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- WHY?
- IPPL
The Democratization Project
Coordingator: Paul Sum, IPPL Senior Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science, University of North Dakota.
Academic Intern: Svitlana Sytnyl.
Paul Sum’s career has focused on new democracies in eastern Europe, especially in Romania. He has engaged in widespread research to determine how civil society and individual citizens change as their nation becomes ever closer to a fully realized democracy. With the Democritization project, Paul is making this research accessible to a general audience. He and those working with him will host town hall meetings, international online discussions, and a wide range of other events to cultivate a world-wide investigation about the nature of democracy.
Paul Sum is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Dakota. His interests were shaped through his experience during an earlier trip to Romania as a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj (1996-1998). He has worked with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the U.S. Department of State (formerly the U.S. Information Agency), the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Democracy International, and the International Research & Exchanges Board. His work includes monitoring elections and campaigns, assessing pre and post-election voter surveys, and evaluating the impact of various democracy assistance programs in Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Romania among other locations. He remains on staff as a Visiting Professor at Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania and has taught at Tulane University and Northwestern University. He is particularly interested in the background and motivations of civil society activists in the post-communist world. He has been widely published, but work in this specific area have appeared in East European Politics & Societies and the Romanian Journal of Science and Politics. He is currently completing an edited volume for Lexington Books titled Romania under Basescu.
Project Resources
Paul on Why?:
Episode 6: Exporting Democracy. Click here
Episode 18: Exporting Democracy Revisited: A Report from Romania. Click here.
more to come
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