Özlem ElgÜn (2006 - 2007)

Turkey

Özlem is from Turkey. She graduated cum laude with a BA from Smith College, in Massachusetts. As an undergraduate at Smith, she received the Ruth Dietrich Tuttle Prize and the Catherine K. Wilder Award to attend the International Symposium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in The Netherlands. She also spent a semester in Washington, D.C., working at the Population Institute. Her research interests in the field of international conflict range from the causes of military coups d’état to the conflict behavior of military regimes. She has presented and co-presented papers at several conferences, including the Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, and undergone rigorous research training, including from The Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models Summer Institute, at Washington University. As a teaching assistant, Özlem helped teach classes in international political economy, international relations, and game theory.

While a Sauvé Scholar, she worked on research papers and subsequently presented them at a number of conferences and talks. She also prepared her dissertation proposal Authoritarian Regimes, Institutions of Leadership Tenure and Succession, and Conflict Behavior and successfully defended it in May 2007, and co-authored a paper  which was accepted for publication in the September 2007 issue of the Political Research Quarterly. Özlem also “discussed my work with a number of other scholars, who were not academicians but were pursuing careers in international relations, and really received very useful feedback. It was a fruitful year to say the least.”

She is currently (2009) completing her dissertation for her PhD in Political Science (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.) while teaching as a lecturer at the University of Nebraska.

Abut her dissertation, Özlem says:“In answering the question of what shapes conflict related decisions, much theoretical work has been developed within the context of democracies. However, authoritarian leaders and the incentives and constraints shaping their decisions remain theoretically elusive.Today, many leaders in the nondemocratic or semi-democratic settings are trying to achieve constitutional change in order to extend the length of their tenure, or to remove particular constraints imposed on their decision making. There are many recent examples. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been trying to pass a referendum that eliminates term limits. The Russian parliament recently voted to extend the presidential term from four to six years, which paves the way for an early comeback by Vladimir Putin. It is important to explore the role of institutions of tenure and succession in shaping authoritarian leaders’ decisions. This is what I am trying to accomplish in my dissertation.”