Book Manuscript The Power of Ethnic Groups (under review by Oxford University Press) – answers why some Soviet successor states experienced secessionist civil war after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I use structured comparison to detail social-political histories of Russia, Moldova, and Ukraine and fuzzy sets to assess twenty-four explanations of secessionist violence across the full range of former Soviet cases. A key finding of the book is that following state collapse, ethnic civil war will happen only in countries where a highly coherent ethnic group senses an existential threat from the state and is then able to respond to the threat violently due to its well-developed ethnic bonds. The fuzzy set truth table for the book may be found here.
Publications (selected) Refereed Journals: Feinstein, S. (2025) “Measuring and Validating the Ukrainian Ethnic Coherence Instrument” Post-Soviet Affairs
Feinstein, S., Poleacovschi, C., Nelson, T., Smith, K. (2025) " Microaggressions in Engineering Education: Where are they happening? Who are the targets and perpetrators?" ASCE Journal of Civil Engineering Education
Estes, K. and Feinstein, S. (Accepted 2024) “External Threat and the Contours of Ukrainian National Identity” Europe-Asia Studies