Mark R. Beissinger is Henry W. Putnam Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He previously served on the faculties of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University. His main fields of interest are social movements, revolutions, nationalism, state-building, and imperialism, with special reference to the former Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, Beissinger is author or editor of six books: Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power (Harvard University Press, 1988); The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society (Westview, 1988); Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia Compared (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge University Press, 2002); Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (Princeton University Press, 2022). Beissinger's recent writings have dealt with such topics as individual participation in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions in 2011, the impact of new social media on opposition movements in autocratic regimes, the role of human error in revolutions, Russian imperialism in Eurasia, civil society and the resistance to democratic backsliding, the relationship between nationalism and democracy, and the evolving character of revolutionary contention. His book Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State received multiple awards, including the 2003 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award (now known as the Merze Tate–Elinor Ostrom Outstanding Book Award) presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book published in the United States in the field of government, politics, or international affairs, and the 2003 Mattei Dogan Award presented by the Society for Comparative Research for the best book published in the field of comparative research.  His book The Revolutionary City won the 2023 Gregory Luebbert Best Book Award from the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association for the best book in comparative politics published over the past two years.

Selected Publications

The Revolutionary City:  Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2022)

Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe [jointly edited with Stephen Kotkin] Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Comparative Politics Series], 2002).

"Conventional’ and ‘Virtual’ Civil Societies in Autocratic Regimes,” Comparative Politics 49, 3 (April 2017), pp. 351-371.

(with Amaney Jamal and Kevin Mazur) “Explaining Divergent Revolutionary Coalitions: Regime Strategies and the Structuring of Participation in the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,” Comparative Politics 48, 1 (2015), pp. 1-24.

"The Semblance of Democratic Revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution,” American Political Science Review 107, 3 (August 2013), pp. 574-592.

“Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions,” Perspectives on Politics (June 2007), pp. 259-276.

Selected Honors and Awards

Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award 

Mattei Dogan Award; Award for Best Book on European Politics, presented by the Organized Section on European Politics and Society of the American Political Science Association

Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin

Member, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Gregory Luebbert Best Book Award