Published Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Religious Policy Cycles: How Does Religion Regulate Distributive Politics in Muslim Societies?”, Forthcoming, The Journal of Politics. 2026. Paper here.

Winner of: APSA 2022 Kenneth D. Wald Best Graduate Student Paper Award, APSA 2022 Weber Best Conference Paper Award

In many Muslim autocracies, governments expand their distributive policies and enhance service-delivery in the religious season of Ramadan. What is the political rationale behind these systematic changes in distributive politics? How could religion offer alternative accountability mechanisms in non-democratic settings? Focusing on Egypt (2014-2020), this paper argues that autocratic regimes distribute in Ramadan to contain political threats, emerging from reputational pressures and mobilization threats triggered by Ramadan’s religious environment, by co-opting areas where such threats are more credible. Analyzing an original municipality-level dataset of government-reported provision of economic benefits, I find that the government reports more economic distribution in Ramadan, especially in places where political threats are higher: more socioeconomically developed and more contentious. This seasonal expansion remains comparable to that during electoral times, but differently targeted. Therefore, authoritarian regimes might adopt different distributive strategies in religious and non-religious times, posing religious institutions as another regulator of economic policy cycles.

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“From Cooptation to Violence: Managing Competitive Authoritarian Elections.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 69(4):731-760, 2025. Paper here.

Autocratic elections are often marred with systematic intimidation and violence towards voters and candidates. When do authoritarian regimes resort to violent electoral strategies? I argue that electoral violence acts as a risk-management strategy in competitive authoritarian elections where: (a) the regime’s prospects for coopting local elites, competitors, and voters are weak, and (b) the expected political cost of electoral violence is low. I test these propositions by explaining the subnational distribution of electoral violence during the most violent election in Mubarak’s Egypt (1981-2011): the 2005 Parliamentary Election. The results indicate that electoral violence is higher in districts where: the regime has a lower capacity for coopting local elites, it faces competition from ideological (rather than rent-seeking) challengers with no cooptation potential, clientelistic strategies are costlier and less effective, and citizens’ capacity for non-electoral mobilization is low. The conclusions provide lessons for containing electoral manipulation and violence in less democratic contexts.

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“The Relationship between Islamic Education and Islamism.” Politics and Religion, 7(3):468-49, 2024. Paper here.

This article examines the relationship between state-provided religious education and support for Islamists. It utilizes a survey of young adults from Egypt, the largest education market in the MENA region. The findings show that recipients of state-provided Islamic education, (Azharites), are more likely to hold favorable views of Islamists. This is likely attributed to the ideological alignment between Azharites and Islamists, since both favor a bigger role of religion in the public sphere and stricter adherence to conservative social norms. However, the analysis does not support the notion that Azharites view Islamists as competitors in the religious market for followers. These results inform policy debates on Islamic education in Muslim countries and illustrate the limitations of mass indoctrination in authoritarian settings

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“The Decline of Religion and Its Rise in Electoral Politics: Religious Belief, Religious Practice, and the Strength of Religious Voting Cleavages.” (with John D. Huber). Comparative Political Studies, 2023, Volume 56, Issue 14, pp.: 2201-2230. Paper here.

Economic development has been linked to a declining importance of religion. But alongside secularization, there has been an increased salience of religion in electoral politics. These seemingly contradictory trends can be understood by distinguishing between two dimensions of religiosity: religious belief and church attendance. We show that religious voting cleavages are strongest in democracies where there is religious cohesion, which means belief and practice go hand-in-hand. Voting cleavages require group members to have distinctive policy preferences and be politically engaged. Strong religious beliefs are associated with distinctive policy preferences (but not with political engagement), and church attendance is associated with political engagement. Thus, religious cohesion provides the key ingredients for a religious political cleavage. But what explains variation in religious cohesion in democracies? We find that religious cohesion increases with economic security. Thus, economic security can promote secularization, but also facilitate the religious cohesion associated with strong religious voting cleavages.

