Anna Grzymała-Busse

Anna Grzymala-Busse

Anna Grzymała-Busse

  • Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies
  • Professor of Political Science
  • Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
  • Director of The Europe Center

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA  94305

 

(650) 723-4270 (voice)

Biography

Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.

Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.

Current research

In The News

Book award winners
News

CDDRL Scholars Celebrated for Exceptional Contributions to Political Science Literature

Anna Grzymala-Busse's book "Sacred Foundations" has been awarded the American Political Science Association's J. David Greenstone Award and the Hubert Morken Best Book in Religion and Politics Award. Erin Baggott Carter and Brett Carter's book "Propaganda in Autocracies" has won the Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award from the International Journal of Press/Politics.
cover link CDDRL Scholars Celebrated for Exceptional Contributions to Political Science Literature
Michael McFaul listens to President Zuzana Čaputová speak during the Q&A portion of her fireside chat at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
News

Slovak President Optimistic about Democracy, but Warns about Russian Misinformation

During a visit to the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová reminded the Stanford community that the stakes of the war in Ukraine are high and will impact democracies far beyond Eastern and Central Europe.
cover link Slovak President Optimistic about Democracy, but Warns about Russian Misinformation
Democracy Day 2023 light up marquee letters
News

Democracy Day sweeps Stanford

Thousands turned out for the student-run, campuswide event, which has grown significantly since launching in 2021.
cover link Democracy Day sweeps Stanford