Canada, Eastern Europe and Russia: Democracy Promotion and Democratization

When:	Saturday, March 4th, 2017
Time:	2:00 pm — 3:15 pm
Location:	Richcraft Hall, Second Floor Conference Rooms
Audience:	Carleton Community, Current Students, Faculty
Cost:	Free

This panel is a part of the Visions for Canada, 2042 Conference. You can learn more about the conference and register to attend by visiting the conference webpage.

Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Canada and Canadians have participated in efforts to establish democratic institutions and civil societies in Eastern Europe; however such initiatives have had mixed results. Have Canadian actors being able to influence lasting democratic change in Eastern Europe? To what extent have economic crises, ethnic tensions, and an increasingly assertive Russia affected dialogue between Western countries and Eastern Europe? And can there be a role for Canada when the expansion of the European Union has been the dominant motif of East-West interaction? This panel brings together the presentations of a dynamic group of emerging scholars, each with a connection to Carleton. With all of them
having spent considerable time in Russia and/or Ukraine, they are well placed to provide perspective on the prospects for political change in a part of the world that is of increasing importance to Canada.

Presenters:

• Andrea Chandler is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. Her fields of research are politics and government in Russia and Soviet successor states, comparative politics of social welfare reform, and gender and politics in post-communist states. She is the author of three books, the most recent of which is titled Democracy, Gender and Social Policy in Russia: a Wayward Society (2013).
• Milana Nikolko is Adjunct Research Professor at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. Her research interests span a variety of topics related to social capital formation and conflict in multi-ethnic societies, diaspora and horizontal legitimacy in global epoch, and political legitimacy in Post-Soviet space. She also teaches in these areas, including courses on nation building, nationalism, and ethnic conflict in Eastern and Central Europe.
• Peter Szyszlo is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies. His doctoral research aims to address the changing nature of higher education in Ukraine, against a backdrop of broader political transition and macro-political dynamics of globalization and the knowledge economy. His project aims to analyze the place of the university as an institution that not only produces and disseminates knowledge, but assimilates and adapts global knowledge to national needs. It also examines the role that Ukrainian national research universities play as arbiters of knowledge and as actors of change. Szyszlo is a member of the EUREDOCS Network (Sciences Po Paris) and the European Research Area Collaborative Research Network.
• Viktoriya Thomson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. She is specializing in the politics of the Ukraine and the ‘Orange Revolution.’
• Mikhail Zherebtsov is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. Zherebtsov’s research interests are centered on contemporary issues of governance and public policy in Russia and other post-Soviet countries, including public administration reforms and institutional modernization, as well as regional politics and federalism in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He is also currently investigating the development of E-government in Russia.