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“Trust Nobody: How Voters React to Conspiracy Theories” (with Giovanna Invernizzi). Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2023, Volume 10, Issue 2, pp.: 201-208. Paper here.

How does exposure to conspiracy theories affect voters’ political attitudes? Using an online experiment among US subjects, we show that exposure to conspiracy theories decreases voters’ trust in the domestic informational environment. Subjects were exposed to conspiracy theories that are entirely unrelated to American domestic politics, which further underscores such narratives’ danger. However, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that voters do not weigh unrelated conspiracies in their evaluation of politicians’ performance and domestic political institutions. Overall, our findings illustrate that an informational environment permeated by conspiracy theories could impede the functioning of democracy by eroding trust in information providers and undermining the credibility of political information.

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“Political Budget Cycles in Autocracies: The Role of Religious Seasons and Political Collective Action”. Politics and Religion, 2022, Volume 15, Issue 3, pp.: 617-622. Paper here.

For autocrats ruling over religious populations as in many Muslim-majority countries, threats of mass collective action and religious mobilization are risky to ignore, being potentially detrimental to authoritarian survival. Religious seasons, such as Ramadan, could raise the seriousness of such threats. Accordingly, incumbents might adopt expansionary fiscal policies to avoid the escalation of political discontent at these times. Focusing on Egypt’s fiscal policy between 2006 and 2019, I find that although the religious season of Ramadan is associated with modest increases in government expenditure and welfare spending, this relationship is dependent on the level of political threats facing the regime. Government spending is higher in Ramadan season when it is preceded by more episodes of anti-regime collective action. This evidence suggests that the interaction between the religious and political contexts could generate political budget cycles outside electoral seasons.

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“Turnout in Transitional Elections: Who votes in Iraq?.” The Journal of the Middle East and Africa , 2018, Volume 9, Issue 2, pp. 153-171. Paper here.

Electoral turnout in Iraq is a puzzling phenomenon. Despite the country’s lack of a democratic past, undeveloped party system, volatile political alliances, inexperienced voters, ethnic politics, sectarian violence, and terrorism, Iraqis’ electoral engagement has reached impressive levels. Given the importance of political participation at the foundational stages of democracy, this article places the individual within a broad context to draw an image of the likely Iraqi voter using five nationally representative surveys covering the three Iraqi parliamentary elections of 2005, 2010, and 2014. The main findings indicate that the Iraqi voter is likely to be a middle-aged, educated male with interest in politics and trust in the political institutions. Surprisingly, the socioeconomic and ethnic identities of the voter are not related to that individual’s decision to participate. Provincial-level violence has a complex and unstable link to individual turnout, depending on its timing, scale, and frequency, but it does not hinder participation. These results challenge some of the common themes in the literature on Iraqi politics and democratization. With the alarming decline in the turnout rate of the 2018 elections, this study is a preliminary guide to understanding how to sustain citizens’ engagement in new democracies.

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“The Welfare State in Egypt, 1995-2005: A Comparative Approach.” AlMuntaqa (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies), 2018, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 66-83. Paper here.

This article applies the typology of welfare state regimes developed by Esping-Andersen in 1990 to the welfare state in Egypt as an example of developing countries. The study surveys the relations between the state, the market, and society from 1995 to 2005, a period characterized by a shift towards a market-oriented economy, challenging the historical legacy of the state’s social role. The methodology employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis while examining the characteristics of seven main welfare schemes and social safety nets in Egypt. The findings suggest that the Egyptian current welfare state can be best described as “conservative/informal,” where social benefits are tied to employment in the formal sector, leading to the family, religious institutions, and clientelistic networks taking on important roles to meet the social needs of the larger informal sector. In addition, the study proposes amendments to the Esping-Andersen typology in order to better understand the welfare programs of developing countries. Mismanagement, quality considerations, the gap between stated goals and implementation, disparities created by gender and urbanization differences, and the role of informal sector should be systematically considered when analyzing welfare regimes in general, and those of developing countries in particular.

