PhD in Political Science

Research project “Exploring Dynamics of "Frozen Conflicts" through Actor-based Interactions” is announcing a call for applications for a PhD position. The proposed PhD project should explore the role of “left-behind” minorities in the conflict dynamics between parent states and secessionist entities/de facto states.  

In conflicts between de facto states and their parent states, the latter are motivated to employ counter-secessionist strategies as a matter of undermining de facto states’ agency in international affairs (Ker-Lindsay 2012; Griffiths and Muro 2020). In that, parent states may, and usually do, rely on their own “left behind” national minorities remaining in de facto states to add another dimension to their territorially based expectations. The situation resembles the triadic nexus model of Rogers Brubaker (1995), where de facto states embarking on state-building become the nationalising “states”, turning the members of the parent state ethnicities into a new national minority, and reimaging the parent state as an “external” national homeland.  

Focusing on how these “left behind” national minorities view, project, and aim at finding their place in an existing frozen conflict can impact the potential dynamics of these conflicts, although the topic of these actors’ place and role in understanding the dynamics of frozen conflicts and their respective trajectories in a more comprehensive way remains limited. We are especially missing comparative accounts that would aim at tentative generalizations based on the study of “left behind” minorities across a variety of cases, both contemporary and past. Possible cases that could be included in the project are Moldovans in Transnistria, Georgians in Abkhazia, and Serbs in Kosovo. 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic.  

Main supervisor: Prof Eiki Berg
Professor of International Relations Theory
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
eiki.berg@ut.ee   

Please contact Prof Berg for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.

Research project entitled “Self-Determination of Peoples in Historical Perspective” is announcing a call for applications for a PhD position. The proposed PhD project linked to “Self-Determination of Peoples in Historical Perspective” may have a historical or a contemporary focus.  

A. Historical projects may propose to explore debates or selected authors writing on: 

1. the distinction between the people and the state and the people’s right to change the constitution;  
2. individual self-determination, popular sovereignty, and representative government;  
3. the relationship between self-determination, federalism and peace;  
4. revolutions and constitutional change in political theory;  
5. self-determination in Baltic (including Estonian) intellectual history; 
6. the links between decolonisation debates and the nationalities-question within the Soviet Union in the post-WWII period.  

B. Projects proposing to explore the concept of the self-determination of peoples from a contemporary perspective might focus on  

1. the concept of relational self-determination (I.M. Young); 
2. debates between neo-Kantians and liberal nationalists;  
3. the self-determination of indigenous peoples;  
4.  Great Power rivalry and the self-determination of ‘small nations’ 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic. Additionally, proposals are also accepted on topics related to theories of representative democracy (historical and contemporary perspectives), and climate change and the current ’crisis’ of representative democracy (historical and contemporary perspectives) 

Main supervisor: Dr Eva Piirimäe
Associate Professor of Political Theory
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
eva.piirimae@ut.ee  

Please contact Dr Eva Piirimäe for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.  

We invite applicants to propose PhD projects that engage in the study of the effects and the determinants of public sector institutional reforms in the EU’s Eastern neighborhood countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine).   

Good governance promotion and assistance to public sector institutional reforms is a growing part of the EU’s agenda. Governance reform has received particularly focused attention in the EU’s enlargement and neighborhood policy as well as in the European Consensus on Development that outlines democracy, good governance, the rule of law, and human rights as the EU’s objectives for its development policy. While the results of the reforms are underwhelming, the attention has recently turned to the need for more nuanced differentiation and tailoring of reform strategies. The question that many are grappling with is how to differentiate donor strategies given the opportunities and constraints stemming from the political economy and institutional configurations in distinct target environments? With this question in mind, applicants are invited to propose projects that would develop new knowledge about the EU’s promotion of good governance.  

The candidates to the PhD program may explore how the EU modulates its strategies across different kinds of reform environments and assess the fit between the EU’s approaches and the types of implementation spaces it encounters in target countries. For investigating context-specific pathways to governance reform, the candidates should take a critical look at the political economy realities of various regime types and/or examine the nuances of the institutional configurations of distinct forms of political settlement that can be observed across the Eastern neighborhood countries. Applicants are encouraged to find innovative approaches to studying the interactions between the EU’s policy instrument mixes and the variety of authority structures impinging on domestic governance practices on the ground. For this, the projects may draw on combinations of lenses including political economy, new-institutionalism, non-democratic regime types, political settlement analysis, national administrative styles, and policy implementation styles among others. While all methodologies are welcome, qualitative approaches will be preferred. 

