NSF Grant for Mikhail Alexseev’s "War, Society, and Democracy: A Panel Survey Project in Ukraine"

Mikhail Alexseev, the Bruce E. Porteous Professor of political science, understands the issues in Ukraine. Alexseev was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and moved to the U.S. in 1991. He has taught political science courses at SDSU for the past 23 years.

Alexseev has published in premier academic presses and journals on threat assessment in interstate and internal wars, ethnic relations, nationalism, and immigration in Russia/Eurasia. Since 2015, he has conducted survey and focus group research into sociopolitical effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with a special focus on how war exposure affects democracy support there.

Awarded an NSF grant for a research project, Alexseev and co-PIs, Henry E. Hale, from The George Washington University (GWU) and Serhii Dembitskyi, from Ukraine National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology will conduct three waves of surveys of individuals in Ukraine who were previously interviewed in 2021/22 about war, society, and democracy to compare pre-war attitudes with those after the war onset and at different war stages.

“Ukrainian sociologists have learned how to conduct surveys under war conditions. This grant will build on that expertise, so we have confidence in generating valuable data. If the war ends and the security situation improves, we will be able to hold an academic conference presenting key findings at the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences,” Alexseev said.

Researchers seek to answer these questions: Can Ukraine survive the Russian aggression not only as a nation, but as a democracy? In what ways could support for democracy change as the war unfolds? What could sustain democratic resilience through losses, stress, uncertainty, Deprivation?

The project will not only generate systematic data on social conditions and attitudes in Ukraine as the war unfolds, providing an in-depth before-after assessment of war effects on society, but it will also open opportunities to improve our knowledge on the social foundations of political systems and their evolution.

With Alexseev’s scholarly work and deep knowledge of Russia and Ukraine, along with membership in the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS) - Eurasia, based in Washington, D.C., and collaborative work with the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences, this NSF-funded project will provide a broad impact by contributing to public knowledge, public policy dialogue, and higher education.