Academic Projects
Current Projects
The Post-Western Offshore System (with Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Sciences Po).
Supported by a Columbia–Sciences Po Alliance Joint Projects Grant, this project examines how the global offshore system has evolved since the Panama Papers in 2016. It explores the regulatory divergence within the West on issues related to transparency and anti-kleptocracy measures and how the rise of new secrecy hubs in Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong are reashaping the global geography of financial secrecy. Our research questions include: how has the offshore system has adapted; what role transnational professional enablers play across democratic and authoritarian contexts; and what methods are needed to research these dynamics?
Related Publications:
“The Age of Kleptocracy: Geopolitical Power, Private Gain,” (With Daniel Nexon) Foreign Affairs March/April 2026.
"Global Corruption Would Be Impossible Without Help From the West," ProMarket, September 15, 2025.
"Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: Kleptocracy's Global Fightback Against Liberal Activism" (with John Heathershaw and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira), European Journal of International Relations, 2024.
The UK's Kleptocracy Problem: How Servicing Post-Soviet Elites Weakens the Rule of Law (with John Heathershaw, Tom Mayne and others), Chatham House Research Paper, December 2021.
Authoritarian Influence and the Liberal Order
Building on Dictating the Agenda (Oxford 2025, with Alexander Dukalskis), these research activities explore how authoritarian states project influence through the institutions, networks, and norms of the liberal international order — and how democracies respond. Current work includes a forthcoming paper for the National Endowment for Democracy on Russia's transnational influence.
Past Projects
Russian Studies & the Social Sciences
With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York across three grant cycles (2016–2025, totaling $2.3 million), Alexander Cooley served as Principal Investigator of a flagship Harriman Institute initiative to rebuild and expand the study of Russia across the social sciences at Columbia and the greater New York university community — supporting faculty research, graduate training, and a new generation of Russia and Eurasia specialists.
Cold Wars and the Academy
As Director of Columbia's Harriman Institute, Alexander Cooley led an oral history project marking the Institute's 70th anniversary — with the Columbia Center for Oral History Research and the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) — documenting Harriman's role in shaping U.S. area studies and foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, Russia, and Eurasia. The project conducted in-depth interviews with 26 directors, faculty, and senior affiliates; findings are summarized in a Cold Wars PONARS memo by Cooley and project director George Gavrilis.