Lincoln A. Mitchell

Lincoln Mitchell is a political analyst, pundit, and writer based in New York City and San Francisco. Dr. Mitchell works on democracy and governance-related issues in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. He also works with businesses and NGOs globally, particularly in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Mitchell writes and speaks about U.S. politics as well and was the national political correspondent for The New York Observer from 2014 to 2016. Dr. Mitchell was a member of the faculty of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs from 2006 to 2013 and retains an affiliation with Columbia's Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. In addition, he worked for years as a political consultant advising and managing domestic political campaigns.

Dr. Mitchell is an accomplished scholar and writer whose current research includes democratic rollback in the U.S., U.S.-Georgia relations, political development in the former Soviet Union, the role of democracy promotion in American foreign policy, and baseball.  He has written six books: Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution, (Penn Press 2008), The Color Revolutions, (Penn Press 2012), The Democracy Promotion Paradox (Brookings 2016), Will Big League Baseball Survive? Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports and the Future of Major League Baseball, (Temple University Press 2016), Baseball Goes West: How the Dodgers and Giants Shaped the Major Leagues (Kent State University Press 2018), and San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press, 2019). Dr. Mitchell has written articles on these topics in The National Interest, Orbis, The Moscow Times, the Washington Quarterly, The American Interest, The National Interest, Survival, the Central Asian Survey, World Affairs Journal, The New York Daily News, and Current History as well as for numerous online publications including the online sections of The Washington Post, The New York Times. The Forward and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Eurasianet, and Transitions Online. Dr. Mitchell has been quoted extensively in most major American, Georgian, and Russian newspapers and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and podcasts including Fox and Friends, All Things Considered, Lou Dobbs, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America, the Jim Lehrer Newshour, ABC Nightline, The Diane Rehm Show, Up and In: The Baseball Prospectus Podcast, the Cespedes Family Barbecast, Sports Byline, and The BBC as well as in Russian and Georgian television. Dr. Mitchell also frequently blogs about American politics on several different online platforms.

Dr. Mitchell's current and recent clients include Freedom House, Democracy International, ARD/Tetratech, the Albright Stonebridge Group, the UNDP and DFID, the United Nations Democracy Fund, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, as well as several private businesses, political interests and investors working in the former Soviet Union.

Dr. Mitchell earned his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his PhD from Columbia University.