Selected Publications

"'NETWORKED' Revolutions?: ICTs and protest mobilization in autocratic regimes", Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 4, 2021

Although a wealth of research has linked the growth of internet-based communication technologies (ICTs) with the rise of anti-government demonstrations in autocracies, empirical evidence on the impact of ICTs on protest remains inconclusive. In this article, I provide a more systematic test of the relationship between ICT use and protest in autocracies, using new data from a cross-national survey of political behavior in the Arab World. I find that although internet use helps to explain protest participation, organizational networks are also important for mobilizing protesters, even in the digital age. Notably, I find that membership in instrumental associations (i.e. those that focus on communal objectives) significantly increases the likelihood of individual protest participation, providing members with the skills necessary for political engagement and essential connections to a sustained flow of information about protest events. Moreover, I find significant interactive effects between organizational membership and ICT use -- while the combination of high-frequency internet use and voluntary association membership generally increases one's propensity to protest, the effects of joining an organization differ noticeably between high- and low-frequency internet users. This work thus illuminates a potential symbiosis between online and offline communities that has largely been overlooked in previous studies of political mobilization and forces a reconsideration of the ways in which civil society organizations work to mobilize contention under authoritarian rule. (Link)

"The dynamics of pro-state mobilization: insights from egypt" (with Melani Cammett), in Ruling By Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements, Cambridge University Press (2020)

On February 2, 2011, pro-regime loyalists swept into Tahrir Square in Central Cairo to attack protesters calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. During the attacks, government-hired thugs rode horses and camels through the protest camp assaulting protesters with whips and other weapons. The event, which came to be known as the "Battle of the Camel", is a violent example of regime-orchestrated contentious action. In this paper we explore the dynamics of such pro-state mobilization (PSM), which we define as collective action to support or defend an established political order and its associated body of elites against actual or perceived challenges from below. In the paper, we ask, "Under what conditions do regimes and their allies organize contentious actions in support of the state?" and outline a set of tentative hypotheses drawing from the extant literature on authoritarian survival and counter-mobilization. Testing these hypotheses using an original dataset of protest mobilization under multiple regimes in Egypt, we find that PSM is largely a reactive response used by elites to counteract episodes of contention that involve significant crowds or attract the engagement of established social movements. Moreover our analysis suggests that hegemonic party systems and hybrid regimes may be more likely to employ PSM as a counter-mobilization tactic, which points to a potential divergence in preferred strategies of social control across regime types. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of broadening our conceptualization of contentious politics to include state-mobilized contention, and invites new research agendas which consider the ways in which various strategies of autocratic survival -- including repression, concessions, election, and pro-state mobilization -- interact to produce authoritarian resilience in the face of opposition. (Link)

"the 2014 tunisian election - more than a secular-islamist divide", Centerpiece, Vol. 29, No.1  (non peer reviewed)

The completion of Tunisia's second democratic election on October 26, 2014 marked a watershed moment in the history of Middle Eastern politics. Amidst a litany of Arab Spring "failures", the execution of free and fair election, and particularly the victory of the secular let over Islamist incumbents has lead many to laud Tunisia's progress in consolidating the region's first true democracy. Yet despite scholarly praise, this article cautions the wave of enthusiasm engendered by Tunisia's recent electoral results. In particular, I argue that the binary depiction of the election as a triumph of secularism over political Islam provides a false picture of voter preference in post-authoritarian elections. More than ideology, I find that what matters most to voters in democratic elections is the ability of the newly elected government to accomplish concrete policy goals such as economic growth, reduction of inequality, and social development (i.e. to establish performance legitimacy) -- a feature to which neither secular Nidaa Tounes or Islamist Ennahda can currently lay claim. This article, then, tempers scholarly enthusiasm over Tunisia's democratic prospects, instead advocating for a more nuanced understanding of party politics and voter concerns as necessary to understand the nascent regime's chances for long-term success.  (Link)

Under Review

"AUTOCRACY: A Substantive Approach" (With Jason Brownlee and Killian Clarke)