To sum up, under this heading, applicants are invited to develop proposals for PhD projects that engage in a study of the following topics: 

• Projects that adopt a policy analysis perspective to the European neighborhood studies. 
• Projects that explore EU’s assistance to good governance and institutional reform through the lens of policy design and policy instruments. 
• Projects that aim to investigate why certain institutional reforms succeed or fail in diverse institutional contexts of the Eastern neighborhood and identify the likely determinants of the observed results. 
• Projects that aim to generate knowledge for matching various reform environments with distinct assistance strategies for evidence-based policymaking and implementation. 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic.   

Main supervisor: Dr Kristina Muhhina
Research Fellow in Public Policy
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
kristina.muhhina@ut.ee   

Please contact Dr Muhhina for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.

Co-production, where public as well as private actors make resource contributions to solving public problems or producing public services, is a buzzword in the field of public governance. It has attracted even more attention with the rise of ICT-enabled arrangements for citizen-sourcing, automated co-production through automatic data transmissions, and open government data portals (Linders 2012, Yuan 2019). While much of the existing scholarship has focused on identifying the barriers of successful co-production, evaluating the impacts of co-production on effectiveness and quality of service delivery, and scrutinizing equity and distributional biases involved, much less of the literature has dealt with the legitimacy and accountability challenges that emerge in these formats of collaboration. There is only limited understanding of how co-production, and particularly its technology-facilitated versions, impact the big questions of democracy such as accountability and legitimacy of governing. 

Some observers suggest that contemporary democracies are faced with a fundamental transformation of the public domain where there is an “institutional misfit” (Meijer 2016) between the decentered politics of co-production and the representative electoral model of governance centered on the parliamentary arena. Among the substantial issues raised is the meaning of the territorially bounded “demos” while co-production practices tend to revolve around a plethora of functional and issue-specific “demoi.” Similarly, digital crowdsourcing and the rise of transscalar virtual communities is mismatched with the prevailing understanding of governance jurisdictions attached to physical locations. Moreover, automated co-production that relies on sensor technologies for data collection and algorithmic decision-making raises thorny issues about the accountability of these automated and semi-autonomous decision systems. Open government data platforms produce innovative solutions to public problems, however, pose another set of questions about the roles of citizens and governments in polities where communities self-organize and essentially provide services themselves. Evidently, (ICT-based) co-production entails a fundamental transformation of the public sector and raises a series of critical issues about the practices and institutional scaffolding of democracy that require new responses.  

With this background in mind, applicants are invited to develop proposals for PhD projects that engage in a study of the following topics: 

• Projects that explore (ICT-enabled) co-production as a new mode of public governance and its implications for the future of democracy.  
• Projects that investigate the consequences of (ICT-enabled) co-production on the transformation of the public domain, and particularly the implications for authority relationships, channels of public control, and the overall legitimacy of governing. 
• Projects that place their analytic focus on the politics of co-production and on understanding the effects of technologized co-production on authority relationships and (re-)allocation of decision-making power. 
• Projects that aim to contribute to the limited understanding of the tension between decentered politics of co-production and the monocentric vision of democracy as well as offer strategies for the pursuit of democracy in increasingly pluricentric sites of governance decoupled from the parliamentary arena. 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic.  

Main supervisor: Dr Kristina Muhhina
Research Fellow in Public Policy
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
kristina.muhhina@ut.ee   

Please contact Dr Muhhina for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.

We invite applicants to propose PhD projects that are interested in: 

• Behavioural insights in policymaking; 
• Financial well-being; 
• Application of behavioural insights for improving financial well-being. 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under any of these topics.  

Applying behavioural insights in policymaking – designing choice architecture in a way that nudges individuals towards course of action least likely to cause them harm and most likely to benefit both their own longer-term interests and societal well-being – is gaining increasing attention. According to the OECD, there are more than a hundred so called nudge units working for governments and municipalities around the world. In total, in various forms and sectors, there are more than 300 nudge units operating globally, applying behavioural insights to topics such as reducing inequality, healthier diets, environmental sustainability, educational attainment, tax compliance, and retirement choices. As emphasized by nudge theory author Cass Sunstein in his book Behavioral Science and Public Policy, nudging is one of many behavioural policy tools. However, nudges are the best known and most studied of them. Despite the groundswell of interest in behavioural insights in research and policy, there is still an abundance of research to be conducted for developing and testing the behavioural policy tools in various contexts and for various societal problems, and for further analysis of the ethical principles of behavioural policy. 

