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Faculty Fellow Michael Coppedge will be a senior visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in the spring of 2021.
During the residential fellowship, he plans to write a book, provisionally titled International Influences on Democratization, that models how countries impact other nations’ levels of democracy through various international networks. According to Coppedge, those networks include linking geographic neighbors, military allies, regional organization members, colonies and colonizers, senders and recipients of migrants, trading and investment partners, countries with shared languages or religions, and countries that exchange of information and values. The models will also test for the impact of external shocks such as interstate war and global economic cycles.
Coppedge said he also hopes to write several shorter pieces on the subject with current and former graduate students affiliated with Kellogg, including Lucia Tiscornia, Benjamin Denison, and Paul Friesen.
“Although much of the research is quantitative analysis that I could do anywhere, I want to add case studies from several regions, and for this purpose, I am looking forward to exchanging ideas with the outstanding faculty at Vanderbilt specializing in Latin American or African politics,” he said, including Elizabeth Zechmeister and former Kellogg Visiting Fellows Mitch Seligson, Noam Lupu and Kristin Michelitch, and former guest scholar Keith Weghorst.
“In addition, one of the attractions is that this fellowship will enable me to live in my home state of Tennessee for the first time in 45 years,” he said.