Research

[Publications] [Book Project] [Working Papers]

Peer-Reviewed Publications

1. Constituency Service and Electoral Accountability in Autocratic Legislatures. Comparative Political Studies, 58(8):1699–1732. 2025. [Abs] [Link]

   How do political outsiders in autocratic legislatures use institutional authorities? I argue that legislative authorities tailored to offering constituency service help to level the playing field between regime and opposition candidates competing for the crucial resource of public support. Though regime candidates may have the ear of those in power through backdoor channels and personal connections, opposition politicians can use ‘by the book’ politics – the legitimate authorities that accompany their office – to supply the constituency goods voters expect. I construct a database of activity from recent legislative terms in Morocco, including more than 27000 unique queries submitted by elected members of parliament to government ministers, and find systematic evidence that voters reward parties and MPs that engage in more constituency service via institutionalized action. Yet the relationship between activity and voteshare is exclusive to opposition parties: regime-linked parties do not see electoral gains from increased legislative activity, but neither are they punished for shirking in office.

2. Legislative Cooptation in Authoritarian Regimes: Policy Cooperation in the Kuwait National Assembly with Tavana, Daniel British Journal of Political Science, 55:e72. 2025. [Abs] [Link]

   How do authoritarian regimes use legislative institutions to coopt rival elites and induce policy cooperation? Theories of cooptation under authoritarianism emphasize two mechanisms in particular: economic rents and policy concessions. Despite the persistence of these mechanisms in the authoritarian politics literature, evidence of their use in legislative institutions and their effect on policy outcomes remains limited. In this paper, we develop a theory of legislative cooptation, or the intentional exchange of economic rents and policy concessions to legislators in exchange for policy cooperation. We test our theory using a novel dataset of 150,000 roll call votes from the Kuwait National Assembly that spans the entirety of Kuwait’s legislative history. We leverage the regime’s participation in the legislature to establish a measure of legislative cooperation and use this measure to estimate the efficacy of mechanisms of cooptation in inducing conformity with its policy agenda. We find that though both mechanisms are effective in eliciting cooperation, they have different strategic and normative implications for our understanding of how representation can emerge in non-democratic contexts.

3. Ministries matter: technocrats and regime loyalty under autocracy Political Science Research and Methods, 12(1):207–219. 2024. [Abs] [Link]

   How do technocrat ministers affect governance under autocracy? Autocrats frequently appoint non-partisan actors with technical competencies to bureaucratic leadership roles. Though their competencies might predict positive performance in office, these ministers are also dependent on the regime for their position and should thus demonstrate loyalty to its interests. I test this in the context of horizontal accountability to the legislature, using data on more than 27,000 legislative requests submitted to ministries in Morocco. I use both exact matching and difference-in-differences analyses to show that technocrat ministers are more than 25 percentage points less likely to respond to legislative queries than partisan cabinet members. The results imply that outside (partisan) participation in government strengthens weak institutions of executive oversight. They also cast doubt on the presumption that technocrat participation in government is universally beneficial to governance.

4. Preferences over Foreign Migration: Testing Existing Explanations in the Gulf World Politics, 74(3):443–475. 2022. [Abs] [Link]

   Do existing theories regarding the impact of foreign migration explain preferences in non-OECD countries? The author adapts and applies explanations for opposition to migration in the Arabian Gulf, a significant region in global migration today, using a survey experiment implemented in Qatar. The results offer a rare validation of predictions from the labor market competition model, demonstrating that individual employment circumstances are important preference determinants. Additionally, while OECD citizens prefer high-skilled migrants, Qataris are indifferent about blue- versus white-collar workers. Mediation analysis suggests that this null effect is the result of competing cultural and economic concerns over the effect of differing classes of migrants on economic and social welfare. The novel context provides a critical test case of the labor market hypothesis and offers insight into how migration preferences in the Global South differ from the Western experience.

5. Greasing the Wheels: the Politics of Environmental Clearances in India with Kopas, Jacob, and Urpelainen, Johannes Studies in Comparative International Development, 57(1):113–144. 2022. [Abs] [Link]

   Does political alignment at different levels of government influence centralized bureaucratic processes? Environmental clearances are important regulatory tools that allow governments to target the distribution of public goods/bads by both controlling negative externalities and allocating rents from project developers. While commentators advocate for central authorities to control environmental licensing of major projects, in emerging markets with weak formal institutions, it is still possible for local politicians to influence this process. We use data on environmental clearances in India for thermal (primarily coal-fired) power plants between the years 2004 and 2014 to test whether local legislators influence an otherwise bureaucratic process in which they play no formal role. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that partisan alignment with the state chief minister results in a sharp increase in local clearance applications. This is consistent with the hypothesis that this type of political influence “greases the wheels” of bureaucracy by facilitating more environmental approvals, rather than creating regulatory bottlenecks. Our results contribute to a growing literature that suggests that lower-level politicians can still exert influence on the policy process despite having few institutionalized powers.