What are the defining traits of an authoritarian regime? Leading works answer this question in negative terms: authoritarian regimes are non-democracies. We propose instead a substantive definition of authoritarianism, which we believe better captures what scholars and laypersons actually mean when they invoke the term. We define authoritarianism as rule by an exclusive political oligarchy. Between substantive authoritarianism and electoral democracy, there is a residual space, of regimes that do not fit under either concept. We call these regimes “non-authoritarian non-democracies” or NANDs. Operationalizing our substantive concept of authoritarianism using a component of the Polity index, we find that approximately 20% of the country-years considered authoritarian in most datasets would arguably be better classified as democracies or NANDs. This substantive understanding of authoritarianism has important theoretical and empirical implications. Theoretically, it ensures that claims about the population of authoritarian regimes are ontologically coherent. For example, tightening the concept means placing regimes that are non-democratic, but also not substantively authoritarian, in separate conceptual space. Empirically, our measure reveals that the post-Cold War era has been even less autocratic than it is normally portrayed, and that concerns about a global turn toward ’autocratization’ are likely overblown. Further, a replication analysis of one prominent study on the types of authoritarian regimes most susceptible to breakdown reveals that important findings in the field may need to be revised. (Link) (Appendix)

"More than a Secular-Islamist Divide: Exploring Mass Ideology in the Modern Middle East" (With Caroline Lancaster)

Although it is a common narrative that politics in majority-Muslim countries are characterized by religious cleavages — dominated by struggles between secularists and Islamists who hold fundamentally distinct ideological positions — little research has been done to evidence this divergence among voters. Using data from the World Values survey, this article investigates how political ideology is structured at the mass level in the Middle East. In contrast to popular perception, we find that religious preferences have little effect on ideological positions among voters. Principal component analysis reveals that religious attitudes are a marginal component of citizens’ ideologies and only weakly predict their preferences on other issue areas. Moreover, results from latent class analyses reveal that secular and Islamist constituents share similar views on democracy and economic issues, with only moderate differences evident in their respective positions on gender norms and social mores. Our findings thus nuance debates about political ideology in the Middle East and temper claims that religious-secular divides systematically organize policy preferences in the Arab world. Instead, we find significant evidence of ideological harmony among non-elites, opening up new possibilities for cross-partisan coalition-building and compromise. (Link)

Working Papers

"The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted: Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes in the Arab Spring"

In academic and journalistic scholarship, the Arab Spring protests have been generally portrayed as "spontaneous" mobilizations facilitated by social media outlets. Yet despite the hegemonic nature of this characterization, empirical evidence casts doubt on the plausibility of social media explanations and necessitates  a re-evaluation of the factors and actors that drove opposition mobilization in the Middle East. In this piece, I highlight the efforts of one such actor, the labor movement, in organizing protest and sustaining anti-regime opposition. Illustrating the two main paths of labor mobilization: direct opposition through street protest and limited mobilization through regime negotiation, I argue that labor participation was critical to the strength of the protest movement in Tunisia and Morocco, ultimately determining the tenor and success of opposition in these cases. Moreover, using evidence from interviews with labor leaders, politicians, and government officials, I illustrate how the selection of these modes of mobilization rose as a strategic response to differing configurations of state-labor relations in these countries. Specifically, I argue that where unions enjoy closed linkages with partisan elites and maintain undemocratic governance structures, organized labor is more likely to undertake limited efforts at mobilization, as union leaders use their power in the political and labor arenas to restrain rank-and-file militancy and channel worker demands into accepted institutional structures. By contrast, when unions lack partisan alliances and establish internally democratic structures that encourage responsiveness to the rank-and-file, direct political mobilization by organized labor is more likely to result. 

"Where do we go from here?: Islamist electoral trajectories in liberalized regimes"

How do Islamist parties fare when allowed to compete in electoral contests? Although Islamic movements have participated in over one-third of competitive parliamentary elections since 1968, little is known about the fate of these parties, particularly following their first electoral success. Given the increased participation of Islamist parties in the Middle East following the 2011 Arab spring, it is important to inquire how these once-outlawed parties adapt to electoral competition and to uncover the various trajectories they follow after engaging in institutionalized politics. In fact, despite claims of an “Islamist political advantage”, I find extreme diversity in the electoral trajectories of Islamist parties who repeatedly participate in competitive elections -- while some parties like the AKP continuously dominate democratic elections, others struggle to reclaim initial electoral success, while still others suffer from violent overthrow and removal from the political system.

In view of this heterogeneity, this article seeks to uncover the determinants of Islamist party success. Using original data which tracks the electoral performance of Islamic political parties from 1968 to 2014, I find that the best predictor of Islamist failure and success in electoral contests is their policy performance, and more specifically, their ability to noticeably improve economic conditions and social welfare in newly democratic societies. In making this argument, I draw upon the concept of "performance legitimacy", that is, the ability of the newly elected government to accomplish concrete policy goals such as economic growth, reduction of inequality, and social development. I argue that Islamist success in "breakthrough" elections stems from their perceptions as disciplined parties which can redress the economic failings of the former regime and improve social welfare for the masses. Where parties live up to these expectations, they continue to succeed despite their ideological leanings; where they do not, they lose electoral strength.