2018 Recipient

The Ed A Hewett Book Prize, established in 1994 and sponsored by the University of Michigan Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe, published in the previous year.

Co-Winner: Sarah Wilson Sokhey
Title: The Political Economy of Pension Policy Reversal in PostCommunist Countries (Cambridge University Press)

Sarah Wilson Sokhey’s The Political Economy of Pension Policy Reversal in PostCommunist Countries examines why pension privatization reforms that spread to different corners of the world came to be reversed in many countries. Demonstrating that moderate reforms were most vulnerable to reversal, Sokhey links such reversals to two key factors: politicians’ desire to access a source of revenue in the short term, and the lack of domestic interest groups invested in the policy. The book combines a large-N, quantitative analysis of global trends in pension policy reversals with careful case studies of Russia, Poland, and Hungary. Sarah Wilson Sokhey’s provocative argument carries well beyond the post-communist context she so persuasively examines. The book’s argument lends further insight into how and why major policy reversals occur in a wide variety of contexts.

Co-Winner: Rachel A. Epstein

Honorable Mention: Regine A. Spector