Articles & Publications

Recent Academic Articles

2024. “The Political Origins of Colonial Land Policy: Evidence From British India and French Algeria.” Comparative Political Studies, Firstview. With Fahad M. Sajid.

Whereas the literature on colonial legacies has flourished in recent years, relatively less attention has been paid to the origins of colonial institutions. What explains variation in the design of colonial institutions? Some scholars have stressed the importance of precolonial factors, arguing that institutions were designed to reflect the environmental and socio-political conditions that the colonizers encountered in the colonies. Others hold that policymaking reflected the colonial powers’ metropolitan identity and aims. We believe these literatures have been insufficiently attentive to the colonial state and the political ideals of colonial bureaucrats. Drawing on evidence from British India and French Algeria, we show that land policy was shaped by intense competition between ideologically motivated officials, who disagreed over the uses and aims of state power. Theorizing the role of ideas allows us to explain variation in colonial policies across both space and time while highlighting the indispensability of qualitative methods of analysis.

2023. “Why Monarchies Still Reign,” Journal of Democracy 34 (2): 47-61.

Is political opposition in monarchies different than in other types of autocracies? This article shows that monarchies are no less vulnerable to regime change than any other authoritarian regime—they fall via coups, collapse during war, and transform into democracies—but they are less likely than other types of autocracies to be overthrown by revolutionary protest. This reduced threat from the street arises from a unique institutional feature: Monarchies can democratize without destabilizing the leadership through transitioning to a democratic constitutional monarchy. The prospect of retaining the ruler appeals to opposition groups who value both democracy and stability, but it also has implications for their ability to organize and sustain mass protest. Monarchies have been extraordinarily common throughout history; investigating how monarchies transition is important for understanding the trajectories of modern states.

2022 “Acting As if: Dramatics, Deception, and the Production of State Power,” PS: Political Science & Politics 55 (1): 32-35. [PDF]

In Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, Lisa Wedeen provocatively argued that the cult of Hafez al-Asad worked not in spite of the fact that the cult’s symbols and rhetoric were patently absurd but because they were. Even ridiculous displays of power and nonsensical rhetorical statements can generate compliance with a regime. After more than 20 years, how well has this argument stood up? Have persuasive counterarguments undermined the central claims in Ambiguities of Domination? In the two decades since its publication, I have participated in intense discussions of this book as both a graduate student at the University of Chicago and as a professor. The leading critical response that readers make is that it is coercion, not symbolic displays, that explains compliance. This article revisits Wedeen’s claim that symbols and rhetoric matter—and not solely as signals of a regime’s coercive capacity.

2022. “A Religious Divide? Social Movements, Parties, and Political Cleavages in Morocco,” the Oxford Handbook of Politics in Muslim Societies, Oxford University Press: 481-500. [PDF]

The primary political cleavage in predominantly Muslim countries often appears to reflect an Islamist-secular divide. This chapter considers cleavages in electoral authoritarian regimes. It argues that, in this setting, the Islamist-secular cleavage is neither as divisive nor as important as it seems to be. It makes three broad claims. First, it argues that ideology—whether secular or religious—matters less than the stance an opposition group takes toward the ruling regime. The primary political question is not whether religion should guide politics, but whether to adopt a more cooperative or confrontational approach to the regime. Second, this analysis stresses the need to consider both formal political parties and social movement organizations (SMOs) when analyzing cleavages under electoral authoritarianism. The most critical actors are typically opposition SMOs, not political parties who participate in authoritarian electoral institutions. Including both allows us to see the limited importance of ideology in authoritarian politics. Third, this chapter suggests that opposition groups do not need to choose between religious and secular frames, but can incorporate elements of both. In a predominantly Muslim society, secular organizations may justify and propose policies on religious grounds, and Islamist groups can support secular aims. Religious and secular frames are not mutually exclusive alternatives. This chapter draws on the history of politics in Morocco to illustrate these claims.

2019. “Trump’s Enabling Role in Rising Regional Repression,” Middle East Report No. 292-293 (Special Issue: Return to Revolution): 39-42.