Another topic rapidly gaining attention from both policy and research is financial well-being. The ultimate aim of financial education (that is the process of developing financial literacy) is to increase financial well-being and more than 50 countries in the world (incl. Estonia) are implementing National Strategies for Financial Education. Yet there is no agreement on how to define or measure that construct, neither are there evidence-based tools for its improvement, nor even proof that financial education has an effect on financial well-being. Longitudinal data on financial well-being from multiple countries will soon be available for the successful applicant’s doctoral research, collected as part of the European Social Survey for the research project Longitudinal financial well-being assessment in turbulent times. However, the prospective candidate does not have to use that data and is free to choose any method for studying the meaning of financial well-being, contributing to its conceptualisation and operationalisation, studying its individual and contextual (e.g. culture, institutional setting) antecedents and outcomes, and to test and develop ways for improving it. The latter could (but do not have to) build on behavioural insights and provide policy implications. 

Main supervisor: Dr Leonore Riitsalu
Research Fellow in Behavioural Policy
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
leonore.riitsalu@ut.ee 

Please contact Dr Riitsalu for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants. 

Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine has transformed the European continent. While changes in policies pursued by European countries – including foreign and defense policies as well as policies related to domestic and intra-EU crisis management – have been discussed extensively, the impact of the war on democratic politics in European countries has received much less attention. How have parties and voters in European countries responded to the war and the associated crises (refugee crisis, energy crisis, cost of living crisis)? How have political discourses and patterns of political competition changed? What pre-existing political cleavages have been amplified, which ones have lost relevance, and what new cleavages, divides and conflicts have emerged? How prominently have topics related to the war featured in election campaigns and (how) has the war shaped election results? How unified or how divided have European societies been in their response to Russian aggression in Ukraine? What factors account for similarities and differences in how parties and voters in different European countries have responded to the war and associated crises? Has the war reinvigorated democracy (e.g. by boosting turnout and participation, highlighting the importance of democracy and European values) or has it amplified various negative trends and threats to democracy (e.g. growing discontent and political alienation, erosion of political trust, the spread of disinformation, curtailing of political rights and civil liberties, restrictions on free speech and media freedom, growing support for populists and extremists, democratic backsliding and autocratization)? How resilient have European democracies been in face of the war and the associated crises and what explains differences in the level of resilience? 

Applicants are encouraged to propose more specific research projects under this general theme. Such projects could focus, inter alia, on the following: 

• Changes in the positioning of political parties, including on foreign and security policy, geopolitics, policy towards Russia, Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees; positions on EU and NATO (accession); changes in patterns of party competition; 
• public opinion and voter behaviour, including changes in voter turnout, priorities, positions, attitudes, party allegiance, vote choice; 
• the impact of the war and associated crises on political discourses, electoral strategies, programs and campaigns, as well as election results and coalition formation; 
• the impact of the war on the quality of democracy; vulnerability and resilience of European democracies in the context of developments since February 24, 2022. 

The proposed projects could use a variety of different research designs (including large-n statistical analysis, small n comparative studies, and in-depth case studies), sources of data (surveys, electoral and party data, interviews, media and document analysis, etc), and research methods.   

Main supervisor: Prof Piret Ehin
Professor of Comparative Politics
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
piret.ehin@ut.ee  

Please contact Prof Ehin for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.

We invite applicants to propose PhD projects that explore and assess the impact of endogenous and/or exogenous factors on the speed, direction, and intensity of the process of European integration.

The proposal would possibly highlight the political and institutional dynamics, the role of the key actors involved, and the related developmental trajectories.   

Starting from the early 2000s, following the most ambitious enlargement in its history and the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005, the European Union (EU) has been facing multiple and successive challenges that have put to test the resilience of its decision-making and increased its degree of politicization of the process of integration. While COVID-19 and the Russian aggression against Ukraine are the last of such challenges, they are clearly not the only ones.  

