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William Zimmerman Professor Emeritus Research Professor, Center for Political Studies Research Scientist, Center for Russian and East European Studies Ph.D., Columbia 4257 ISR 426 Thompson Street (734) 763-1348 wzim@umich.edu Research Interests Comparative Government and Politics World Politics/International Relations

Professor Zimmerman’s research focuses primarily on two main themes: one is a long standing interest in analyzing the links between attitudes to markets, democracy, and foreign policy in Russia, the other concerns the way Russia was, is, or may be in the future a “normal” country. The first is part of a more general inquiry concerning the extent to which findings, based almost entirely on American data, on the role of elites and mass publics transfer to Russian foreign policy. The second constitutes an effort to do a work of synthesis that attempts to impart enhanced rigor to assertions that a country, in this instance, Russia, is or is not a normal country and to place that discussion in the context of a re-examination of the literature on the nature of the Soviet system, assessments of the post-Soviet transformation, and efforts to place contemporary Russia in a comparative context.

• “Normal democracies” and improving how they are measured: the case of Russia” Post-Soviet Affairs, summer 2007 forthcoming
• “Slavophiles and Westernizers redux: Contemporary Russian elite perspectives”  Post-Soviet Affairs, 21, 3, 2005
• The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Mass and Elite Perspectives, 1993-2000. (Princeton University Press, 2002).
• "The Soviet Union and the Russian Federation: A Natural Experiment in Environmental Compliance," in Environmental Compliance with International Treaties: A Crossnational Comparison ed. Harold K. Jacobson and Edith Brown-Weiss (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
• (with Judith Kullberg) “Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems of Russian Democracy,” World Politics,  51, 3 (April 1999).