Since 2011, the Middle East region’s authoritarian rulers have increasingly relied on harsh repression to maintain their power—whether in direct response to protest, or as part of a broad crackdown on free speech and dissent aimed at deterring challenges from below. In Morocco, for example, after the 2011 protests subsided, the regime quietly began arresting activists and independent journalists. In response to the 2016 protests in the Rif region, which began after a fishmonger was crushed inside a garbage truck while trying to recover fish confiscated by the police, the Moroccan regime cracked down and arrested protest leaders. During the recent protests in Algeria, police deployed tear gas, shut down the Internet and arrested journalists. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir declared a state of emergency last year in response to the growing protest movement, authorizing security forces to suppress demonstrations. Iraq has responded with lethal violence to protests, killing over 250 by the end of October 2019. Further, arms sales to the region have increased, and states like Egypt, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia have used arms against civilians at home and abroad. Across the region, civil society organizations, human rights defenders and press freedoms have come under attack.

What explains this uptick in repression? The roots of repressive authoritarianism could be entirely domestic, as leaders respond to local conditions using tried-and-true tactics out of the autocrat’s playbook. But the ubiquity of repressive tactics across different cases in recent years suggests that there may be regional or even global conditions that favor their usage. This piece considers the impact of Trump’s discourse on autocratic responses to protest.

2018. “Nationalism, Collaboration, and Resistance: France under Nazi Occupation” (with Matthew A. Kocher and Nuno P. Monteiro). International Security 43 (2): 117-150.  [PDF]

Does nationalism produce resistance to foreign military occupation? The existing literature suggests that it does. Nationalism, however, also can lead to acquiescence and even to active collaboration with foreign conquerors. Nationalism can produce a variety of responses to occupation because political leaders connect nationalist motivations to other political goals. A detailed case study of the German occupation of France during World War II demonstrates these claims. In this highly nationalistic setting, Vichy France entered into collaboration with Germany despite opportunities to continue fighting in 1940 or defect from the German orbit later. Collaboration with Germany was widely supported by French elites and passively accommodated by the mass of nationalistic French citizens. Because both resisters and collaborators were French nationalists, nationalism cannot explain why collaboration was the dominant French response or why a relatively small number of French citizens resisted. Variation in who resisted and when resistance occurred can be explained by the international context and domestic political competition. Expecting a German victory in the war, French right-wing nationalists chose collaboration with the Nazis as a means to suppress and persecute their political opponents, the French Left. In doing so, they fostered resistance. This case suggests the need for a broader reexamination of the role of nationalism in explaining reactions to foreign intervention.

2018. “Benefits and Pitfalls of Google Scholar” (with Michael Chwe, Mala Htun, Francesca R. Jensenius, David Samuels, and David A. Singer). PS: Political Science & Politics 51 (4): 820-824. [PDF]

Google Scholar (GS) is an important tool that faculty, administrators, and external reviewers use to evaluate the scholarly impact of candidates for jobs, tenure, and promotion. This article highlights both the benefits of GS—including the reliability and consistency of its citation counts and its platform for disseminating scholarship and facilitating networking—and its pitfalls. GS has biases because citation is a social and political process that disadvantages certain groups, including women, younger scholars, scholars in smaller research communities, and scholars opting for risky and innovative work. GS counts also reflect practices of strategic citation that exacerbate existing hierarchies and inequalities. As a result, it is imperative that political scientists incorporate other data sources, especially independent scholarly judgment, when making decisions that are crucial for careers. External reviewers have a unique obligation to offer a reasoned, rigorous, and qualitative assessment of a scholar’s contributions and therefore should not use GS.

2017. “Repression and Activism among the Arab Spring’s First Movers: Evidence from Morocco’s February 20th Movement.” British Journal of Political Science 47 (3): 699-718. [PDF]

Why are some people willing to initiate protest against authoritarian regimes? How does repression affect their willingness to act? Drawing on data from the Arab Spring protests in Morocco, this article argues first that activism is passed down from one generation to the next: first movers often came from families that had been punished for opposing the regime in the past. Secondly, repression during the Arab Spring was also counterproductive: those connected to first movers via Facebook supported renewed pro-democracy protests when informed of the regime’s use of repression in 2011. A regime that jails and beats political dissidents creates incentives for its citizens to oppose it; these abuses can come back to haunt the regime long after repression occurs.