The diverse nature of these challenges includes – but is not limited to –internal and external security threats, migration flows and humanitarian emergencies, party-based populism and Euroscepticism, economic crisis and financial instability, complex multicultural societies, and identity-related dividing lines.   

From a comparative perspective, the emergence, consolidation, and diffusion of rival regional integration projects in the Eurasian context add further geo-political complexities to the scope and direction of European integration in terms of competing interests and values.   

Both qualitative, quantitative, and mixed research designs are welcome.

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic.

Main supervisor: Dr Stefano Braghiroli
Associate Professor of European Studies
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
stefano.braghiroli@ut.ee 

Please contact Dr Braghiroli for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.

PhD projects submitted under this heading should engage in a study of Russian civil society either inside Russia, in the diaspora, or both. The successful applicant will join the team working on a research project led by Professor Viacheslav Morozov and financially supported by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The primary focus of the project is on the new forms of civic activism and resistance, the evolving identities and discourses of civic engagement, strategies of survival under the increasingly repressive regime and practices of adjustment to the reality of migrant life under varying legal provisions and ideological landscapes of the host countries. 

The proposed project could address civil society institutions and practices in specific sectors (anti-corruption activism, volunteer work, philanthropy, independent media, religion, academia/expert community, social entrepreneurship, civil rights advocacy, labour unions) or address cross-sectoral issues. Research focusing on Russia’s regions outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as studies inspired by postcolonial reflection, are particularly welcome. There are no preferences regarding the methods to be used, as long as their choice is properly justified as part of the general research design. Linguistic competences (such as fluent Russian) appropriate to the proposed method are required; knowledge of Estonian is an advantage. 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic. 

Main supervisor: Prof Viacheslav Morozov
Professor of EU–Russia Studies
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
ETIS profile
viacheslav.morozov@ut.ee   

Please contact Prof Morozov for an approval of your proposal ahead of the application deadline! Please note that the prospective supervisor is not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants.  

You can submit a proposal on a topic of your own choosing, on the condition that the proposal fits the research interest of one of the supervisors at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies (see supervision competencies). 

The proposal should fall under (one of) the following broad areas of supervision: 

Comparative Politics: 

• Electoral studies, political participation, and political culture; 
• Democracy and democratization; 
• Nationalism and ethnopolitics; 
• Memory politics and transitional justice; 
• E-services, e-governance and e-voting, and the impact of information and communication technologies on political participation and electoral behaviour. 

International Relations: 

• International relations, international security, and foreign policy; 
• Identity, sovereignty, geopolitics; 
• Borders, regions, regionalism; 
• European integration; 
• Historical and contemporary theories of international justice, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. 

Our regional focus is mainly on: 

• Russia and Eurasia 
• Eastern Europe 
• European Union 

Interested candidates are invited to prepare a research proposal outlining the specific research project they would pursue under this general topic.  

We require applicants to establish contact with one of our faculty before submitting an application to receive a preliminary consent on supervision, in order to avoid rejection on thematic grounds. However, please note that the prospective supervisors are not in a position to provide extensive comments or help develop project descriptions at the application stage, given the large number of applicants. 

Please contact either the potential advisor directly or Ms Kristel Vits, Coordinator of Political Science specialty (kristel.vits@ut.ee), for advice on the potential advisor(s) ahead of the application deadline! 

Art Alishani, MA (TalTech)

Topic: "Harnessing the potential of algorithms and intelligent technologies to build robust and human-centric public administrations: Cross-border digital public services"
Supervisors: Vincent Homburg and Mihkel Solvak

Butrint Berisha, MA (Stockholm)

Topic: "Exploring the role of civil society organisations in the foreign policy of contested states: An analysis of Kosovo, Palestine and Taiwan since 2010"
Supervisor: Eiki Berg

Logan Carmichael, MA (Auckland)

Topic: "Cybersecurity Uplift in the Estonian Digital Governance Model, 2007-2021"
Supervisor: Mihkel Solvak

Michael Cole, MA (Birmingham)

Topic: "The influence of Russian discourse on right-wing populist discourses in Ukraine and Georgia"
Supervisor: Andrey Makarychev

Stefan Dedovic, MA (TalTech)

Topic: "Interoperability governance of the cross-border mobile electronic identification"
Supervisors: Vincent Homburg and Mihkel Solvak

