefield), ‘Understandings of the Nation in Russian Public Opinion:
Survey Evidence from Putin’s Russia (2001–2014)’, Russian Politics 2, no. 2: 123 – 154
(2015) (with Svitlana Chernykh), ‘Coalitional Presidentialism and Legislative Control in
Post-Soviet Ukraine’, Post-Soviet Affairs 31, no. 3: 177–200
(2015) (with Stephen Whitefield), ‘Support for Environmental Policies: Are Post-Communist
Societies (Still) Different?’, Environmental Politics 24, no. 4: 598-616
(2014) (with Nicholas Cheeseman and Timothy Power), ‘Rethinking the ‘Presidentialism
Debate’: Conceptualizing Coalitional Politics in Cross-Regional Perspective’,
Democratization 21, no. 1: 72-94. This article received the inaugural Comparative
Area Studies (CAS) Prize by the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
in April 2014
(2014) ‘Presidential Dynamics and Legislative Velocity in Russia, 1994–2007’, East
European Politics 30, no. 4: 588-601
(2013) (with Stephen Whitefield) ‘Forward to Democracy or Back to Authoritarianism?
The Attitudinal Bases of Mass Support for the Russian Election Protests of 2011–
2012’, Post-Soviet Affairs 29, no. 5: 387–403
(2013) ‘The Preponderance and Effects of Sectoral Ties in the State Duma’, Europe-Asia
Studies 65, no. 4: 717-736
(2012) (with Stephen Whitefield) ‘The Effects of the Global Financial Crisis on Russian
Political Attitudes’, Post-Soviet Affairs 28, no. 2: 187-208
(2012) ‘Members and Leaders in Russian Party Organisations’, East European Politics 28,
no. 3: 283-297
(2008) ‘The Legislative Effects of Presidential Partisan Powers in Post-Communist Russia’,
Government and Opposition 43, no. 3: 424–453
(2007) ‘The Influence of Sectoral and Regional Economic Interests on Russian Legislative
Behaviour: The Case of State Duma Voting on Production Sharing Agreements
Legislation’, Post-Soviet Affairs 23, no. 4: 302-328
(2006) ‘Za i protiv mazhoritarizma dlya rossiiskikh zakonodatelei’, Sravnitel'noe
konstitutsionnoe obozrenie 57, no. 4: 13-20
(2005) ‘Party Cohesion and Policy-Making in Russia’, Party Politics 11, no. 3: 299-318.
(2004) ‘Prichiny institutsional’noi stabil’nosti vtoroi Gosudarstvennoi Dumy (1996-1999)’,
Russkii sbornik. Issledovanie po istorii Rossii XIX-XX veka, no. 1: 335-356
(2003) ‘Defending the Institutional Status Quo: Communist Leadership of the Second
Russian State Duma, 1996-1999’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 28, no. 1: 5-28
(2002) (with Petra Schleiter) ‘"Productive but not Valued": The Russian State Duma, 1994-
2001’, Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 5: 701-724.
(1997) ‘Democratic Consolidation and Parliamentary Reform in Russia, 1990-93’, The
Journal of Legislative Studies 3, no. 4: 44-69
Chapters in Edited Volumes
(2023) (with Ben Noble) ‘The Federal Assembly – more than just a “rubber stamp”?, in
Graeme Gill (eds.) Handbook of Russian Politics and Society, (Abingdon: Routledge).
(2020) (with Nic Cheeseman and Timothy J. Power), ‘Inside the Coordination Paradigm:
New Perspectives on Minority Presidents and Coalition Management’, in Rudy B. Andeweg et al (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Political Executives (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
(2019) 'The Uses and Abuses of Presidential Term Limits in Russian Politics’, in Alex Baturo
and Robert Elgie (eds.) The Politics of Presidential Term Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
(2015) (with Stephen Whitefield), ‘Putin’s Nationalism Problem’, in Richard Sakwa and
Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska (eds.) Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics,
Propaganda and Perspectives (E-International Relations)
(2012) ‘The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Ethnic Minorities in the Russian
Parliament‘, in Oleh Protysk and Benedikt Harzl (eds.) Managing Ethnic Diversity in
Russia (Abingdon: Routledge)
(2012) ‘Business Representation in the State Duma’, in Lena Jonson and Stephen White
(eds.) Waiting For Reform Under Putin and Medvedev (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan)
(2011) ‘The Federal Assembly and the Power Vertical’, in Graeme Gill and James Young
(eds.) Handbook of Russian Politics and Society, (Abingdon: Routledge).
(2012) ‘Proval parlamentskoi reform v Rossii (1990-1993): upushchennaya vozmozhnost’, in
V. Kashirin (eds.) Velichie i yazvy Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Regum)
(2009) ‘Vozdeistvie partiinykh rychagov vlasti prezidenta na zakonodatel'nyi protsess v
postkommunisticheskoi Rossii’, in E. Meleshkina and G. Mikhaleva (eds.)
Politicheskaya konkurentsiya i partii v gosudarstvakh postsovetskogo prostranstva
(Moscow: INION RAN)
(2005) ‘Majority Control and Executive Dominance: Parliament-President Relations in
Putin's Russia’, in Alex Pravda (ed.), Leading Russia: Putin in Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press). This chapter was reprinted in a Reader of the ‘best work on the Russian political system’ (2013) Joel Ostrow (ed.) Politics in Russia: A Reader (Los Angeles: Sage)
(2001) ‘Legislative Politics in Russia’, in Archie Brown (ed.), Contemporary Russian
Politics: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
(2000) (with Jeffrey Gleisner) ‘The Consolidation of Russian Parliamentarianism: The State
Duma 1993-1998’, in Neil Robinson (ed.), Institutions and Change in Russian Politics (London: Macmillan)