6. A Dynamic Model of Primaries with Slough, Tara, and Ting, Michael M Journal of Politics, 82(4):1443–1457. 2020. [Abs] [Link] [PDF]

   Primary elections are increasingly popular around the world, but historically political parties have typically chosen their candidate selection mechanisms in a decentralized manner. We develop a theory that accounts for variations in the use of primary elections in these settings. In our model, two parties choose candidates for general elections over an infinite horizon. Each party has an elite and a non-elite faction, where the elite faction can choose whether to hold primaries or nominate itself. Primaries produce more electable candidates, but losing a primary also deprives elites of private goods and future elite status. The model predicts that parties adopt primaries under high ideological polarization or when they are electorally disadvantaged. Additionally, we show how rigidities in the ability of winners to change candidate selection mechanisms can increase the universal adoption of primaries in electorally volatile environments.

7. Environmental justice in India: incidence of air pollution from coal-fired power plants with Kopas, Jacob, Jin, Xiaomeng, Harish, SP, Kennedy, Ryan, Shen, Shiran Victoria, and Urpelainen, Johannes Ecological Economics, 176:106711. 2020. [Abs] [Link]

   Air pollution is a vexing problem for emerging countries that strike a delicate balance between environmental protection, health, and energy for growth. We examine these difficulties in a study of disparate levels of exposure to pollution from coal-fired power generation in India, a country with high levels of air pollution and large, marginalized populations. With data on coal plant locations, atmospheric conditions, and census demographics, we estimate exposure to coal plant emissions using models that predict emission transportation. We find that ethnic and poor populations are more likely to be exposed to coal pollution. However, this relationship is sometimes non-linear and follows an inverted u-shape similar to that of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. We theorize that this non-linear relationship is due to the exclusion of marginalized communities from both the negative and positive externalities of industrial development.

8. Sectarian Framing in the Syrian Civil War with Corstange, Daniel American Journal of Political Science, 62(2):441–455. 2018. [Abs] [Link] [PDF]

   How do civilians respond to civil war narratives? Do they react to ethnic frames more strongly than to alternatives? Governments and rebels battle for hearts and minds as well as strategic terrain, and winning the narrative war can shift legitimacy, popular support, and material resources to the sympathetically framed side. We examine the effect of one‐sided and competing war discourses on ordinary people’s understandings of the Syrian civil war—a conflict with multiple narratives, but which has become more communal over time. We conduct a framing experiment with a representative sample of Syrian refugees in Lebanon in which we vary the narrative that describes the reasons for the conflict. We find that sectarian explanations, framed in isolation, strongly increase the importance government supporters place on fighting. When counterframed against competing narratives, however, the rallying effect of sectarianism drops and vanishes.

Book Project

Politics ‘By the Book’: Institutions, Service Provision, and Opposition Success under Authoritarianism (working title)

How do opposition parties build popular support under authoritarianism? This book challenges conventional explanations that opposition success depends primarily on ideological appeals or anti-regime mobilization. Instead, I demonstrate that opposition parties gain broader citizen support by leveraging available institutional channels to deliver tangible services—a strategy that simultaneously builds electoral coalitions while remaining within regime-acceptable bounds. I deploy a range of qualitative and quantitative evidence from the Moroccan case, as well as cross-national evidence, to show how opposition parties navigate institutional authorities to secure government resources for constituents and demonstrate competence and responsiveness. This service-oriented approach explains why some opposition parties thrive in competitive authoritarian systems while others fail to gain traction. Yet this strategy operates within significant constraints. While service provision can generate electoral accountability even on uneven playing fields, it ultimately reinforces the regime’s cooptative logic by channeling opposition energy toward bureaucratic rather than transformative politics. This project reframes existing concepts of opposition strategy in autocracies and identifies a novel use case for institutional authorities. It provides evidence that even where elections are not contested on a level playing field, electoral accountability is possible and politicians are incentivized to address constituent demands. Finally, it contextualizes this opposition strategy within the regime’s broader efforts at cooptation, identifying the limiting factors on opposition electoral gains. Collectively, this project reveals the promise and pitfalls of cooptative authoritarian institutions for government responsiveness and electoral change.

Selected Working Papers (available on request)

1. Political Connections, Patronage, and Consumer Attitudes: Evidence from Morocco with Bhandari, Abhit [Abs]

   Clientelism alters citizens’ behavior as voters, but can it also impact citizens as consumers? We argue that despite voting for politicians who offer targeted goods, citizens abstain from financial transactions with these politicians in the future. Clientelistic politicians, by demonstrating their willingness to bend rules in the electoral process, lead consumers to believe they will also be untrustworthy in a transactional environment. We test this theory using evidence from a conjoint experiment in Morocco, a country where politicians often have one foot in the private sector. The results demonstrate the linkages between patronage networks and consumer behavior in contexts characterized by clientelism and suggest that political support does not necessarily translate to economic support.

