Lenka Bustikova

Lenka Buštíková grew up in Prague and holds a PhD in political science from Duke University and MA degrees from Charles University, Central European University and Harvard University. She is Associate Professor in European Union and Comparative East European Politics at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on party politics, voting behavior, clientelism, and state capacity, with special reference to Eastern Europe. Her book, Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press), demonstrates that far right parties mobilize against politically ascendant minorities. It received the Davis Center Book Prize in political and social studies (2020). Her co-authored element Defection Denied assesses theories about wartime attitudes toward militant groups in Dagestan using survey experiments.

She is the recipient of the 2015 Best Article Prize, awarded by the American Political Science Association's European Politics and Society Section, for her article "Revenge of the Radical Right", and also the recipient of the 2017 Best Paper Prize, awarded by the American Political Science Association's Comparative Democratization Section, for her paper co-authored with Cristina Corduneanu-Huci "Patronage, Trust and State Capacity: The Historical Trajectories of Clientelism". Her research has been supported by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.

She is currently serving as an editor of East European Politics, Cambridge Elements Series on the Politics and Society in Eastern Europe and Eurasia and is an incoming editor of Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party Systems.