Kathryn Stoner

Kathryn Stoner

Kathryn Stoner, MA, PhD

  • Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
  • Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford
  • Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Hoover Institution

FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-1820 (voice)
(650) 724-2996 (fax)

Biography

Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. 

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013);  "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010);  "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997); and "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, 2021).

She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

publications

Working Papers
March 2009

Domestic and International Influences on the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and Russia's Initial Transition to Democracy (1993)

Author(s)
cover link Domestic and International Influences on the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and Russia's Initial Transition to Democracy (1993)
Working Papers
May 2006

When the Wave Hits a Shoal: The Internal and External Dimensions of Russia's Turn Away from Democracy

Author(s)
cover link When the Wave Hits a Shoal: The Internal and External Dimensions of Russia's Turn Away from Democracy

Current research

In The News

Russia globe
Q&As

Don’t underestimate Russia’s capabilities, influence on the global stage, says Stanford scholar

Moscow is more capable of disrupting global world order than it is given credit for, Kathryn Stoner argues.
cover link Don’t underestimate Russia’s capabilities, influence on the global stage, says Stanford scholar