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Fodei Batty
Ph.D. Candidate

Primary Field: Comparative Politics
Secondary Field: American Politics
Website

Dissertation: What Role for Ethnicity? Political Behavior and Mobilization in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone and Liberia

Fodeis dissertation is on post-conflict political behavior and mobilization in Liberia and Sierra Leone. He examines the notion that ethnic identity underpins the voting calculus in "low-information" societies. His teaching and research interests are in Comparative Politics including democratization, development and modernization, Third World politics, ethnic politics, post-conflict political behavior and African politics. Fodei has also taught courses in critical thinking and American Government. He is the recipient of a Jennings Randolph Peace Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the United States Institute of Peace under which he spent two years conducting fieldwork in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Fodei has carried out consultancy work for the U.K. Department for International Development and other international agencies.

Mihaiela Ristei
Ph.D. Candidate

Primary Field: Comparative Politics
Secondary Field: American Politics
Website

Dissertation: Competing Formal and Informal Institutions in a Democratizing Setting: An Institutional Analysis of Corruption in Romania

Mihaiela's dissertation focuses on the relationship between formal institutions and corruption, which she analyzes as a set of informal institutions, in Romania in the decade prior to the country's accession to the European Union. More specifically, she is testing the capacity of formal institutions to change the informal institution of corruption and thus reduce corruption in four sectors: the judiciary, customs, health care, and public procurement. She has spent one year in Romania conducting field research, where she was affiliated with the Romanian Academic Society. Throughout that period, she collaborated with anticorruption experts, public officials, and NGOs activists dedicated to curbing corruption. Her research and teaching interests are in Comparative Politics including democratization and democratic consolidation, formal and informal institutions, political representation, politics of former communist countries, and Qualitative Research Methods. Mihaiela has presented research papers at professional conferences, such as the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, and the international conference and seminar on anticorruption in Passau, Germany. She is the recipient of the WMU Dissertation Writing Fellowship and the Gwen Frostic Fellowship for 2008-09.