Ambassador John Beyrle presented his credentials to President Parvanov as U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria on September 8, 2005. A career officer in the senior Foreign Service at the rank of Minister-Counselor, Ambassador Beyrle has held policy positions and foreign assignments with an emphasis on U.S. relations with Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the USSR since joining the State Department in 1983.

Ambassador Beyrle's overseas service has included two tours at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, most recently as Deputy Chief of Mission. He was Counselor for Political and Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Prague, and a member of the U.S. Delegation to the CFE Negotiations in Vienna. He served an earlier tour at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria 1985-87. His Washington assignments include Acting Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States, and Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council. He served as a staff officer to Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, and as a Pearson Fellow and foreign policy adviser to the late Senator Paul Simon.

Ambassador Beyrle received a B.A. degree with honors from Grand Valley State University, and an M.S. degree as a Distinguished Graduate of the National War College.

Ambassador Elena Poptodorova has been the Ambassador of the Republic of Bulgaria since February 2002. Prior to assuming the ambassadorial post, Mrs. Poptodorova has held a number of government positions and served as a member of parliament for 11 years (1990-2001) as a representative of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. She is a signature figure of the new Bulgarian democracy, playing an active role in policy making and known as one of the liberal and maverick members of her party. In the period of June 2001 to August 2002, she led the Directorate of International Organizations and Human Rights. She served as Spokes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately before becoming Bulgarian Ambassador to the United States.

Ambassador Poptodorova received her B.A. and M.A. in English and Italian Language and Literature from Tthe Kiment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. She has a M.A. in international relations and diplomacy from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria.

This event is co-sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Calendar of the Ambassadors' trip in the US

In 2006, under the auspices of the Program on Democracy, CDDRL initiated a project called "Waves and Troughs of Post Communist Reform." The project is led jointly by Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. The idea is to look over a fifteen plus year span at the ups and downs of post-communist democratic development since 1989. Why have some countries transited relatively smoothly to consolidated democracy (like Poland, for example), while others, like Belarus languish in authoritarianism? Why did some countries in the region experience a second wave of democratic reform beginning in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, while others, like Russia suffered notable slips back from democracy toward autocracy by 2005?

McFaul and Stoner-Weiss assembled a group of scholars to compare country experiences in the former communist world, but more specifically to compare the interplay of two factors that have been downplayed so far in the political science work done on democratic transitions: the power of mass mobilization, and the influence of international actors on democratic transitions.

The project hopes to contribute a greater understanding to what makes democratic

transitions stick, and why some democracies fail to consolidate, by examining in greater

detail these previously overlooked variables in comparison to others like level of economic development, for example. In this way, the project should help further a more general and complete understanding of democratic transition worldwide.

Participants in the project include scholars and policy makers from North America and

Europe, as well as from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Papers from this workshop are available as CDDRL Working Papers.