By Robert Strenge, WSU News
PULLMAN, Wash. – Washington State University sociologist Mikhail Balaev has received a two-year National Science Foundation award of $170,000 to study political and corporate ties in the American government.
The grant will enable him to collect and analyze data related to the professional affiliations of presidential appointees since 1978 in order to create a network model of the ties between corporations and executive government.
The study is intended to analyze the level of corporate influence in the government through creation of a dynamic time-series network model of the political power elite in the U.S.
Balaev is a macro-sociologist with broad academic interests in economic and political sociology.
Growing up in Soviet Russia, he witnessed the massive socio-economic change brought by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which inspired his interest in sociology. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Oregon in 2008.
Contact:
Mikhail Balaev, assistant professor, WSU Department of Sociology, 509-372-7119, mikhail.balaev@wsu.edu