HURI Research Fellow  at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

September 2023 - April 2024
Supported jointly by a VUIAS Fellowship Abroad and by HURI with the Alex Woskob Family Foundation Endowment Fund

HURI Research Project

Legislators in Networks: Corruption, Clientelism, and Law-Making

How do legislative networks affect politics? This project examines the effect of lawmakers' ties in the Ukrainian parliament on corruption, political survival, and law-making activities. In addition to conventional party and fraction ties, Ukrainian legislators tend to form networks through unelected parliamentary staff where personal legislative assistants serve as human links between members of parliament. Dr. Vlasenko suggests that a higher number of legislator's ties within such networks is associated with increased returns to office through participation in corruption schemes, better chances of reelection, and higher frequency of legislative co-sponsorship. This effect of legislative networks exists due to proliferation of clientelist relations aided by Ukrainian oligarchs. The study implies that rent-seeking and vote-buying behavior is made possible by low levels of accountability and transparency which are typical for countries with weak democratic institutions.

Biography

Dr. Anastasiia Vlasenko is a HURI Research Fellow at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, jointly supported by HURI and by the Virtual Ukraine Institute for Advanced Study with a VUIAS Fellowship Abroad. She is also a visiting professor at Kyiv School of Economics and recent postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. She studies legislative politics and democratization with specialization in politics of Ukraine. Her monograph project, ‘Legislators in Networks: Corruption, Clientelism, and Law Making’ investigates how legislative networks formed through parliamentary aids can affect rent-seeking behavior in the Ukrainian parliament. Vlasenko is particularly interested in the study of corruption, legislative politics, transitional period reforms, propaganda, electoral politics, and forecasting. Her research has been published in the Journal of Politics. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Florida State University in 2022, M.A. in Political Science from Florida State University in 2018, M.A. in International Relations from New York University in 2016, and M.Sc. in European Affairs from Lund University in 2013, and B.A. in Political Science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2011. In 2020-2021, she worked at the Hertie School in Berlin as a visiting researcher. In 2014-2016, Vlasenko was a Fulbright scholar at New York University. At Florida State University, New York University, and Kyiv School of Economics, she has been teaching courses on comparative politics, public policy, quantitative methods, and post-Soviet studies.