Askat Dukenbaev (PhD candidate) was selected as a fellow of the Charles & Kathleen Manatt Democracy Studies Fellowship at IFES (www.ifes.org) in Washington D.C. for the summer of 2012.  The fellowship provides Askat an opportunity to conduct a research on the topic of his dissertation at IFES’ F. Clifton White Applied Research Center for Democracy and Elections (ARC), and have the benefit of mentorship from IFES’ international election and democracy experts on staff.

Askat's research interests include political participation and democratization, state and nation building, public policy making and public administration reform in the Kyrgyz Republic and other post-Soviet countries. His PhD dissertation is on factors influencing electoral participation and voting behavior in the countries of post-Soviet Central Asia, with a focus on the Kyrgyz Republic (1991 – 2012). He has published on politics, public administration, and higher education of Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, and has regularly commented on pressing public policy issues of Kyrgyzstan in various national and international mass media outlets.