Dr. Stanislav Markus is Associate Professor of International Business and Business Partnership Foundation Fellow at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. Professor Markus received his PhD from Harvard University and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the Moore School, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He has also spent time in visiting capacity at the Guanghua School of Management of Peking University and at the University of California in San Diego.
Professor Markus works on political risk, non-market strategy, and the political economy of development in the post-Soviet space and in emerging markets more broadly. He explores the interactions between business and state, especially with respect to property rights, corporate governance, stakeholder engagement, lobbying, corruption, expropriation, regulatory enforcement, party finance, and institution building. One of his current projects analyzes an original dataset of super-rich Ukrainian tycoons and their political strategies aimed at maximizing corporate wealth.
His book – Property, Predation, and Protection (Cambridge University Press, 2015) – was awarded the 2016 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research by the International Social Science Council and the European Consortium for Political Research. The book outlines the structure of political risk to firms in Russia and Ukraine as well as the strategies used by firms to neutralize such risk.
His research has been published or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals including World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, Daedalus, and Polity. His research has been recognized through various awards including the Luebbert Award for Best Article in Comparative Politics (from the American Political Science Association); the Wilson Center Fellowship (from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.); the Harvard Academy Fellowship (from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies); and the Jean Monnet Fellowship (from the European University Institute in Florence).
Professor Markus has lived in Russia, Ukraine, China, and several West European countries. He has native fluency in Russian and German, proficiency in French and Ukrainian, and a basic understanding of Mandarin.