Name: Incentives & Adaptation: Regional Governance in Contemporary Russia
Start: 2026-03-10T16:00:00-05:00
Location: Kansas Memorial Union

Incentives & Adaptation: Regional Governance in Contemporary Russia

The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) and the Department of Political Science invite you to "Incentives & Adaptation: Regional Governance in Contemporary Russia" March 10 at 4:00pm in the English Room of the Kansas Memorial Union. The talk will be given by Dr. Dmitriy Vorobyev (European Research University, Ostrava, Czech Republic), who is a KU POLS Ketzel speaker.
Russia’s regional governors operate within a complex web of incentives such as federal expectations, electoral pressures, local demands, and personal career ambitions. This talk explores how these forces shape their behavior and policy choices, from budget allocation and corruption to political loyalty and electoral management. By examining how regional leaders respond to shifting institutional and political environments, the talk highlights what these dynamics reveal about the functioning of the Russian governance system. Drawing on insights from economics, political science, and recent interdisciplinary research, we will discuss how incentives at the top translate into everyday governance across Russia’s regions.
Dmitriy Vorobyev is a microeconomist with research interests in political economy, public economics, and the economics of information. He holds a PhD in Economics from CERGE-EI (Czech Republic) and an MA in mathematics and computer science from Baltic Federal University (Russia). After graduation, Dmitriy pursued an academic career as an assistant professor of economics at Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg, Russia) and as a research associate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, before joining European Research University in 2020.
Dmitriy’s research focuses on the role of information in political processes, the efficiency of political institutions, regional governance, and corruption. A number of his papers, both theoretical and empirical, have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Public Choice, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. He also teaches a variety of courses, including microeconomics, game theory, information economics, and public economics.