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Bryn Rosenfeld

Associate Professor

Overview

Bryn Rosenfeld is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and a co-Principal Investigator of the , supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Her research interests include comparative political behavior, with a focus on regime preferences and voter behavior in nondemocratic systems, development and democratization, protest, post-communist politics, and survey methodology. 

Her first book, (Princeton University Press, 2021), explains how middle-class economic dependence on the state impedes democratization and contributes to authoritarian resilience. It won the 2022 Best Book award from the APSA's Democracy & Autocracy section, the Ed A. Hewett Book Prize for outstanding publication on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), and an Honorable Mention for the APSA's William H. Riker award for best book in political economy. She is also the recipient of a Frances Rosenbluth best paper prize, as well as a Best Article Award honorable mention and Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation, both by the APSA's Democracy & Autocracy section. 

Her articles appear in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Sociological Methods & Research, among other outlets. 

Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, she was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California and a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. She is also a former editor of The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog and has worked for the U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Opinion Research, where she designed and analyzed studies of public opinion in the former Soviet Union. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Media


Newsweek -- 04/30/2025


Center for Strategic & International Studies podcast --

Trump Posture on Ukraine Peace Based on Flawed Assumptions
A&S Communications --


Bloomberg -- 02/18/2025
and 15 other media outlets


Stanford -- 12/03/2024


The New Statesman -- 04/05/2024
and 2 other media outlets


Foreign Affairs -- 03/25/2024


AP -- 03/14/2024
and 431 other media outlets

Russia’s presidential election is ‘not so important’ as what will come after
A&S Communications -- 03/11/2024

Law and Justice party seeing ‘double rebuke’ from voters
A&S Communications -- 10/18/2023


ETH Zurich -- 02/01/2023


Washington Post -- 12/29/2022

Professor wins award for book about middle class and democracy
A&S Communications -- 11/18/2022


Vox -- 09/25/2022
and 8 other media outlets

Biden admin rhetoric strengthens Russian propaganda about U.S.
A&S Communications -- 04/25/2022


Euronews -- 04/15/2022
and 1 other media outlet


Washington Post -- 02/11/2022


The Washington Post -- 06/29/2021


Democracy Paradox Podcast -- 01/26/2021

Middle class actually enables autocrats in post-Soviet countries
Cornell Chronicle -- 12/07/2020


Washington Post -- 09/10/2020

Research Focus

Comparative Politics, Political Behavior, Development and Democratization, Authoritarian Regimes, Protest, Post-communism, Survey Methods

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