Grzegorz Ekiert


Grzegorz Ekiert is a Polish sociologist and Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University. He directed the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies from 2012 to 2024.

Career

Ekiert graduated with an MA in sociology from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1980. He received an MA from Harvard University's Department of Sociology in 1987 and completed his PhD in sociology at the same institution in 1991 under the supervision of Theda Skocpol with a thesis titled The State Against Society: The Aftermath of Political Crises in Hungary, 1956–1963, Czechoslovakia, 1968–1976, and Poland, 1981–1989.
Ekiert was a lecturer in sociology at the Jagiellonian University from 1980 to 1984. He joined the faculty of Harvard's Department of Government in 1991. He was the director of Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, the chair of undergraduate concentration in Social Studies and a senior scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
He was Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute, Resident Fellow in Metaforum Institute, University of Leuven, Belgium, member of the Advisory Board of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, External Examiner in Politics, Public Administration and Global Studies at the University of Hong Kong, Jean Monet Fellow at the European University Institute, The 21st Century COE Program Fellow at Hokkaido University, Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at European University Institute and a visiting fellow at Collegio Carlo Alberto.
Ekiert is also Senior Faculty Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Ukrainian Research Institute, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also a member of the Club of Madrid Advisory Committee and a founding member of the Concilium Civitas and Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, Poland. He is a member of several advisory boards in social sciences research institutions and NGOs.

Research and writing

His teaching and research interests focus on comparative politics, regime change and democratization, civil society and social movements, and East European politics and societies. His ongoing work explores patterns of civil society development in new democracies in Central Europe and East Asia, the state of democracy in postcommunist world, the EU membership impact on post-communist democracies, and state mobilized contention in authoritarian and hybrid regimes.
His book Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, written jointly with Jan Kubik, was awarded the Orbis Book prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
He edited the special journal issues of East European Politics and Societies and of Taiwan Journal of Democracy.

Selected publications

Books

The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe, Princeton University Press 1996Rebellious Civil Society. Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, University of Michigan Press 1999Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements, Cambridge University Press 2020

Edited books

Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule, Cambridge University Press, 2003

Articles and book chapters

  • "Contentious Politics in New Democracies: Hungary, the former East Germany, Poland and Slovakia", World Politics, 50.4, pp. 547–581
  • "The State after State Socialism: Poland in Comparative Perspective," in: The Nation-State in Question, ed. John Hall and John Ikenberry, Princeton University Press 2003, pp. 291–320.
  • "Introduction: Academic Boundaries and Path Dependencies Facing The EU's Eastward Enlargement", East European Politics and Societies, special issue, pp. 2–19.
  • "Democracy in Postcommunist World: An Unending Quest", East European Politics and Societies, 21.1, pp. 1–24.
  • "Dilemmas of Europeanization: Eastern and Central Europe after the EU Enlargement", Acta Slavica Iaponica, 25, pp. 1–28
  • "The End of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe: The Last Middle Class Revolution?", Political Power and Social Theory, 21, pp. 99–123.
  • "Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe 100 Years On", East European Politics and Societies, 27.1, pp. 88–105
  • "Myths and Realities of Civil Society", Journal of Democracy, 25.1, pp. 46–58.
  • “Three Generations of Research on Post-Communist Politics – A Sketch”, in East European Politics and Societies, 29.2, pp. 323–337.
  • "Civil Society and Three Dimensions of Inequality in Post-1989 Poland", Comparative Politics, 49.3, pp. 331–350
  • "The Study of Protest Politics in Eastern and Central Europe in the Search of Theory", in Routledge Handbook of East European Politics, ed. Adam Fagan and Petr Kopecky, Routledge 2018, pp. 197–211.
  • "Civil Society Approach", in Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformations, ed. Wolfgang Merkel, Raj Kollmorgen and Hans-Jurgen Wagener, Oxford University Press 2019, pp. 151–160
  • "Civil Society as a Threat to Democracy,” in The Power of Populism and People, ed. Nathan Stoltzfus and Chris Osmar, Bloomsbury Academic, London 2021, pp. 53–71.
  • "Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Twenty-First Century", in Post-Pandemic Features: Sociology of Crisis Experience in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Kaja Gadowska and Anna Giza, Brill Publishers 2024, pp. 215–230.