About me

I am Professor of Russian and East European Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to that, I worked at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (as Professor of Social Sciences and East European Studies), at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin (as an Associate in the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Division), at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (as an Assistant Professor for International Political Economy) and at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (as a Senior Research Fellow). I obtained my PhD degree from the University of Mannheim.

My research is located at the border between political science and economics, with a focus on the post-Soviet Eurasia and Russia, as well as, more generally, internal and international dimensions of authoritarian regimes. My current and recent research projects cover, in particular, four areas: the impact of historical legacies on the contemporary political and social development of the post-Soviet countries; Russian sub-national politics; informal relations in bureaucracy of authoritarian states (especially in the post-Soviet Eurasia); and cross-border cooperation of authoritarian states (in particular autocracy promotion and authoritarian regionalism in Eurasia). In terms of methods, most of my work is quantitative and uses large-N datasets (especially sub-national data), though I have used qualitative and mixed methods in some projects as well.

My articles appeared in American Political Science Review, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics and Journal of Democracy, among other journals. My books, Authoritarian Regionalism in the World of International Organizations and Historical Legacies of Communism: Modern Politics, Society and Economic Development (both with Anastassia Obydenkova), were published by the Oxford University Press in 2019 and by the Cambridge University Press in 2021 respectively. My work was awarded the Knut Wicksell Prize from the European Public Choice Society, the Gordon Tullock Prize from the Public Choice Society and the journal Public Choice, as well as the Ovsievich Memorial Prize from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Leontieff Center. 

In addition to academic work, I regularly give talks to non-academic audiences. My research was covered, among others, by the ARD, ZDF, Phoenix, BBC, 3sat, SRF, ÖRF, Deutschlandradio, Washington Post, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Handelsblatt, Wirtschaftswoche, Focus, Rheinische Post, Frankfurter Rundschau, Tagesspiegel, Berliner Zeitung, Der Freitag, taz, Le Temps, De Volkskrant, Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun.

E-mail: alexander.libman@fu-berlin.de