Dimitar Gueorguiev is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where he teaches Chinese politics, comparative institutions, research methods, and foreign policy. Dr. Gueorguiev is also a China fellow with the Wilson Center. When it comes to the Chinese context, Dr. Gueorguiev’s research centers on regime strategies and institutions for harnessing public participation in the service of political control. Outside China, his work focuses on elections, corruption, and foreign investment. Gueorguiev’s articles have been published in leading journals like the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. His co-authored book, China’s Governance Puzzle (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explains how China’s ruling Communist Party reduced corruption and addressed longstanding public grievances with the help of transparency and public participation. His most recent book Retrofitting Leninism (Oxford University Press, 2021) explains how technology-enhanced public engagement can facilitate authoritarian control.
Dr. Gueorguiev’s current research explores foreign policy hawks, in D.C. and in Beijing, and how they drive U.S.-China relations by way of influence on political elites and the public at large. This research relies heavily on survey measures and experiments designed to isolate hawkish sentiments and builds on the “China Policy Barometer,” a five-year study aimed at gauging the Chinese public on prominent public policy issues, which is currently being refashioned to focus on foreign policy with the help of a Wilson Center China fellowship.
Dr. Gueorguiev is also deeply invested and involved on issues related to censorship, self-censorship, and academic freedom. He is currently working with the Association of Asian Studies to organize and edit a volume on “new threats to academic freedom in Asia.”