Ketevan Bolkvadze

Political science

About

Ketevan Bolkvadze is a Senior lecturer (Universitetslektor) at the Department of Political Science in Lund. 

She has previously been a Crafoord fellow at Harvard University (2023) and a visiting scholar at Uppsala University (2015). Ketevan holds a PhD from the University of Gothenburg (2018).  

Her research interests include democratization and hybrid regimes, justice and security reforms, as well as environmental politics. More broadly, she’s interested in how to make democratic governance work, how to incentivize politicians to shift from short to long time-horizons and prompt them to provide better public services to their citizens.

Her work has appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, and Democratization, among others. Ketevan is a recipient of several large-scale research grants, including from Horizon Europe, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, the Crafoord Foundation, and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

In addition to her academic work, Ketevan also serves (or has served) as a consultant for Freedom House (NiT Advisor), the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (External Consultant), and the Georgian Institute of Politics (Board Member).

Publications

Journal articles and book reviews:

Bolkvadze, K., & Sümeghy, D. (2024). Misconduct by private security officers and trust in the police: evidence from a natural experiment in Sweden. Policing and Society, 1-21. 

Bolkvadze, K. (2023). "Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America. By Yanilda María González." Book review, forthcoming in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, online first. 

Berglund, C., & Bolkvadze, K. (2022). Sons of the Soil or Servants of the Empire? Profiling the Guardians of Separatism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Problems of Post-Communism. E-pub ahead of print. 

Bolkvadze, K. (2020). To Reform or to Retain? Politicians’ Incentives to Clean Up Corrupt Courts in Hybrid Regimes. Comparative Political Studies, 53(3-4), 500-530.

Povitkina, M., & Bolkvadze, K. (2019). Fresh pipes with dirty water: How quality of government shapes the provision of public goods in democracies. European Journal of Political Research, 58(4), 1191-1212.

Bolkvadze, K. (2017). Hitting the saturation point: unpacking the politics of bureaucratic reforms in hybrid regimes. Democratization, 24(4), 751-769.

Bolkvadze, K. (2016). Cherry picking EU conditionality: Selective compliance in Georgia’s hybrid regime. Europe-Asia Studies, 68(3), 409-440.

Chapters in edited volumes:

Bolkvadze, Ketevan & Lebanidze, Bidzina (2016) ‘Building Security Community in the Neighbourhood? Evidence from Georgia’, in Rieker, Pernille (ed.) External Governance as Security Community Building the limits and potential of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Bolkvadze, Ketevan & Naylor, Rachel (2015) ‘Popular and Elite Perceptions of the EU in Georgia’, in Bachmann, Veit & Müller, Martin (eds.) Neighbours Looking In: Perceptions of the EU in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Palgrave Macmillan.

Bolkvadze, Ketevan, Bachmann, Veit & Müller, Martin (2014) ‘I am Georgian, therefore I am European: Comparing elite and public perceptions of EUrope in Georgia’, in Chaban, N. & Holland, M. (eds.) Communicating Europe in Times of Crisis: External Perceptions of the European Union. Palgrave Macmillan.

Working Papers:

Povitkina, Marina & Bolkvadze, Ketevan (2017) “Democracy, corruption and public goods provision: the case of water management”. V-Dem Working paper No. 62. Presented at Anxieties of Democracy Workshop, the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, May 21-23, 2017.

Bolkvadze, Ketevan (2015) “Efficiency without Autonomy? Bureaucratic Reforms in Georgia’s Hybrid Regime.” QoG Working Paper No. 2015/17. Quality of Government Institute, Sweden.

Policy reports/papers:

Bolkvadze, Ketevan (2022) Rule of Law as Political Insurance: why pro-European reforms are in the GD’s best interest. Georgian Institute of Politics. 

Bolkvadze, Ketevan (2013) Drams, Laris and Politics: Political Funding Regulations in Armenia and Georgia,Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy NIMD/Clingendael Institute, The Hague.