My research is driven by four interrelated subjects in comparative politics and international relations:

(1) omnibalancing (an international relations concept);

(2) sentiment analysis of political texts;

(3) East Europe-China relations (with a focus on Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia); and

(4) political manipulation.

(1) Omnibalancing

My omnibalancing research seeks to evaluate how regimes (both democratic and autocratic) seek to use their external relations to counter domestic threats to regime survival and remain in power. My work (Braga 2025) revises Steven David’s (1991) formulation of omnibalancing. My revisions remove outdated features of David’s (1991) omnibalancing, add new enabling conditions to the theory, and pairs the evaluation of omnibalancing with explain-outcome process tracing (Beach 2021). I am currently seeking to expand omnibalancing use cases. I want include more cases of omnibalancing in developed democracies. I am also looking to expand more cases from the post-Soviet space, such as from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

(2) Sentiment Analysis

My sentiment analysis work develops Russian language processing pipelines to measure and track political communication in Russian-speaking political contexts. So far, my work (Braga 2025) has been limited to official political speeches. However, I am hoping to expand this to Russian and Chinese social media.

(3) East Europe-China Relations

My research on East Europe–China relations primarily examines the uneven penetration of Chinese economic and authoritarian learning influences in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia (Braga 2025; Braga & Hall 2019; Braga & Sangar 2020). I am developing a Master’s-level module on Chinese relations with East Europe, post-Communist countries. My past work has focused on how regimes have sought to take advantage of and accommodate China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Braga 2016).

(4) Political Manipulation

Political manipulation is a new area of research, which is a product of my study under Andrew Wilson (2018; 2023) at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. My research investigates how incumbents in electoral authoritarian regimes use political technology (supply-side engineering of politics) to control politics at home and abroad. My research is motivated by the need to understand how democratic politics is being undermined in the dawning multi-order era.

Last Updated: 31 July 2025.