The V-Dem Regional Center for Eastern Europe and Russia was founded in May 2015 as the first regional research center within the worldwide V-Dem network. Its mission is to conduct research on democracy and democratization in the post-communist world focusing on the V-Dem database. The Center is supported by a Personal Research Grant (PUT) awarded by the Estonian Research Council to Vello Pettai, Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Government and Politics.
The Center holds an annual October conference on V-Dem research related to Eastern Europe and Russia. The center invites scholars to contact with their work on V-Dem to promote its dissemination within the regional academic community.
Research
The V-Dem Regional Center conducts research on democracy and democratization in Eastern Europe and Russia, focusing on the Varieties of Democracy dataset. For scholars of Eastern Europe and Russia, the V-Dem database offers unprecedented opportunities to study democracy and democratization in these regions. In addition to time-series analyses of democratic change from 1900 to 2012, we can also drill down into individual components of democracy and examine constellations of democracy in particular countries or regions. Because the V-Dem database encompasses the entire world, we can also conduct cross-regional comparisons in order to better flesh out the particularities of Eastern Europe and Russia.
At the V-Dem Regional Center for Eastern Europe and Russia, current focus is on the analysis of democratic development in the Baltic region during both the interwar period and following re-independence in 1991. Preliminary research results will be presented during the annual October conference.