Lenka BuÅ¡tÃková grew up in Prague and holds a PhD in political science from Duke University and MA degrees from Charles University, Central European University and Harvard University. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University.
Her research focuses on party politics, voting behavior, clientelism, and state capacity, with special reference to Eastern Europe.
Her book, Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press), demonstrates that far right parties mobilize against politically ascendant minorities. It received the Davis Center Book Prize in political and social studies (2020).
She is the recipient of the 2015 Best Article Prize, awarded by the American Political Science Association’s European Politics and Society Section, for her article “Revenge of the Radical Right”, and also the recipient of the 2017 Best Paper Prize, awarded by the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section, for her paper co-authored with Cristina Corduneanu-Huci “Patronage, Trust and State Capacity: The Historical Trajectories of Clientelism”.
She is currently serving as an editor of East European Politics.
