Research groups and areas

Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies on ETIS.

International Relations

In general, International Relations represents a research field which combines welfare and security themes as well as cooperation and conflict perspectives with actors’ interests and capacities to act in a structurally coherent (or anarchic) global arena. More specifically, this research field has covered tensions related to shifts in sovereignty and global order as well as protracted and intractable conflicts embedded and enframed within theoretical approaches of geopolitics, foreign policy, security politics, biopolitics, identity and memory politics.

Head of the research field: Eiki Berg
Affiliated staff: Andrey Makarychev, Shpend Kursani, Heiko Pääbo, Raul Toomla, Ana-Maria Albulescu, Izzet Yalin Yüksel, Butrint Berisha, Thomas Linsenmaier, Kristel Vits

The Centre for Eurasian and Russian Studies
De Facto States Research Unit

Comparative Politics

The comparative politics research theme focuses on political institutions and processes, political behavior, political ideas and ideologies, as well as public opinion and political values and attitudes. Research conducted under this theme focuses on democracy and elections, parties and party systems, voting behavior, political cleavages and their transformations, including in the context of globalization, European integration and various crises. This research also examines various threats to democracy, including populism, political extremism, low levels of political participation, polarization, radicalization, and autocratization, as well as strategies for countering such threats and strengthening democratic institutions, processes and values. In terms of geographic scope, our research focuses mostly on European countries.

Head of the research field: Piret Ehin
Affiliated Staff: Martin Mölder, Mihkel Solvak, Liisa Talving, Andres Reiljan, Edgars Eihmanis, Ville Haapanen, Tatiana Lupacheva

Political Theory

Political theory research group at the Skytte institute studies the underlying principles of democratic institutions and the formation of political ideologies genealogically, seeking to highlight the complex origins of our current political vocabularies and normative commitments. Members of the group examine various kinds of theories of liberalism, democracy, nationalism, patriotism, cosmopolitanism, sovereignty, human rights, peace, and international order. The most favoured approaches are contextualism, legal theory and conceptual history, including metareflection about them. The more specific current research foci include: 1) theories of the self-determination of peoples from the Enlightenment to present; 2) theories of ’self-management’, ’autonomy’, ’self-government’ and ’civil society’ from the nineteenth century to present; 3) theories of democracy and authoritarianism in the first half of the 20th century, including the legitimation of specific political regimes/institutions; 4) the ideological foundations of Soviet “federalism”; 5) the conceptual and cultural history of the Soviet “friendship of peoples”; 6) theories of nation-statehood and ’small states/ nations’; 7) theories of international peace and order.

Head of the research field: Eva Piirimäe
Affiliated Staff: Hent Kalmo, Juhan Saharov, David Ilmar Lepasaar Beecher, Liisi Veski, Oliver Rowe

Research Group on Self-Determination of Peoples

Russian and Eurasian Studies

Russian and Eurasian Studies is a broad interdisciplinary field bringing together the study of history, politics, economic development, society and culture of Northern Eurasia. Its geographical scope is determined by the Soviet legacies, but at present it typically excludes EU member states and candidate countries and focuses on the areas where the pull of Europe is relatively weaker and where various forms of identification with Asia or Eurasia are significantly present.

Affiliated staff: Andrey Makarychev, Elena Pavlova, Aigerim Nurseitova, Natalia Kovyliaeva, Bogdan Romanov, Azniv Tadevosyan

Venemaa ja Euraasia uuringute keskus

Baltic Studies

Baltic Studies focuses on the study of Estonia's home region from the perspective of area studies and the promotion of knowledge about this region at the international level. The strand can be divided into two main thematic areas: historical developments and contemporary developments. The first focuses on the processes of how the Baltic States grew out of the Russian Empire in search of their place in the wider Baltic Sea region. The second strand analyses the political and social developments of the period, with a focus on Estonia. Contemporary developments are also examined in the context of the wider Baltic Sea region.

Head of the research field: Catherine Gibson

Affiliated staff: Liisi Veski, Juhan Saharov, Piret Ehin, Martin Mölder, Heiko Pääbo, David Ilmar Lepasaar Beecher, Mari-Liis Sulg

European Union Studies

European Union studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies focuses on the drivers, dynamics and consequences of European integration, as well as on EU institutions, politics and policy-making processes. The four main foci include 1) democracy in the EU, including European Parliament elections, voting behavior in the European Parliament, EU decision-making processes, including possible reforms thereof, 2) EU economic governance and economic and social policies, 3) the interaction between norms, institutions and policies at the national and at the EU level; 4) EU enlargement and relations with neighboring countries, especially Eastern Partnership countries.

Heads of the research field: Piret Ehin, Stefano Braghiroli, Edgars Eihmanis, Thomas Linsenmaier, Maili Vilson

Affiliated staff: Edgars Eihmanis, Thomas Linsenmaier, Maili Vilson, Thomas Linsenmaier, Sandra Hagelin

Governance and Public Administration

In this group, three broad research themes are engaged with. First, recent innovations in the formats of public governance are studied from the perspectives of governance networks, (ICT-enabled) co-production of public services, and polycentric governance arrangements. Research under this heading concentrates on both effectiveness and democratic credibility of various public service designs. Second, good governance promotion and public sector institutional reforms in non-democratic and democratizing countries are studied with an emphasis on the EU’s Eastern Neighborhood. Projects under this heading aim to investigate why certain institutional reforms succeed or fail in diverse institutional contexts and match various reform environments with distinct assistance strategies for evidence-based policymaking and implementation. Third, a separate stream of scholarship focuses on issues and challenges in Estonian public administration. Scholarship under this heading centers on designing and implementing various public policies, programs, and initiatives in Estonia, covering areas like public participation, evidence-based policy-making, collaborative models, service design, etc.

Heads of the research field: Kristiina Tõnnisson, Kristina Muhhina

E-governance and Digital Public Services

Research and applied research in E-governance and digital public services focus on three core domains. First on digital participation in general and remote Internet voting in particular, including how this voting technology diffuses, who is more likely to use it and how and what exactly affects trust in this technology. Second, pro-active and life-event services design and personalisation of such services through using machine learning methods on integrated datasets. This includes using process generated data to estimate service impact and the automation of said assessments for service owners. Third, what administrative and technical barriers need to be overcome to build cross-border digital services and how to design the impact assessment of such services.

Heads of the research field: Mihkel Solvak, Vincent Homburg

Affiliated staff: Andres Võrk, Taavi Unt, Peeter Leets, Stefan Dedovic, Bogdan Romanov, Art Alishani, Logan Carmichael, Biao He, Piret Ehin

ECePS ERA Chair of e-governance and digital public services
Center of IT Impact Studies

Applied Social Science Research

RAKE webpage

Behavioural Policy and Financial Well-Being

Applying behavioural insights in policymaking – designing choice architecture in a way that nudges individuals towards the 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. 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.

Head of the research field: Leonore Riitsalu

Affiliated staff: Kristjan Pulk, Pirjo Turk

Human-centred approach for increasing financial well-being of individuals and societies