I am assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.

My research examines authoritarian politics from two perspectives. First, I study how democratic institutions — particularly legislatures — matter in autocracies: how they shape policy outcomes, whether they allow for citizen representation, and how autocrats maintain political control even as they delegate authority to elected bodies. My book project, Politics ‘By the Book,’ investigates how opposition parties compete for electoral support within these institutions, drawing on a diverse set of data from Morocco.

Second, I study how citizens navigate these political environments — how regime strategies, political messaging, and institutional performance shape attitudes and behavior. This work draws on survey and large-N behavioral data from the Middle East and North Africa as well as the online sphere.

My work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and the British Journal of Political Science, among other outlets. My studies and individual projects have been generously supported by the National Science Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and the U.S. Department of Education, among others. I previously held fellowships at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

I hold a PhD in political science from Columbia University and a BS from Yale University. Before entering academia, I was a research associate at the RAND Corporation and a Fulbright fellow in Syria.

You can reach me at erin [dot] a [dot] york [at] vanderbilt [dot] edu.