Contact Information
Department of Political Science
Mailcode #9420
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9420

Phone: (805) 893-3432
Advising: (805) 893-4192
Fax: (805) 893-3309

Cynthia S. Kaplan, Professor
Comparative Politics: Russian, Tatar, Baltic  and Kazakh politics; ethnicity, political behavior and public opinion, social mobilization, framing, democratization, and qualitative methods
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Ph.D., Columbia University, 1981
C.V. (in .pdf format)

ImageProfessor Kaplan has visited the countries of the former Soviet Union over 60 times with research residencies in Russia, Tatarstan, and Estonia. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Estonia during the fall 2005, spent part of the summers of  2006 and 2008 in Kazan, Tatarstan, and delivered a lecture series on Russian politics in Warsaw, Poland in spring 2007.  In 2009, she began research in Kazakhstan as part of a new project on identity that also includes Russia, Tatarstan, and Estonia.

She has participated in the International Research and Exchanges Board's scholars programs four times, living in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tallinn (Estonia), Novosibirsk, and Kazan, and has served as the director of the UC-Systemwide Study Center in Moscow. Her survey research in Russia and Estonia has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies. In addition to surveys, her research includes the creation of an event data set based on the coding of the Russian and Estonian language press and a discourse analysis of Estonian and Russian language literary journals.  Most recently, she has commissioned in-depth interviews and focus groups on identity in Russia, Tatarstan, Estonia, and Kazakhstan. 

Professor Kaplan has just completed a book with Henry Brady (UC Berkeley) entitled, Gathering Voices: Political Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), and is the author of The Party and Agricultural Crisis Management in the USSR (Cornell University Press, 1987). Her current research, supported by a Policy Connect Collaborative Grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (2007) and the National Council on Eurasian and Eastern European Research (2009), explores constructivist understandings of ethnic identity through the use of focus groups and surveys. The research compares ethnic identity and its political consequences in Russia, Estonia,  Tatarstan, and Kazakhstan.

Courses Taught:

Undergraduate
PS 118Comparative Ethnic Politics
PS 128Foreign Policy of Russia and the Successor States
PS 143Politics of the Former Soviet Union and the Successor States
PS 106 and
PS 196
Undergraduate and Senior Seminars on Democratization, Political Culture, and Muslims in Eurasia
Graduate
PS 230Comparative Politics
PS 231Comparative Methods
PS 236Democratization
PS 237Social Movements and Collective Action
PS 280APolitics of the Former Soviet Union and the Successor States
PS 281Comparative Ethnic Politics

Selected Recent Publications:
"Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnic Identity" (with Henry Brady). In Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Science Research, edited by Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnson, and Rose McDermott (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

"The Emergence of Political Agendas: The Independence Movement in Estonia in 1985-1991," in Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World (Joseph W. Esherick, Hasan Kayali, and Eric Van Young, eds.). Boulder, Colorado: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.

Editor, Journal of Baltic Studies, Special Issue: "Transition and Consolidation: Shifting Behavior, Meaning, and Attitudes" (Winter, 2001).

"Subjects to Citizens: From Non-Voting, to Protesting, to Voting in Estonia during the Transition to Democracy" (with Henry E. Brady), Journal of Baltic Studies (Winter, 2001).

"Categorically Wrong? Nominal versus Graded Measures of Ethnic Identity" (with Henry E. Brady), Studies in Comparative International Development (Fall 2000), pp. 56-91.

"Ethnicity and Sovereignty: Insights from Russian Negotiations with Estonia and Tatarstan," in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 251-274.


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