Marc P. Berenson is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He holds a BA degree from Harvard University and a PhD degree from Princeton University. 

Prior to joining King’s in September 2013, Dr Berenson was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute on Florence, Italy, (2007-2008) and served as a research fellow on the Governance Team at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton (2007-2013). Previously, Dr Berenson worked as a research analyst for the American Bar Association, CNN World Report, the EastWest Institute, The Carter Center, and the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He also has undertaken several consultancies, for, among others, the World Bank in Russia and the OECD’s Tax and Development Programme.

Ukraine’s path towards democracy and the rule of law has been a central focus of Dr Berenson since he founded and directed the USAID-funded “Law in Action” programme for Freedom House in Kyiv in the mid-1990s, which sought to further the rule of law in Ukraine as well as in Russia and the Caucasus. His academic work on post-communist governance, corruption, public administration, state capacity, and state-society relations has particularly focused on how citizens’ interactions with the bureaucracy shape their perceptions of the state and meaning of citizenship.  

Dr Berenson is the author of Taxes and Trust: From Coercion to Compliance in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which is published by Academic Studies Press in 2026 in an updated, Ukrainian-language version as Податки та довіра у Польщі, Росії та Україні від примусу до виконання зобов’язань. His articles have appeared in academic edited volumes, Comparative Political Studies, East European Politics, the Journal of Communist Studies, Transition Politics and elsewhere. He is also a co-author with Valeriia Novak at the Ukrainian Parliamentary Institute of "Taxpayer Compliance and Ukraine's Economic Recovery," a policy report for parliamentarians and policymakers in Kyiv.  

Previously, Dr Berenson served as Chair of the Social Science and Public Policy, Humanities and Law Research Ethics Subcommittee, King’s College London, 2021 – 2023; as Chair of the Law, Politics and Economics Research Ethics Panel, King’s College London, 2017-2021; and as Chair of Research Ethics Committee, Institute of Development Studies, 2009 – 2013.

He is proficient, to various degrees, in Italian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Research 

Society and State Across the Post-Communist World

In looking across the post-communist world—and especially at Poland, Russia and Ukraine, Dr Berenson has oriented his governance-centred research towards all of the classic functions performed by all states (to some degree or another). Namely, Dr Berenson has focused on the implementation of tax collection policy (as a measure of the extraction of resources from society), on poverty relief and pensions policies (as a measure of the distribution of money back into society), and on the willingness to serve in the defence of Ukraine (as a measure of society's support for state security and defence), and he has been intrigued by regulatory policy areas as well. The implementation of extractive, distributive, defence, and regulatory policies, Dr Berenson argues, are good ones for researching how states and societies interact to get things done as they require the penetration of society as well as utilise a variety of resources and legitimacy on the part of the people to be successful. Examining these areas provides a clearer view of the core, fundamental state tasks. In investigating these issues, Dr Berenson broadly utilises a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including especially public opinion and unique survey research.

Dr Berenson’s 2018 Cambridge University Press book - Taxes and Trust: From Coercion to Compliance in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (updated and republished in a new Ukrainian edition by Academic Studies Press in 2025 as Податки та довіра у Польщі, Росії та Україні від примусу до виконання зобов’язань) – focuses on three states at three, distinctly different stages of the transition from a coercive governing regime to such a state. Poland has transitioned successfully to a rule-of-law tax state, implementing client-oriented tax collection policies to ensure high levels of compliance. Russia employs a largely coercive tax system that enjoys moderate levels of tax compliance. Ukraine, meanwhile, has failed up to 2022 to build a tax state that is either effectively coercive or legitimate in the eyes of its citizens, rendering lower levels of compliance until after Russia's full-scale invasion of 2022, when public support for fulfilling citizenship obligations dramatically increased. In essence, Poland has been more effective because it has a state that is more organised, embodied with more resources and more citizen-focused as well as a society that is more capable of being a compliant partner. Effective governance occurs when state and society interact in a dualistic process through trust.