2012. “Rethinking Moroccan Nationalism, 1930-1944.” Journal of North African Studies 17 (3): 475-490. [PDF]

 Historians and social scientists studying the French protectorate era in Morocco have suggested that nationalist resistance began by the 1930s, if not earlier. Accordingly, the efforts to reform French rule in the 1930s have been called ‘proto-nationalism’ or ‘early nationalism’ in histories that portray nationalism as an evolutionary process, one that grows in a linear, unidirectional fashion. This article explores the tensions between nationalist and reformist demands, and stresses the distinctiveness of these mobilisation platforms. It argues against subsuming calls for reform into the nationalist narrative, proposing instead that calls for reform constituted an alternative to nationalist demands for independence. Proponents of reform emphasised equality and opposed the authoritarian nature of French rule. In contrast, the Independence Party, founded in 1944, challenged the foreign nature of imperial rule. Attention to these differences points to the diversity of responses to French rule. Moroccan anti-colonialism took multiple forms and did not always espouse nationalist goals. Labelling all opposition ‘nationalist’ inhibits our understanding of how actors come to seek national independence. Further, recognising that activists espoused different goals over time is important because it helps make sense of the different visions of the post-colonial order that elites espoused in the years after independence.

2010. “Triggering Nationalist Violence: Competition and Conflict in Uprisings against Colonial Rule.” International Security 35 (2): 88-122. [PDF]

Nationalist conflict has been one of the most pervasive and intractable types of conflict in the modern era. In some places, nationalist conflict has entailed lengthy wars, terrorist campaigns, and rural insurgency. Yet in many others, nationalist organizations have pursued peaceful strategies, engaging in bargaining, diplomacy, and popular protest. Why do some nationalist movements turn violent, whereas others remain primarily peaceful? Drawing on nationalist struggles against the French colonial empire, the competitive violence theory posits that violence was primarily driven by competition among nationalists. Nationalist violence erupted when colonial states pursued policies to restrict nationalist opposition and repress leading nationalists, creating a leadership vacuum and encouraging new nationalist actors to use violence to vie for influence. The competitive violence theory exemplifies an approach that can explain variation in both the timing and location of violence.

2009. “After the Credits Roll: The Long-term Effects of Educational Television on Public Knowledge and Attitudes” (with Bethany Albertson). American Politics Research 37(2): 275-300.

Television has replaced the newspaper as the major source of news for most people, and thus has the potential to inform the public and influence attitudes. A growing literature has demonstrated the immediate effects of television viewing, but the ability of a particular program to have lasting effects is less clear. In this article, we report on two field experiments that provide a test of the durability of media effects by examining whether two television broadcasts had a lasting influence on viewers' knowledge and attitudes. Both television programs were designed to raise awareness about particular policy issues and to persuade. We find that one of the television programs affected viewer attitudes, even weeks after it aired, while the second television program did not. We consider why particular types of television programs and particular formats are better able to have a lasting impact on the public. Our findings suggest that message repetition is a crucial mechanism for influencing attitudes over the long-term.

Other Recent Writing

“A Post-Colonial World Cup Showdown for the Ages,” Symposium on Abu Aardvark's MENA Academy, December 14, 2022.

“Can an Increase in Repression Stop a New Series of Protests in the Arab World?” Washington Post, March 8, 2019.

“Moroccans Vote Friday, but Neither Main Party Will Really Win,” Washington Post, October 6, 2016.

“The Mixed Record of Morocco’s February 20th Protest Movement,” Washington Post, February 20, 2016. 

“The Arab Spring: New Approaches to Social Movement Research.” Arab Uprisings: New Opportunities for Political Science, Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) Studies 1, June 12, 2012.

“Morocco’s Resilient Protest Movement.” The Middle East Channel of Foreign Policy, February 20, 2012.