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Book Chapters

“Islam, Politics, and Women in the Public Sphere: Between Institutions, Movements, and Practices.” Forthcoming. In The I.B. Tauris Handbook of Contemporary Islamic Studies, ed. Seyfeddin Kara and Suleyman Dost. London: I.B. Tauris, 2026. Chapter here.

Bridging interpretive and quantitative research approaches, this chapter synthesizes interdisciplinary discussions of three interrelated inquiries. First, how have major political turning points recast debates about Islam and women’s public roles? Second, how does Islam shape women’s prospects for public participation, whether through state laws and reforms, Islamist parties and movements, or religious practices and interpretations? Third, what does the recent turn to quantitative methods in the study of Islam add to longer-standing debates, and how might it be put into dialogue with qualitative and interpretive approaches?

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Working Papers

“Bad Impression: The Implications of Violent Elections on Political Participation and Attitudes.” Paper here.

This paper examines how exposure to electoral violence in citizens’ first election-during their impressionable years-shapes later political engagement under authoritarianism. Focusing on Egypt’s unusually competitive and violent 2005 parliamentary election, I match fine-grained district-level violence data to post-Mubarak surveys. Using a Difference-in-Discontinuities design, I compare the effects of first eligibility in 2005 across violent and non-violent districts. I find that first-time eligibility is associated with higher post-Mubarak electoral participation regardless of violence. However, cohorts eligible to vote in violent districts-especially where the state enabled violence by regime-aligned non-state actors rather than directly repressing voters-exhibit higher rates of non-electoral participation, compared to their counterparts in nonviolent districts. The findings suggest that violent first-election experiences can reallocate engagement from institutional to non-institutional channels, in ways that depend on how state-perpetrated violence is organized. They also point to perceptions of state institutions, particularly institutional trust, as one plausible mechanism shaping youth political trajectories.

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“Indoctrination and Authoritarian Statecraft: The Case of Religious Education” (with Allison Spencer Hartnett).*

Authoritarian regimes rely on direct indoctrination via educational institutions as a key strategy to legitimate and consolidate their rule. Regimes are constrained, however, in deploying direct indoctrination because it requires significant investments in institution-building and personnel. We argue that regimes allocate such institutions based on their expectations of political returns via three non-exclusive logics: reinforcing ideological affinity among supporters (ideological consolidation), inducing compliance in opposition strongholds (ideological incursion), and displacing opposition-controlled institutions with state-run alternatives (institutional displacement). We test our argument in the case of state-supplied religious schooling in post-2013 Egypt, where a nominally secular authoritarian regime contends with both a religious political opposition and a devout society. Using a novel dataset of the universe of state-sponsored religious schools established between 2017 and 2020, we find that more investments are allocated to districts with high regime support, opposition strongholds, and where the religious opposition is institutionally entrenched. We also find evidence that these investments are associated with public compliance (measured by electoral participation) while inducing backlash in privately held political and religious beliefs based on the Arab Barometer survey. Our analysis contributes a new theoretical framework and empirical analysis of how autocrats signal social control via indoctrination in religiously mobilized societies.

*Note: Paper available upon request.

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“Measuring Change without Harm: Ethical and Methodological Lessons from an Edutainment Experiment in Egypt” (with Salma Mousa and Donald Green)*

This study evaluates whether narrative entertainment can shift attitudes, norms, and quasi-behaviors related to gender practices in Egypt, and how such changes can be measured. We report results from a randomized edutainment intervention in Luxor built around a nationally broadcast television drama addressing female genital mutilation (FGM), early marriage, and family planning. Participants were randomly assigned to view an FGM reel, a family-planning reel, or a placebo storyline. Outcomes were measured through midline surveys and interviewer-blinded qualitative interviews conducted six months later, analyzed at scale using large language models. Survey results show that the FGM reel increased opposition to the practice and awareness of health risks, while effects on family planning were more limited. Interview-based measures correlate meaningfully with survey outcomes, validating standard instruments, but capture additional dimensions, including emotional framing and spontaneous salience, that surveys miss. Importantly, we show that eliciting and analyzing open-ended interview content on sensitive topics can be done without increasing respondent distress, highlighting an ethical pathway for integrating qualitative measurement into experimental evaluations of harmful practices. The findings demonstrate how qualitative interviews, analyzed systematically, can complement experimental surveys without substituting for them.

*Note: Paper available upon request.

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“Explaining Gender Gaps in Political Participation: A Cross-National Study” (with Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra and Jane M. Sakr)*

What explains gender gaps in political participation around the world? In this paper, we re-assess prevalent explanations of cross-national variation in gender disparities in electoral and non-electoral participation. To that end, we aggregate and standardize data from an array of existing cross-national surveys. Our dataset includes more than 4 million respondents, covering more than 130 countries surveyed in the period from 1972 to 2024. This provides us with the largest available dataset to date to examine our question of interest, a significant improvement over existing cross-national accounts.

*Note: Paper available upon request.

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“From Religious Violence to Political Compromise: The Historical Determinants of Institutional Trust” (with Isabela Mares).*

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“Analyzing Causal Mechanisms: A Review of Theory and Practices in Political Science”. Paper here.

Recent empirical works in political science have been showing increasing interest in the study of causal mechanisms. Given that, this paper has three main goals. First, it provides a detailed survey of the methodological approaches used by scholars to study causal mechanisms. Then, it holds practice against theory to underline the discrepancy between the methodological requirements of the most commonly used approaches and how they are implemented. Second, I point out an overlooked issue with the study of causal mechanisms; measurement error. Through a set of analytical results and Monte Carlo studies, I underline the threat of measurement error in the study of causal mechanisms. Finally, I build on the theoretical discussions to suggest five-point criteria and two novel robustness checks to facilitate the choice of the methodological approach that best matches the data structure and the theoretical framework of a given research.

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“Believing Conspiracy Theories: Causes, Effects, and Processes from a Comparative Empirical Perspective”. Paper here.

This paper surveys the existing empirical literature on conspiratorial beliefs at the individual level with a special focus on political implications

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Policy Papers

“Ethically Informed Algorithmic Matching and Refugee Resettlement,” (with Craig. D. Smith). Forced Migration Review, 2024, Issue 73. Paper here.

This article discusses real-world projects using algorithms to match resettled refugees with sponsors and services. The authors argue that, when done right, algorithms can support larger-scale and better-informed resettlement.

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“Interim Evaluation Report, Re-match: Relocation via Matching,” (with Craig D. Smith, Laura Celeste, Elisa Ertl, Katja Wagner, Lea Rau), Berlin Governance Platform, 2024. Report here.

With Re:Match, the relocation of asylum seekers within the EU was successfully implemented for the first time using an algorithm-based matching process. In the first project year 2023, 78 Ukrainian asylum seekers in Poland were matched directly with six German cities and supported in the practical implementation of their relocation. Based on the evaluation of the first relocation phase, the interim evaluation of Re:Match presents exciting project data and results and explains the underlying processes and technical features.

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“Labor Productivity: Large vs. Small, Turkey vs. EU,” TUSIAD Competitiveness Forum Briefs, 2014. Report here.

The paper examines the labor productivity gap between firms in Turkey and the European Union (EU) by comparing labor productivity of firms of different sizes. The gap between the labor productivity among large firms in Turkey and the average labor productivity of large firms in the new member states of the EU (called EU10) is quite small. By contrast, the labor productivity of the smallest group of firms in Turkey (those employing less than 20 employees) are less than one-half as productive as the average productivity of the same size group in EU10. In addition, the share in employment of this group of firms in Turkey is higher than the average share in EU10.