M. Steven Fish

Professor of Political Science

Email: sfish@berkeley.edu
Phone: (510) 643-1943
Office Location: 744 Barrows
Office Hours: Th 5:15-7:15
Spring 2008 Course: PS137C Democracy and Its Alternatives in The Developing World

Professor Fish

Professor Fish received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1993. His research and teaching interests include post-Soviet politics, democratization and regime change, and general comparative politics. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on these topics. He is the author of Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1995) and a coauthor of Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2001). He has also published articles in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Current History, Diplomatic History, East European Constitutional Review, East European Politics and Societies, Europe-Asia Studies, The Journal of Communist Studies, Journal of Democracy, Peace and Change, Post-Soviet Affairs, Slavic Review, World Politics and numerous edited volumes.


Course Information available as PDF
    PS137C: Democracy and its Alternatives in the Developing World
  • Syllabus

Some Recent Publications available as PDF

Winner, Best Book Prize, Comparative Democratization section, American Political Science Association

"This is an important work, and should be read both by Russia specialists and those interested in comparative democratization. It is very well written and its presentation is easy to follow, making it amenable for undergraduate course use as well. With this book, Fish has raised the bar for future work on Russian politics."
---Perspectives on Politics

"All serious scholars of contemporary Russia should engage with what Fish has written here, in what is undoubtedly one of the book books on Russia today." ---International Affairs


Cover of Democracy From Scratch


"This book does a superb job of deparochializing Soviet and post-Soviet studies. But more importantly, Fish sheds new theoretical light on the dynamic of the transition from ideocratic authoritarianism…Elegantly written, conceptually original, and intellectually provocative, Fish's book is a most illuminating contribution to the growing body of scholarship on political democratization and the problematic transitions from state socialism."
---American Political Science Review

"A theoretically sophisticated, original, and convincing account of the emergence of the democratic opposition in the Gorbachev period and after, and the reasons for its continuing weakness, Democracy from Scratch is one of the most important contributions to the political science of the new Russia yet published. It questions much conventional wisdom and should reshape important debates."
---Europe-Asia Studies


Cover of Democracy From Scratch

Charles and Louise Travers
Department of Political Science
210 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1950

Phone: 642-6323
Fax: 642-9515
psfront@berkeley.edu