Brian Grodsky, Ph.D.

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a recent graduate of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Ph.D., August 2006). My research interests include human rights, transitional justice, democratization, global civil society, social movements and U.S. foreign policy. Prior to beginning my Ph.D., I worked for several years as a reporter and diplomat. My articles have appeared (or are forthcoming) in journals including Slavic Review, Government and Opposition, Human Rights Review, World Affairs, Central Asian Survey and Journal of Central Asian Studies. I am currently working on two major projects. The first is a book manuscript (entitled The Costs of Justice: Understanding How New Leaders Choose to Respond to Previous Rights Abuses) in which I explore the determinants of transitional justice (legal responses to a former regime's repressive acts following a change in political systems) in post-communist states. Using evidence from more than 215 elite interviews conducted in Serbia, Croatia, Poland and Uzbekistan, I challenge the central argument in the democratization literature that transitional justice is largely a function of new elites' relative power. Instead, I argue transitional justice, like many political decisions faced by new leaders, is more closely linked to a regime's capacity to provide those (seemingly unrelated) goods and services expected by constituents. The second book manuscript, entitled Civil Society in the Shadow of Revolution: The Fate of Pro-Democracy NGOs When Democracy is Won, uses the post-communist cases of Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia to explore the impact of early democratization on pro-democracy organizations, focusing on when and why inclusion of these organizations into a post-revolution government occurs, and how inclusion or exclusion affects the NGO-government relationship and, ultimately, the path of democratic consolidation.

Department of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250
Office: Public Policy Building, 3rd floor Phone: (410) 455-2568 Fax: (410) 455-1021 Voice/TTY: (410) 455-3233