2. Party Discipline and Women’s Substantive Representation in Autocracies with Shalaby, Marwa [Abs]

   Do female legislators exhibit more party discipline in autocratic regimes? How does party discipline affect the representation of women’s interests? Work has provided mixed evidence on women’s substantive representation in autocracies. On the one hand, work has shown that female legislators are more likely to act on behalf of their female constituents and push for policies that serve their interests. On the other hand, others have highlighted the limited role played by female legislators and viewed them as merely ’token’ women. We present one of the first systematic evidence of women’s substantive representation in autocracies. Focusing on the case of Morocco, we analyze the oral and written queries initiated by female legislators for almost a decade. Our results suggest that female politicians in autocracies advance women’s rights. Furthermore, we find that women demonstrate high levels of party discipline; however, this does not negatively affect the representation of women’s interests.

3. Google Trends for Global Research: A Cautionary Note with Fariss, Chris [Abs]

   Google search data ("Google Trends") is a powerful data source for cross-national and cross-temporal research into public interest and attention. But an often overlooked challenge is that these data as reported are constructed from representative sample draws from a vast population of queries. This article aims to quantify the challenges posed by this sampling process using an original, large-scale dataset of Google Trends sample data. We characterize the non-random nature of the resulting variability and consider the implications for global research using a simulation and set of empirical examples. We identify a set of diagnostic attributes for assessing noise, as well as a group of predictors including Internet penetration and population size, temporal scope, and language of study. The results inform future efforts to use this data source to understand public attitudes in different global contexts.

4. Institutional Backlash: Assembly Dissolution and Snap Elections in Authoritarian Regimes with Tavana, Daniel [Abs]

   Do incumbent autocrats benefit from early elections and premature dissolutions of legislative bodies? Building on insights from the literatures on opportunistic election timing, cabinet duration and durability, and legislative bargaining, we argue that assembly dissolutions in authoritarian regimes can generate substantial political backlash. Our empirical approach focuses on the consequences of assembly dissolution on electoral and legislative behavior in Kuwait, where the Emir enjoys broad dissolution powers—despite a constitutional requirement that obligates a him to submit his policy agenda for legislative approval. Our analysis draws on 60 years of electoral and legislative data from Kuwait. We find that assembly dissolution leads to greater electoral support for more active legislators and prompts legislators to oppose the government more frequently. Our article challenges the conventional wisdom that autocrats benefit from manipulating electoral and legislative institutions. Closer attention to legislative and electoral behavior in electoral autocracies—rather than macro-level regime outcomes—indicates that executive attacks on legislatures can often backfire in ways that the existing literature has not previously explored. As a greater number of authoritarian regimes crack down on democratic institutions, our theoretical framework provides new insight into the consequences of executive aggrandizement and democratic backsliding in non-democracies.

5. Unexpected Voices: How Cultural Agents Reshape Political Communication with Kim, Eunji [Abs]

   Digital media has transformed how citizens encounter politics, often through incidental exposure in ostensibly apolitical spaces. Prior research emphasizes content drift, in which political messages appear in non-political spaces due to algorithms or social networks. We theorize a different pathway—actor drift—in which audiences receive political content from messengers they initially followed for explicitly non-political reasons. Analyzing millions of Instagram posts and comments from chef-influencers before and after the onset of the Israel–Hamas war, we show that identity-proximate chefs integrated political commentary into their culinary posts, which drew higher engagement overall but triggered disengagement among loyal followers. This withdrawal was dose-dependent, scaling with politicization intensity, and extended even to a politically aligned audience. Rather than creating a new pathway for incidental political learning, actor drift reconfigures audience composition. These dynamics demonstrate a core tension: politicization extends the reach of cultural agents while eroding the parasocial trust that made them influential.

6. Cosponsorship and Collective Action in an Authoritarian Legislature [Abs]

   What enables collective action–and collective opposition–in authoritarian legislatures? Legislative bodies in authoritarian regimes possess significant law-making powers. Yet, critically, policy proposals require support from a majority of members to be successfully enacted. The legislature has the authority to write its own policy–and reject or amend regime-proposed policy–in theory, but it can only do so in practice when lawmakers act collectively. I theorize that cosponsoring legislative proposals facilitates collective behavior in other policy areas, particularly in opposing regime policy. I construct a dataset of bill cosponsorship by participants in the Kuwaiti legislature covering 50 years of legislative history from 1963-2016. I use multiple difference-in-differences estimators to show that in periods when they cosponsor legislation together, legislator pairs engage in more overt joint opposition, including voting against the regime on policy issues and interpellating regime-appointed ministers. I additionally construct measures of legislator centrality to the cosponsorship network and find preliminary evidence that this is linked to the success rate in getting policy proposals enacted. This is a novel finding within the literature on authoritarian politics and offers insight on how the legislature might build its capacity to act independently from the regime–and which legislators are most influential in this process.