Hale, Henry E. 1966–

PERSONAL:

Born February 5, 1966. Education: Duke University, B.A. 1988; Harvard University, 1998, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, 1957 E St., N.W., Washington, DC 20052. E-mail—hhale@gwu.edu.

CAREER:

Political scientist, educator, and writer. George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs, Washington, DC, assistant professor of political science and international affairs. Formerly assistant professor of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington. Also research associate at Harvard University's Strengthening Democratic Institutions (SDI) Project, 1998-2000. Teaching experience includes adjunct or visiting professorships at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, MA, 1997-98, and the European University, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1999; and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Davis Center for Russian Studies postdoctoral fellow, 1998; Peace Scholarship, U.S. Institute of Peace, 1995-96; Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award, American Political Science Association (APSA) Political Organizations and Parties (POP) section, for Why Not Parties in Russia?; Alexander L. George Award for best article in qualitative methods, APSA Qualitative Methods Section, 2005, for "Divided We Stand"; Fulbright fellow, 2007-08. Research grants from National Science Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.

WRITINGS:

Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism, and the State, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including Europe-Asia Studies, Orbis, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs, World Politics, and Comparative Politics. Chief editor and writer for Russian Election Watch, a monthly electronic publication, 1999-2000, 2003-04.

SIDELIGHTS:

Henry E. Hale is a political scientist whose primary interests include the issues of democratization, federalism, ethnic politics, and regional integration, often focusing on cases concerning the former Soviet region, especially Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. In his first book, Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism, and the State, the author focuses on Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union as a control case in the study of theories of political party development. Hale explains why Russia stands out as a case where political parties have failed to dominate the political system despite displaying many of the features usually considered sufficient for party development.

The author begins by discussing the electoral markets and what he calls the country's "political smorgasbord." He looks at party entrepreneurship in the Russian electoral market from 1989 to 2004, and analyzes the power of parties in the Russian party system. He goes on to discuss party substitutes in Russia and concludes with a discussion of the theories of parties and Russia's transition from authoritarian rule. Writing in the Political Science Quarterly, Stephen Blank noted that the author "makes clear that Presidents Yeltsin and Putin, as well as regional governors and financial-industrial groups, used every means at their disposal to subvert not just challengers from other parties but even those from within their own government who sought to develop parties strong enough to aggregate sufficient interests to challenge them."

In his next book, The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World, Hale addresses the question of what ethnicity really is in an effort to help bridge the radical scholarly divide that generates contradictory recommendations for resolving ethnic conflict. Noting that modern research into how the human brain works has created the need for a revision of existing schools of thought concerning ethnicity, the author presents his case that ethnic identity is a specific cognitive device that has the ability to exacerbate but not cause collective action problems. In the process, he creates a new general theory of ethnic conflict. He demonstrates his theory's potential with an examination of separatism in the former Soviet Union and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which were formerly part of the Soviet Union before its breakup. The author ultimately reinterprets nationalism's role in CIS relations and the Soviet Union's breakup, pointing out that, in his opinion, the breakup was much less inevitable than thought by many experts.