Seva Gunitsky
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Areas of interest
- External sources of domestic reforms
- Great power rivalries and hegemonic transitions
- Regime waves and democratic diffusion
- International relations theory
Biography
Main bio
Seva Gunitsky is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. His work examines how international forces like war and globalization shape democracy and domestic reforms. He is the author of Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press), selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the best books of 2017. Some of his work has appeared in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as popular outlets like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. A native of Russia, Seva is a graduate of Columbia University and a former post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University.
Select publications
- A Long History of Betrayal: Why Washington keeps encouraging foreign uprisings—and then walking away. Foreign Policy, January 16, 2026.
- The Two Mearsheimers: Ukraine and the Tragedy of Offensive Realism. International Studies Review 27(4) (December 2025)
- Anna Lysenko and Seva Gunitsky. The Invisible Front: Ukraine’s IT Army and the Evolution of Cyber Resistance. Post-Soviet Affairs, 41(4):263-288 (November 2025)
- Kyungwon Suh, Ryan Griffiths, and Seva Gunitsky. Hegemonic Shocks and Patterns of Secession. International Interactions 51(4):568-597 (October 2025)
- Prosecuting the Powerful: Historical data shows putting leaders on trial is a healthy democratic practice. With Semuhi Sinanoglu and Sahib Jafarov. Foreign Policy, October 28, 2025.
- The New Price of Statehood. With Ryan D. Griffiths. Foreign Affairs, May 20, 2025.
- The Forgotten Dystopian Vision That Explains Trump’s Canada Obsession. The New Republic, March 31, 2025.
- After Putin. Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2022.
- The Bully in the Bubble. With Adam Casey. Foreign Affairs, February 4, 2022.
- There’s Plenty of Blame to Go Around on Ukraine. Foreign Policy, January 24, 2022.
- Autocratic Diffusion and Great Power Politics. In Before and After the Fall: World Politics and the End of the Cold War, edited by Nuno P. Monteiro and Fritz Bartel, Cambridge University Press, December 2021
- Democracies Can’t Blame Putin for Their Disinformation Problem. Foreign Policy, April 21, 2020.
- The Weakness of the Strongman. With Adam Casey. Foreign Affairs, March 24, 2020.
- The Great Online Convergence: Digital Authoritarianism Comes to Democracies. War on the Rocks, February 19, 2020.
- Rival Visions of Parsimony. International Studies Quarterly 63.3, September 2019, p.707-716
- Seva Gunitsky and Andrei Tsygankov. “The Wilsonian Bias in the Study of Russian Foreign Policy.” Problems of Post-Communism 65.6, Nov/Dec 2018, p. 385-393
- “Democratic Waves in Historical Perspective.” Perspectives on Politics 16.3, September 2018, p. 634-651.
- Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics). March 2017.
- “Corrupting the Cyber-Commons: Social Media as a Tool of Autocratic Resilience.” Perspectives on Politics 13.1, March 2015, p. 42-54.
- “From Shocks to Waves: Hegemonic Transitions and Democratization in the Twentieth Century.” International Organization 68.3, Summer 2014, p.561-97.
- “Lost in the Gray Zone: Competing Measures of Democracy in the Former Soviet Republics.” In Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, edited by Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder. 2015, Cambridge University Press.
- “Complexity and Theories of Change in International Politics.” International Theory 5.1, March 2013, p. 35-63.
Awards & recognition
- SSHRC Insight Grant (2019-2024)
- Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (2015-17). Co-PI with Ryan Griffiths (PI, University of Sydney) and Charles Butcher (co-PI, PRIO)
- Fung Global Fellowship, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University
- Connaught New Research Award, University of Toronto, (2014-15)
- Departmental Institutional Grant; University of Toronto; Department of Political Science (2012), Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (2013)
- Research Grant, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, 2012
- Connaught Start-up Grant, University of Toronto, 2011
Courses
POL 2200
Core Course - International Politics (Ph.D. seminar)
POL 486/2205
Democracy and the International System (undergraduate/graduate seminar)
PCJ 460/461
Causes of War and Peace (undergraduate seminar)
POL 208
Introduction to International Relations (undergraduate lecture course)