Radityo Dharmaputra, MA (Glasgow/ Tartu)

Topic: "Contemporary Russian Foreign Policy Discourse towards Asia: Assessing the Logic of Causality in the Discursive Structure of Identity"
Supervisor: Viacheslav Morozov

Ville Tapani Haapanen, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Green parties in the globalization divide"
Supervisors: Liisa Talving and Zack Grant

Sandra Hagelin, MA (Amsterdam)

Topic: "Understanding the role of borders and boundaries in European Integration following the Covid-19 crisis"
Supervisor: Stefano Braghiroli

Biao He, MA (OsloMet)

Topic: "E-governance for all: How does the Chinese local government bridge the digital divide that persons with disabilities experience in the use of e-governance services?"
Supervisors: Vincent Homburg and Mihkel Solvak 

Urmas Hõbepappel, MA (Lund)

Topic: "Changing History – Changing the Present? Postmodernist Historiography and Political Change in China"
Supervisor: Andrey Makarychev

Sanshiro Hosaka, MA (OUJ)

Topic: "Covering Former Empire 'Peripheries': Academia's Reception of Russian Strategic Narratives in International Conflicts"
Supervisor: Andrey Makarychev

Kristjan Kaldur, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Early patterns of integration among the newly arrived migrants: the case of Russian-speaking new migrants in Estonia"
Supervisors: Piret Ehin and Kristina Kallas

Natalia Kovyliaeva, MA (CEU)

Topic: "Gaining Voice: Digital Feminist and Women's Movements in Post-Soviet Countries"
Supervisor: Katrin Uba and Andrey Makarychev

Maria Leek, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Conceptualizing the European Union as an international actor: an analysis of the moving position of the EU’s Self and the construction of Europe from within"
Supervisor: Viacheslav Morozov

Thomas Michael Linsenmaier, MA (FU Berlin)

Topic: "The interplay between regional international societies – towards a European security architecture?”
Supervisor: Viacheslav Morozov

Tatiana Lupacheva, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "The electoral consequences of personalised parliamentary behaviour: A comparative textual analysis of legislative speeches"
Supervisor: Martin Mölder

Eoin Micheal McNamara, MA/MSc (Tartu/ London)

Topic: "What determines the NATO contribution of small post-2004 allies? A comparative analysis of Estonia, Slovenia and Bulgaria"
Supervisor: Andres Kasekamp and Eiki Berg

Bogdan Romanov, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Electronic voting in Russia: the scrutiny of 'i-voting' in an authoritarian context"
Supervisor: Mihkel Solvak

Oliver Rowe, MA (Geneva)

Topic: "Self-determination in Theory and Practice: The Reconfiguration of the 'Russian' Empire, 1914-1924"
Supervisor: Eva Piirimäe

Anselm Schmidt, MA (Regensburg)

Topic: "Russian versus Ukrainian 'International' News Media and the War in Ukraine: Between Actors and Instruments of State"
Supervisor: Andrey Makarychev

Annika Siirak, MA (Tartu/ Bruges)

Topic: "How political change towards democracy can end up stuck in a hybrid regime"
Supervisor: Eiki Berg

Mari-Liis Sulg, MA (Tallinn)

Topic: "Small State Foreign Policy strategic options: Estonian Example"
Supervisor: Eiki Berg

Azniv Tadevosyan, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Dissensus in Music and Cinema in Post-2012 Russia"
Supervisor: Viacheslav Morozov

George Spencer Terry, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "The Far Right as a Cultural Phenomenon: Searching for Definitions in Italy, Poland, and Estonia"
Supervisor: Andrey Makarychev

Märten Veskimäe, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Measuring the impact of government e-services"
Supervisor: Mihkel Solvak

Maili Vilson, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "The Europeanization of national foreign policy during the crisis in Ukraine"
Supervisors: Viacheslav Morozov and Piret Ehin

Kristel Vits, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "De facto states and dependences: disentangling the interrelationship between de facto statehood and patronage"
Supervisor: Eiki Berg

Louis Wierenga, MA (Toronto)

Topic: "Ready for Battle: Threat narratives in the social media discourse of the radical right in Estonia and Latvia”
Supervisors: Vello Pettai and Andres Kasekamp

Izzet Yalin Youksel, MA (Tartu)

Topic: "Understanding De Facto, Small and Microstates: Elite Navigations at the Crossroads of International Patron-Client Relationships and Ontological Insecurity"
Supervisor: Eiki Berg

Dissertations defended at the Institute since 2006

Click on the link to access the full dissertation online.

