CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

[email protected]

Research Interests
Democracy promotion, comparative democratization, and the relationship between political and economic reform in the postcommunist world.

Michael McFaul is the former director of CDDRL and deputy director of FSI at Stanford University. He also is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directs the Iran Democracy Project, as well as Professor of Political Science, and CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member at Stanford University. 

Dr. McFaul is also a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Eurasia Foundation, the Firebird Fund, Freedom House, the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX).

He is the author and editor of several monographs including, with Anders Aslund, Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (2006) with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform (2004); with Kathryn Stoner Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (2004); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (2003); Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (2001); and with Tova Perlmutter, Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (1995). He serves on the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Post-Soviet Affairs, and The Washington Quarterly. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

Professor McFaul comments frequently in the national media on American foreign policy and international politics. He has appeared on all major television and radio networks, while his opeds have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Moscow Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Weekly Standard.

Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his Ph.D. in International Relations in 1991.

Dr. McFaul is currently on leave serving as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he is considered to be one of the top five national security players in government (The Washington Independent).

Other affiliations
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace