Margaret Hanson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies. She is a political economist whose interdisciplinary and multi-methods research examines state-society relations in autocracies. Specifically, she focuses on how legal institutions, economic development, support for democracy, and migration shape state-society relations under dictatorship. Regionally, she specializes in the politics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. She teaches classes in comparative politics, economic development and globalization, authoritarian politics, political economy, and qualitative and mixed research methods.
Education
Ph.D. The Ohio State University
Publications
2021. “Building Socialist Legality: Political Order and Institutional Development in the Soviet and Chinese Procuracies” (with Michael Thompson-Brusstar, University of Michigan). Forthcoming, Jan. 2021 Europe-Asia Studies.
2020. “Higher Education as an Authoritarian Tool for Regime Survival: Evidence from Kazakhstan and around the World” (with Sarah Wilson Sokhey, University of Colorado-Boulder). Problems of Post-Communism.
2017. “Legalized Rent-Seeking: Eminent Domain in Kazakhstan.” Cornell International Law Journal 50(1), 15-46. Available here.
Research Activity
Managing the Predatory State: Corruption and Governance in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Book Manuscript).
“Under the Veil of Democracy: What Do People Mean When They Say They Support Democracy?" (with Hannah Chapman, Miami University; Valery Dzutsati, Arizona State University; Paul DeBell, Fort Lewis College). Under Review.
“Captured Courts and Legitimized Autocrats: Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Council” (with Nora Webb Williams, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Under Review.