Ionut-Valentin Chiruta, "Triadic nexus relationships in an age of populism: interactions between Hungary, Romania and the Hungarian minority in Szeklerland“, 2023
Supervisor: Vello Pettai

Lelde Luik, “Re-evaluating the Role of Representative Institutions in Radical Democratic Theory: Lessons from Democratic Identity Construction in Latvia”, 2023 
Supervisor: Viacheslav Morozov  

Ivan Ulises Kentros Klyszcz, "How does violent conflict affect paradiplomacy? An exploratory research with cases from the North Caucasus.", 2022
Supervisor: Eiki Berg

Andrii Nekoliak, "'Memory laws' and the patterns of collective memory regulation in Poland and Ukraine in 1989–2020: a comparative analysis", 2022.
Supervisor Vello Pettai

Maksim Kulaev, "Trade unions, transformism and the survival of Russian authoritarianism", 2021.
Supervisor Viatcheslav Morozov

Juhan Saharov, "From economic independence to political sovereignty: inventing “self-management” in the Estonian SSR", 2021.
Supervisor Eva Piirimäe

Shota Kakabadze, "'The Caucasian chalk circle': Georgia’s self at the East/West nexus", 2020.
Supervisors Andrey Makarychev and Maria Mälksoo

Lukas Pukelis, "Informal mutual oversight mechanisms in coalition governments: Insights from the Baltic states for theory building", 2018.
Supervisor Vello Pettai

Ryhor Nizhnikau, "Externally induced institutional change in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood: migration and environment reforms in Ukraine and Moldova in 2010–2015", 2017.
Supervisor Viatcheslav Morozov

Kats Kivistik, "Relevance, content and effects of left-right identification in countries with different regime trajectories", 2017.
Supervisors Piret Ehin and André Freire

Kristian Lau Nielsen, "Soft Power Europe: The Lesser Contradiction in Terms and Practices", 2016.
Supervisor Eiki Berg

Birgit Poopuu, "Acting is everything: the European unioon and the process of becoming a peacebuilder", 2016.
Supervisor Maria Mälksoo

Kristina Kallas, "Revisiting the triadic nexus: An analysis of the ethnopolitical interplay between Estonia, Russia and Estonian Russians", 2016.
Supervisor Vello Pettai

Liisa Talving, "Economic conditions and incumbent support: when and how does the economy matter?", 2016.
Supervisors Piret Ehin and Kristjan Vassil

Raul Toomla, "De facto states in the international system: Conditions for (in)formal engagement", 2014.
Supervisor Eiki Berg

Andro Kitus, "A Post-Structuralist “Concept” of Legitimacy", 2014.
Supervisors Vello Pettai and Lasse Thomassen

Mari-Liis Sööt, "Explaining corruption: Opportunities for corruption and institutional trust", 2013.
Supervisor Tiina Randma-Liiv

Kadri Lühiste, "Regime Support in European Democracies", 2013.
Supervisor Piret Ehin

Viljar Veebel, "The role and impact of positive conditionality in the EU pre-acession policy", 2012.
Supervisor Eiki Berg

Alar Kilp, "Church authority in society, culture and politics after Communism", 2012.
Supervisor Rein Taagepera

Maria Groeneveld, "The role of the state and society relationship in the foreign policy making process", 2012.
Supervisors Andres Kasekamp and Alexander Astrov

Heiko Pääbo, "Potential of Collective Memory Based International Identity Conflicts in Post-Imperial Space: Comparison of Russian Master Narrative with Estonian, Ukrainian and Georgian Master Narratives", 2011.
Supervisor Andres Kasekamp

Mihkel Solvak, "Private members’ bills in parliament - a comparative study of Finland and Estonia", 2011.
Supervisor Vello Pettai

Holger Mölder, "Cooperative security dilemma – practicing the Hobbesian security culture in the Kantian security environment", 2010.
Supervisor Eiki Berg

Allan Sikk, "Highways to power: New party success in three young democracies", 2006.
Supervisors Rein Taagepera and Mogens N. Pedersen