Teaching

For the 2026-27 academic year, Dr Berenson is the Post-Graduate Taught (PGT) Dissertation Coordinator in the Department of War Studies and is teaching modules 6SSW0014 "Russia in the 21st Century: Foreign Policy, Identity and Security" and 7SSWN364 "Russia and its West" with War Studies colleagues Dr Ruth Deyermond and Dr Domitilla Sagramoso.

At King’s, Dr Berenson previously has taught other courses on Ukraine and Russia, including the module 7YYRN008 "Governance and Economic Growth in Transition" and the undergrad and post-graduate twin modules 6YYR0011 and 7YYRN011 “Contemporary Ukrainian Politics and Society,” which are the first modules devoted solely to the study of Ukrainian politics to be taught at King’s. And, he was the first module leader at King’s to embed a writing course within an introductory politics module for first-year undergraduates (4YYR0001 "States & Markets").

PhD Supervision

Dr Berenson is available to supervise research students in the areas of governance, state-building and state-society relations in any country, especially in Ukraine as well as in the other European post-communist states.

Publications

• Податки та довіра: від примусу до дотримання у Польщі, Росії та Україні (Taxes and Trust: From Coercion to Compliance in Poland, Russia and Ukraine), Updated, Ukrainian language edition, forthcoming 2026. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press.
  Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
• Do Citizens Respond to Tax Reforms during Conflict? Experimental Evidence from UkraineBerenson, M. P. & Birch, S., 2025, In: East European Politics. 41, 2, p. 277-293 17 p.
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
• Taxpayer Compliance and Ukraine's Economic RecoveryNovak, V. & Berenson, M., 2023, Kyiv, Ukraine. 66 p.
  Research output: Book/Report › Report
• Taxes and Trust: From Coercion to Compliance in Poland, Russia and UkraineBerenson, M. P., 25 Jan 2018, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 378 p.
  Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
• The Russian Federation’s International Development Assistance ProgrammeBerenson, M. P., Larionova, M. & Rakhmangulov, M., 2016, The BRICS in International Development. Jing Gu, Alex Shankland and Anuradha Chenoy (eds.). London: Palgrave.
  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference
• A State of Debate Report: The Russian Federation’s International Development Assistance ProgrammeBerenson, M. P., Larionova, M. & Rakhmangulov, M., Aug 2014, In: IDS Evidence Report. 88
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
• Promoting Greater Cooperation Between Russia and OECD DonorsBerenson, M. P., Larionova, M. & Rakhmangulov, M., Feb 2014, In: IDS Policy Briefing. 53
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
• Less Fear, Little Trust: Deciphering the Whys of Ukrainian Tax ComplianceBerenson, M. P., 2010, Orange Revolution and Aftermath: Mobilization, Apathy, and the State in Ukraine. D'Anieri, P. (ed.). Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press
  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference
• Serving Citizens: How Comparable Are Polish and Russian ‘Street-Level’ Bureaucrats?Berenson, M. P., May 2010, In: Comparative Political Studies. 43, 5
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
• Berenson, M. P., 2008, Administrativnye reformy v contexte vlastnykh otnoshenij: opyt postsocialisticheskih transformatsij v sravnitel'noj perspektive. Oleinik, A. & Gaman-Golutvinoj, O. (eds.). Moscow: ROSSPEN
  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
• Rationalising or Empowering Bureaucrats? Tax Administration Reform in Post-Communist Poland and RussiaBerenson, M. P., 2008, Reforming the state without changing the model of power? On administrative reform in post-socialist countries. Oleinik, A. (ed.). Routledge
  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
• Rationalising or Empowering Bureaucrats? Tax Administration Reform in Post-Communist Poland and RussiaBerenson, M. P., Mar 2008, In: Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. 24, 1, p. 136-155
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
• Does Political Culture Matter? Deciphering the Whys of Ukrainian Tax ComplianceBerenson, M. P., 2008, Florence, Italy: Max Weber Programme Working Paper Series, European University Institute.
  Research output: Book/Report › Book