Ongoing Book Project

Religious Cycles of Policy Responsiveness: How Religious Seasons Shape Public Opinion and Government Responsiveness in the Muslim World

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Published Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Trust Nobody: How Conspiracy Theories Can Distort Political Accountability” (with Giovanna Invernizzi). Journal of Experimental Political Science. (Forthcoming). 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. (Forthcoming). 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 9.2 (2018): 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) 1.1 (2018): 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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Working Papers

“Religious Cycles of Government Responsiveness: Why Governments Distribute in Ramadan”.*

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

In many Muslim societies, autocrats expand their distributive policies in the religious season of Ramadan. Why do autocrats distribute in Ramadan? And, who do they target? Focusing on Egypt (2014-2020), this paper argues that the regime distributes in Ramadan to contain political threats to its survival by co-opting areas where such threats are more credible. This strategy addresses rising political pressures during the season while signaling the regime’s competency and goodness by capitalizing on the month’s religious norms. I test this argument using an original municipality-level dataset of government-reported provision of economic benefits. The findings show that the government reports more economic distribution in places where political threats are higher: more socioeconomically developed, more contentious, and more affected by unpopular austerity measures. Using survey data, I also find that distribution in Ramadan translates into reputational gains for the regime, particularly among its critics. The conclusions suggest that autocrats might adopt multiple targeting strategies to respond to different threats to their survival, sometimes rewarding threatening groups to buy their acquiescence.

*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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“The Decline of Religion and Its Rise in Electoral Politics” (with John D. Huber). Paper here.

Economic development has been linked to the declining importance of religion. But alongside secularization, there has often been an increased salience of religion in electoral politics. These seemingly contradictory trends can be understood if we distinguish 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, where 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 more associated with distinctive policy preferences, and church attendance is more 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 it also facilitates the religious cohesion associated with strong religious voting cleavages.

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“Explaining Electoral Violence in Autocracies: Evidence from Mubarak’s Egypt”. Paper here.

Autocratic elections are often marred with systematic intimidation and violence toward voters and candidates. When do authoritarian regimes resort to violent electoral strategies? Why do some electoral contests suffer more violence than others in autocracies? I argue that electoral violence acts as a risk-management strategy in competitive authoritarian elections where: (a) the regime’s capacity for coopting competitors, local elites, and voters is low, and (b) the expected political cost of violence is low. To test these propositions, I study the subnational distribution of electoral violence and intimidation during the most violent election in Mubarak’s Egypt (1981-2011): the 2005 Parliamentary Election. The analysis leverages quantitative and qualitative data from a variety of sources. The results indicate that electoral violence is higher in districts where: the regime’s capacity for coopting local elites and competitors is low, clientelistic strategies are costlier and less effective, and citizens’ capacity for non-electoral mobilization is low. The conclusions provide valuable lessons for international and domestic efforts to contain the phenomenon of electoral violence in less democratic contexts.

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“Official Islam: Why Do Governments Invest in Religious Education” (with Allison Spencer Hartnett).*

Why do governments invest in religious education? Focusing on the recent expansion of governmental Qur’anic schools in Egypt, we argue that state-sponsored Qur’anic schools are more likely to be placed in districts with an established Muslim Brotherhood presence and high levels of competition between formal and informal providers of religious education. This is because governmental control of informal religious schooling at the local level allows the government to create new supporters and sway younger generations from the support of Islamist opposition. We test our argument using a novel dataset of Qur’anic religious schooling and the structure of local religious markets in Egypt, as well as contemporary survey data.

*Note: Paper available upon request.

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

Mohamed, Ahmed Ezzeldin. “Labor Productivity: Large vs. Small, Turkey vs. EU.” (2014). TUSIAD Competitiveness Forum Briefs. Paper here.

The paper examines the labor productivity gap between firms in Turkey and the European Union (EU) by comparing labor productivities 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.