Gender quotas are increasingly being adopted by autocrats in part to legitimize their rule. Yet, ... more Gender quotas are increasingly being adopted by autocrats in part to legitimize their rule. Yet, even in autocracies, these quotas increase women’s political representation. It thus stands to reason that public support for gender quotas in autocracies might be shaped by this trade-off between advancing women’s rights and granting the regime legitimacy. All else equal, regime opponents should be less supportive of gender quotas in autocracies, wary of legitimizing the regime. We uncover evidence of this proposition in an analysis of region-wide Arab Barometer surveys and a survey experiment in Algeria. We also find that evaluations of this trade-off are conditioned by other demographics, with women, gender egalitarians, and Islamists remaining more consistent in their support for/opposition to gender quotas regardless of regime gains. Overall, our findings suggest that gender quotas in autocracies are viewed through a political lens, creating a potential backlash toward women’s empow...
The Algerian military’s response to the 2019–2020 Hirak protests was relatively peaceful. In cont... more The Algerian military’s response to the 2019–2020 Hirak protests was relatively peaceful. In contrast to its violent repression of protests in 1988, and subsequent coup and civil war in the 1990s, the military showed considerable restraint toward the Hirak. Leveraging a survey of 2,235 self-reported military personnel, I show that the military’s restraint emanated from protesters’ use of nonviolence and fraternization, as well as from a recognition that the military’s more repressive approach in the 1990s was a mistake. At the same time, a priming experiment suggests that the military’s willingness to repress increases when protesters threaten the military’s corporate interests, and when Russia, Algeria’s primary arms supplier, reiterates its support for the regime. Overall, the results show how protester tactics, international reactions, and political learning can condition the military’s repression or restraint during times of unrest.
Episodes of mass political violence, such as genocide and civil war, have been thought to both en... more Episodes of mass political violence, such as genocide and civil war, have been thought to both encourage and discourage future political mobilization. We square these competing hypotheses by disaggregating between protest onset and resilience. We argue that exposure to mass violence decades ago should on average decrease protest onset, by heightening fears of repression and retribution. However, conditional on protesting, prior exposure to violence should increase protest longevity, by generating greater political grievances that fuel commitment to the cause. We find evidence of both effects in Algeria during the 2019–20 Hirak protests that toppled President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Pairing an original dataset on massacres during the 1990s civil war with a rolling online survey of 18,000 Algerians in 2019–20, we find that areas exposed to greater violence in the 1990s had on average fewer, but more committed, protesters in 2019–20.
A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders... more A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders can undermine the religion's social influence. Do these negative consequences of politicization also extend to Islam? Contrary to scholarly and popular accounts that describe Islam as inherently political, we argue that Muslim religious leaders will weaken their religious authority when they engage with politics. We test this argument with a conjoint experiment implemented on a survey of more than 12,000 Sunni Muslim respondents in eleven Middle Eastern countries. The results show that connections to political issues or politically active religious movements decrease the perceived religious authority of Muslim clerics, including among respondents who approve of the clerics' political views. The article's findings shed light on how Muslims in the Middle East understand the relationship between religion and politics, and they contribute more broadly to understanding of how politicized religious leaders can have negative repercussions for religion.
Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military’s decision to either d... more Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military’s decision to either defend the ruler or make common cause with the ruled. Yet surprisingly little scholarship investigates opposition expectations for the military’s likely response to mass protest. We theorize that some determinants of the military’s willingness to repress are more observable to activists than others. In particular, we identify conscription as a highly salient indicator that soldiers will refuse to fire on protesters and hypothesize that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to materialize against regimes with conscripted armies than those with volunteer forces. We substantiate this theory with two sources of evidence: (1) a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Algerian Revolution and (2) a cross-national analysis of the positive association between conscription and nonviolent campaign onset from 1945 to 2013.
Domestic politics around the globe have become increasingly polarized along secular-religious lin... more Domestic politics around the globe have become increasingly polarized along secular-religious lines. Recent literature suggests that one way to ease secular-religious tension and gridlock is for religious leaders to offer progressive reinterpretations of religious texts, that might convince religious conservatives to compromise from their seemingly-fixed policy positions. But can everyday citizens deploy religious reinterpretations themselves? We examine this question through a series of citizen debates in Tunisia, in which 602 participants attempted to reach a compromise over two ‘culture wars’ issues. Across both experiments, we find that having secular liberals engage religious conservatives with religious reinterpretations backfired, nearly halving the rate of compromise. Religious reinterpretations produced both defensive conservatives and emboldened liberals, obstructing compromise between them. While scholarship suggests that religious leaders may be able to deploy reinterpre...
Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military's decision to eith... more Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military's decision to either defend the ruler or make common cause with the ruled. Yet surprisingly little scholarship investigates opposition expectations for the military's likely response to mass protest. We theorize that some determinants of the military's willingness to repress are more observable to activists than others. In particular, we identify conscription as a highly salient indicator that soldiers will refuse to fire on protesters, and hypothesize that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to materialize against regimes with conscripted armies than those with volunteer forces. We substantiate this theory with two sources of evidence: (1) a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Algerian Revolution, and (2) a cross-national analysis of the positive association between conscription and nonviolent campaign onset from 1945-2013.
These files contain the data and code needed to replicate the tables and figures in the article N... more These files contain the data and code needed to replicate the tables and figures in the article Norm Diffusion through US Military Training in Tunisia in Security Studies. For any questions, contact [email protected].
identification has been declining in Britain, as in many other countries, so this vital buffer to... more identification has been declining in Britain, as in many other countries, so this vital buffer to events with shock potential has weakened. The shocks of the contemporary era should therefore not be regarded as being more intense than somewhat similar events in the past, nor have they occurred with greater frequency. What is different, the authors assert, is that the British party system has become significantly more susceptible to change. Multiple waves of panel data from the British Election Study (BES) are used to validate this argument, beginning with the evidence of dealignment. The authors report that in the four elections up to and including the 2017 election, 60% of voters switched parties at least once. In the 1960s, Butler and Stokes (Political Change in Britain, 1969) identified 13% of British electors as swing voters. So the decline in partisan commitment has been significant, but it is difficult to explain. It is not well accounted for by the decline of class divisions,...
In May 2017, the Tunisian military allowed protesters to storm and shut down an oil valve in Tata... more In May 2017, the Tunisian military allowed protesters to storm and shut down an oil valve in Tataouine, in contravention of a direct order from President Essebsi to defend the production site. While scholars have recently examined military defection during mass uprisings, these protests were small and localized. Why did the military disobey President Essebsi in Tataouine? Drawing upon a survey of military officers conducted six months prior to the defection, I show that the military's composition and corporate interests, rather than its professionalism, likely prompted its defection. The majority of the military hails from impoverished regions in Tunisia's neglected interior and identifies with the demands of protesters in these regions. The military also saw the curtailment of its material and political interests in early 2017, giving it little incentive to repress protesters on the regime's behalf. Methodologically, this study provides some of the first survey data of ...
Supplemental Material, replication for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Shar... more Supplemental Material, replication for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Sharan Grewal, and Yasser Kureshi in Journal of Conflict Resolution
Supplemental Material, Appendix_(1) for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Sha... more Supplemental Material, Appendix_(1) for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Sharan Grewal, and Yasser Kureshi in Journal of Conflict Resolution
A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders... more A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders can undermine the religion's social influence. Do these negative consequences of politicization also extend to Islam? Contrary to scholarly and popular accounts that describe Islam as inherently political, we argue that Muslim religious leaders will weaken their religious authority when they engage with politics. We test this argument with a conjoint experiment implemented on a survey of more than 12,000 Sunni Muslim respondents in eleven Middle Eastern countries. The results show that connections to political issues or politically active religious movements decrease the perceived religious authority of Muslim clerics, including among respondents who approve of the clerics' political views. The article's findings shed light on how Muslims in the Middle East understand the relationship between religion and politics, and they contribute more broadly to understanding of how pol...
Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civil... more Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civilian officials and the elected leaders that appoint them oversee and decide military affairs. This paper exposes a challenge to civilian control in the United States that originates in the disparaging attitudes military personnel hold toward civilian society. We argue that when military personnel view military culture as superior, they are more likely to view civilian political leaders as illegitimate and in turn to favor actions that undermine civilian control. We develop a typology of civilian control in which military officers can constrain, contest and limit civilian authority. Our empirical analysis provides strong and consistent evidence of the corrosive effects of military superiority on civilian control across three surveys of U.S. military personnel: the 1998-99 TISS survey of 2901 military officers, a 2014 YouGov of 275 veterans, and an original 2020 survey of 770 West Point cad...
Gender quotas are increasingly being adopted by autocrats in part to legitimize their rule. Yet, ... more Gender quotas are increasingly being adopted by autocrats in part to legitimize their rule. Yet, even in autocracies, these quotas increase women’s political representation. It thus stands to reason that public support for gender quotas in autocracies might be shaped by this trade-off between advancing women’s rights and granting the regime legitimacy. All else equal, regime opponents should be less supportive of gender quotas in autocracies, wary of legitimizing the regime. We uncover evidence of this proposition in an analysis of region-wide Arab Barometer surveys and a survey experiment in Algeria. We also find that evaluations of this trade-off are conditioned by other demographics, with women, gender egalitarians, and Islamists remaining more consistent in their support for/opposition to gender quotas regardless of regime gains. Overall, our findings suggest that gender quotas in autocracies are viewed through a political lens, creating a potential backlash toward women’s empow...
The Algerian military’s response to the 2019–2020 Hirak protests was relatively peaceful. In cont... more The Algerian military’s response to the 2019–2020 Hirak protests was relatively peaceful. In contrast to its violent repression of protests in 1988, and subsequent coup and civil war in the 1990s, the military showed considerable restraint toward the Hirak. Leveraging a survey of 2,235 self-reported military personnel, I show that the military’s restraint emanated from protesters’ use of nonviolence and fraternization, as well as from a recognition that the military’s more repressive approach in the 1990s was a mistake. At the same time, a priming experiment suggests that the military’s willingness to repress increases when protesters threaten the military’s corporate interests, and when Russia, Algeria’s primary arms supplier, reiterates its support for the regime. Overall, the results show how protester tactics, international reactions, and political learning can condition the military’s repression or restraint during times of unrest.
Episodes of mass political violence, such as genocide and civil war, have been thought to both en... more Episodes of mass political violence, such as genocide and civil war, have been thought to both encourage and discourage future political mobilization. We square these competing hypotheses by disaggregating between protest onset and resilience. We argue that exposure to mass violence decades ago should on average decrease protest onset, by heightening fears of repression and retribution. However, conditional on protesting, prior exposure to violence should increase protest longevity, by generating greater political grievances that fuel commitment to the cause. We find evidence of both effects in Algeria during the 2019–20 Hirak protests that toppled President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Pairing an original dataset on massacres during the 1990s civil war with a rolling online survey of 18,000 Algerians in 2019–20, we find that areas exposed to greater violence in the 1990s had on average fewer, but more committed, protesters in 2019–20.
A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders... more A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders can undermine the religion's social influence. Do these negative consequences of politicization also extend to Islam? Contrary to scholarly and popular accounts that describe Islam as inherently political, we argue that Muslim religious leaders will weaken their religious authority when they engage with politics. We test this argument with a conjoint experiment implemented on a survey of more than 12,000 Sunni Muslim respondents in eleven Middle Eastern countries. The results show that connections to political issues or politically active religious movements decrease the perceived religious authority of Muslim clerics, including among respondents who approve of the clerics' political views. The article's findings shed light on how Muslims in the Middle East understand the relationship between religion and politics, and they contribute more broadly to understanding of how politicized religious leaders can have negative repercussions for religion.
Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military’s decision to either d... more Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military’s decision to either defend the ruler or make common cause with the ruled. Yet surprisingly little scholarship investigates opposition expectations for the military’s likely response to mass protest. We theorize that some determinants of the military’s willingness to repress are more observable to activists than others. In particular, we identify conscription as a highly salient indicator that soldiers will refuse to fire on protesters and hypothesize that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to materialize against regimes with conscripted armies than those with volunteer forces. We substantiate this theory with two sources of evidence: (1) a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Algerian Revolution and (2) a cross-national analysis of the positive association between conscription and nonviolent campaign onset from 1945 to 2013.
Domestic politics around the globe have become increasingly polarized along secular-religious lin... more Domestic politics around the globe have become increasingly polarized along secular-religious lines. Recent literature suggests that one way to ease secular-religious tension and gridlock is for religious leaders to offer progressive reinterpretations of religious texts, that might convince religious conservatives to compromise from their seemingly-fixed policy positions. But can everyday citizens deploy religious reinterpretations themselves? We examine this question through a series of citizen debates in Tunisia, in which 602 participants attempted to reach a compromise over two ‘culture wars’ issues. Across both experiments, we find that having secular liberals engage religious conservatives with religious reinterpretations backfired, nearly halving the rate of compromise. Religious reinterpretations produced both defensive conservatives and emboldened liberals, obstructing compromise between them. While scholarship suggests that religious leaders may be able to deploy reinterpre...
Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military's decision to eith... more Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military's decision to either defend the ruler or make common cause with the ruled. Yet surprisingly little scholarship investigates opposition expectations for the military's likely response to mass protest. We theorize that some determinants of the military's willingness to repress are more observable to activists than others. In particular, we identify conscription as a highly salient indicator that soldiers will refuse to fire on protesters, and hypothesize that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to materialize against regimes with conscripted armies than those with volunteer forces. We substantiate this theory with two sources of evidence: (1) a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Algerian Revolution, and (2) a cross-national analysis of the positive association between conscription and nonviolent campaign onset from 1945-2013.
These files contain the data and code needed to replicate the tables and figures in the article N... more These files contain the data and code needed to replicate the tables and figures in the article Norm Diffusion through US Military Training in Tunisia in Security Studies. For any questions, contact [email protected].
identification has been declining in Britain, as in many other countries, so this vital buffer to... more identification has been declining in Britain, as in many other countries, so this vital buffer to events with shock potential has weakened. The shocks of the contemporary era should therefore not be regarded as being more intense than somewhat similar events in the past, nor have they occurred with greater frequency. What is different, the authors assert, is that the British party system has become significantly more susceptible to change. Multiple waves of panel data from the British Election Study (BES) are used to validate this argument, beginning with the evidence of dealignment. The authors report that in the four elections up to and including the 2017 election, 60% of voters switched parties at least once. In the 1960s, Butler and Stokes (Political Change in Britain, 1969) identified 13% of British electors as swing voters. So the decline in partisan commitment has been significant, but it is difficult to explain. It is not well accounted for by the decline of class divisions,...
In May 2017, the Tunisian military allowed protesters to storm and shut down an oil valve in Tata... more In May 2017, the Tunisian military allowed protesters to storm and shut down an oil valve in Tataouine, in contravention of a direct order from President Essebsi to defend the production site. While scholars have recently examined military defection during mass uprisings, these protests were small and localized. Why did the military disobey President Essebsi in Tataouine? Drawing upon a survey of military officers conducted six months prior to the defection, I show that the military's composition and corporate interests, rather than its professionalism, likely prompted its defection. The majority of the military hails from impoverished regions in Tunisia's neglected interior and identifies with the demands of protesters in these regions. The military also saw the curtailment of its material and political interests in early 2017, giving it little incentive to repress protesters on the regime's behalf. Methodologically, this study provides some of the first survey data of ...
Supplemental Material, replication for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Shar... more Supplemental Material, replication for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Sharan Grewal, and Yasser Kureshi in Journal of Conflict Resolution
Supplemental Material, Appendix_(1) for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Sha... more Supplemental Material, Appendix_(1) for How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation by Sharan Grewal, and Yasser Kureshi in Journal of Conflict Resolution
A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders... more A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders can undermine the religion's social influence. Do these negative consequences of politicization also extend to Islam? Contrary to scholarly and popular accounts that describe Islam as inherently political, we argue that Muslim religious leaders will weaken their religious authority when they engage with politics. We test this argument with a conjoint experiment implemented on a survey of more than 12,000 Sunni Muslim respondents in eleven Middle Eastern countries. The results show that connections to political issues or politically active religious movements decrease the perceived religious authority of Muslim clerics, including among respondents who approve of the clerics' political views. The article's findings shed light on how Muslims in the Middle East understand the relationship between religion and politics, and they contribute more broadly to understanding of how pol...
Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civil... more Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civilian officials and the elected leaders that appoint them oversee and decide military affairs. This paper exposes a challenge to civilian control in the United States that originates in the disparaging attitudes military personnel hold toward civilian society. We argue that when military personnel view military culture as superior, they are more likely to view civilian political leaders as illegitimate and in turn to favor actions that undermine civilian control. We develop a typology of civilian control in which military officers can constrain, contest and limit civilian authority. Our empirical analysis provides strong and consistent evidence of the corrosive effects of military superiority on civilian control across three surveys of U.S. military personnel: the 1998-99 TISS survey of 2901 military officers, a 2014 YouGov of 275 veterans, and an original 2020 survey of 770 West Point cad...
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