Scott Radnitz

Scott Radnitz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, with research interests in contentious politics, ethnic identity and conflict, informal networks, democratization, and politics in Central Asia and the former Soviet Union. His dissertation, "It Takes More than a Village: Mobilization, Networks, and the State in Central Asia," seeks to explain variance in the scale of political mobilization in low-income and authoritarian countries, using fieldwork conducted in Central Asia in Russian and Uzbek. It argues that mass mobilization is likely to occur when elites are able to earn revenue independently of the state and establish autonomous ties with elites in other regions. Non-state elites garner political support by providing surrogate public goods to their communities and posing as benefactors. If the regime threatens to harm this relationship, by restricting embedded elites' freedoms or denying them access to resources, mobilization is one of the few means available to advance (or defend) their position. Such elites have an incentive to mobilize their respective supporters and, when linked through networks that transcend geographic boundaries, broker between regions to form a mass movement. The dissertation combines anthropological methods with original survey data and concepts of network analysis.

From April 2003-August 2005, Scott participated in an international project, "Accounting for State-Building, Stability, and Violent Conflict: The Institutional Framework of Caucasian and Central Asian Transitional Societies," based at the Free University of Berlin, where Scott spent seven months collaborating with researchers from Germany, the UK, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. He contributed a chapter to an edited volume of this project’s results, with publication expected in 2006.

Scott was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003-04 and has received research grants from the Mellon MIT Inter-University Program on Non-Governmental Organizations and Forced Migration, Foreign Language and Area Studies, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the Department of Education. His non-academic ventures include working as an interpreter at a US military base in Uzbekistan, interning for Dr. Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, traveling, and skiing. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.

Publications

“Weighing the Political and Economic Motivations for Migration in Post-Soviet Space: The Case of Uzbekistan,” Europe- Asia Studies 58(5), July 2006 (lead article): 653-677.
“Look Who’s Talking! Islamic Discourse in the Chechen Wars,” Nationalities Papers 34(2) May 2006: 237-256.
"What Really Happened in Kyrgyzstan?," Journal of Democracy, 17(2), April 2006.

"Networks, Localism, and Mobilization in Aksy, Kyrgyzstan," Central Asian Survey, 24(4), December 2005.
"The Tyranny of Small Differences: The Relationship Between Ethnic Diversity and Democracy in the Former Socialist Bloc," Demokratizatsiya, 12(1), Winter 2004.
"Working with the Warlords: Designing an Ethnofederal System for Afghanistan," Regional and Federal Studies, 14(4), Winter 2004.

Book review

Review of Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond ( University of Washington Press), forthcoming in Nationalities Papers, September 2006.

Works under review

"Informal Networks and Mobilization in Central Asia," in Christoph Zuercher, Jan Koehler, and Jonathan Wheatley, eds., book chapter submitted as part of edited volume on state- building and informal institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Research in progress

“The Color of Money: Privatization, Economic Dispersion, and the Post-Soviet Revolutions”
"Social Capital and Networks in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Evidence From a New Cross- National Survey," (with Christoph Zuercher and Jonathan Wheatley).
"Bottom-up, Top-Down, and Run Amok: A Critique of Theories of Revolution and Rebellion."
“Is There an Umma? Real and/or Imagined Social Networks in the Muslim World”