Dr. Aleksandra Sznajder Lee is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA, USA. After receiving her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 2006, she spent the 2006-07 academic year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Aleksandra's research focuses on the politics of economic reform and industrial restructuring in transition economies and on the resulting types of capitalism that emerge in the postcommunist region. Her current book project examines the mechanisms through which politicians use state resources to fulfill their political objectives while balancing between domestic and external pressures for either policy stability or change in the steel sector across four postcommunist countries: Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. In related pieces, she considers the intersection of industrial relations in heavy industry with political and economic reform as well as explores managerial attitudes to restructuring. In a separate project, Aleksandra studies the effect of ruling communist successor parties on the level of economic reform across central and eastern Europe. Aleksandra teaches survey courses on comparative politics, European politics, research methods, as well as more specialized seminars on the political, economic, and social aspects of postcommunist transition.