Sarah Wilson Sokhey

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of Political Science

The Ohio State University

 

For a PDF version of my CV, please click here.  

 

2014 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall

Сolumbus, OH 43212-1373

sokhey.3@osu.edu 

 

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science with a specialization in comparative politics, political economy, the politics of policy reform, and the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. In the fall of 2010, I will be joining the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder as an Assistant Professor of Political Science.

Dissertation

The Politics of Policy Reform: The Role of Private Business in Post-Communist Pension Reform

Abstract: Debates over post-communist pension reform activated a wide array of groups with competing interests in the overhaul of a long-standing system of social support. Accounts of these reforms, however, have largely overlooked one of the most important players—the private investment sector. Privatizing pensions would be financially beneficial for this sector as it promised to increase domestic savings by allowing mandatory retirement contributions to be privately managed and invested. What role, if any, did the investment sector play in the design and adoption of private pension systems in the post-communist countries? Cross-national empirical analysis based on the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia confirms that the private sector was influential, but indicates that its influence depended on the domestic political and economic context. By leveraging differences across three distinct periods of Russian politics, I lay out more precisely when and why the private investment sector had an impact on pension policy outcomes. The central finding is that resources and organizational capacity do not always directly translate into policy outcomes, and that success is contingent on factors such as the level of democracy, the presence or absence of international organizations, and the pressure posed by ageing populations. Furthermore, I argue that it is critical to consider the role of interest groups in all three components of the policy process—problems, policies, and politics—to understand when and whether they are influential (Kingdon 1984 [2003]). The private investment sector, for instance, was influential in generating and selecting proposals, although it was not a key player in problem recognition and was less influential in subsequent political battles over implementation. By clarifying our theoretical understanding of who governs and why, this research offers important theoretical insights into the role of interest groups in the politics of policy reform.

 

 

This web site was last updated in January 2010.                                        

                  

 

My dissertation committee consists of the following professors:

Professor Timothy Frye (co-chair)

Professor Sarah Brooks (co-chair)

Professor Irfan Nooruddin

Professor Marcus Kurtz