Tsveta Petrova, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York

Tsveta Petrova received her PhD in political science from Cornell University in 2011 and then completed postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University's Davis Center and Columbia University's Harriman Institute. Petrova is the recipient of research awards from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies and the Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership at the University of Pittsburgh. She has also earned many fellowships and grants from organizations including the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, IREX, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Council for European Studies. Her work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Democracy, and the Review of International Affairs.

This book theorizes a mechanism underlying regime-change waves, the deliberate efforts of diffusion entrepreneurs to spread a particular regime and regime-change model across state borders. Why do only certain states and nonstate actors emerge as such entrepreneurs? Why, how, and how effectively do they support regime change abroad? To answer these questions, the book studies the entrepreneurs behind the third wave of democratization, with a focus on the new eastern European democracies – members of the European Union. The study finds that it is not the strongest democracies nor the democracies trying to ensure their survival in a neighborhood of nondemocracies that become the most active diffusion entrepreneurs. It is, instead, the countries where the organizers of the domestic democratic transitions build strong solidarity movements supporting the spread of democracy abroad that do. The book also draws parallels between their activism abroad and their experiences with democratization and democracy assistance at home.

Represents a new direction in the study of Western democracy assistance by focusing on the role of new democracies that were former recipients of such assistance in promoting democratic change abroad

Adds agents and their motivations and innovations to the literature on the diffusion of democracy

Draws parallels between democracy promotion abroad and democratization experiences and democratic assistance at home

Emphasizes the role of non-Western actors in the propagation and future of the liberal norms that are foundational to the current international order