Eleonora Minaeva

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PhD Researcher in Political Science at the European University Institute

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About Me

I am a Doctoral Researcher in the Social and Political Sciences Department at the European University Institute. In the upcoming spring semester, I will be visiting the George Washington University and the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.

Contact Information

Current Projects

I specialize in comparative studies of authoritarian regimes, with a focus on the politics of post-communist countries. My research projects investigate local politics, urban protests, and interethnic relations in non-democratic systems. My current dissertation projects examine how dictators manipulate subnational institutions, specifically addressing two key questions: Why do authoritarian regimes decentralize? And if already decentralized, why do they reverse it? This study analyzes the factors that predict the introduction and cancellation of public elections at the subnational level across autocratic regimes worldwide.

The second part of my project explores the impact of introducing local executive elections on local contestation, elite composition, and government performance. This collaborative research is conducted with Kirill Melnikov and Thomas Hazell. We explore a unique experimental setting in Kazakhstan, where local executive elections have been introduced, and we track the changes in the composition and compliance of rural elites.

Teaching Experience

In 2023, I taught the Introduction to R course for first-year PhD students at the European University Institute. In the fall of 2024, I conducted a block seminar on the Political Paths of Post-Soviet Countries for Master’s students at the Technical University of Darmstadt (Download Syllabus).

Publications

  1. Minaeva, E., Rumiantseva, A., Zavadskaya, M. (2023). From local elections to appointments: How has municipal reform changed vote delivery in Russian municipalities? Electoral Studies, Vol. 85, DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2023.102657.
  2. Minaeva, E. (2023). Policy Activism in Urban Governance: The Case of Master Plan Development in Perm. In Jeremy Morris, Andrei Semenov, and Regina Smyth (Eds.), Varieties of Russian Activism: State-Society Contestation in Everyday Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  3. Minaeva, E. (2022). Strategies for the Preservation and Cancellation of the Direct Election of Municipal Heads in Russia. Universe of Russia. Sociology. Ethnology, Vol. 31, Issue 2: 97-117. (In Russian).
  4. Minaeva, E., Panov, P. (2021). Dense Networks, Ethnic Minorities, and Electoral Mobilization in Contemporary Russia. Problems of Post-Communism, DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2021.1974885.

Online Publications and Working Papers

  1. Ross, S., Serebrennikov, D., Minaeva, E., & Netyaev, V. (2024). Surveillance Technologies in Autocratic Regimes: The Moscow AI Experiment and its Implications for Crime Control and Police Effectiveness. Available at SSRN.
  2. Rogov, K., & Minaeva, E. (2022). The Journey from 1945 to 1941.
  3. GIS Technologies in Ethno-Political Studies: Spatial Localization of Ethnic Groups.

Grants

  1. Russian Science Foundation (2018 — 2023): Collective Grant for Russian Scholars: Mechanisms of Interests Coordination in the Urban Development Processes.
  2. Oxford Russia Fellowship (2020 — 2021): Individual Grant for Young Russian Scholars: Political Consequences of the Implementation of Municipal Heads’ Appointments in Russia.
  3. Russian Foundation for Basic Research (2019 — 2021): Collective Grant for Russian Scholars: Spatial Localization of Ethnic Minorities within the Framework of Political-Administrative Boundaries as a Factor of Politicization of Ethnicity on Sub-National Level: Russian Practices in the Context of World Experience.
  4. Volkswagen Foundation (2019 — 2021): Collective Grant for Interdisciplinary and International Research: Shifting Paradigms: Towards Participatory and Effective Urban Planning in Germany, Russia and Ukraine.
  5. Russian Science Foundation (2015 — 2017): Collective Grant for Russian Scholars: Securing a Balance in Interethnic Relations: Regional autonomies, the State Integrity and the Rights of Ethnic Minorities.