Research

My research focuses on the use of democratic institutions by non-democratic rulers to affect cooperation or competition among opposition factions. In particular I examine the effects of legislatures and political parties. I draw on substantive examples from across African and the Middle East with a special focus on Morocco. Papers are available upon request.

Dissertation Work

Opposition Dynamics in Authoritarian Legislatures
Most empirical scholarship investigating legislatures in authoritarian regimes find that the use of this democratic institution extends the tenure of the ruler. This finding is then used as a stylized fact when developing models explaining the mechanism behind the apparent tenure increase. However, a deeper examination of the literature reveals mixed results. In fact, legislatures only extend the length of rule under certain conditions, while at other times they seem to have no effect. This paper presents a two-stage formal model of bargaining and cooperation with uncertainty over ideal points that develops comparative statics to explain when we should and should not expect to see a legislature increasing an authoritarian ruler's tenure.

A United Front? Testing Opposition Cooperation in Authoritarian Regimes
Much of the literature regarding opposition activity in non-democratic regimes focuses on the relationship between the ruler and the opposition. The approach fails to account for the dynamics of opposition groups interacting with each other which can have a substantial effect on regime stability. Furthermore, current scholarship generally discounts any claim of policy preference by political parties in non-democratic regimes. I investigate the validity of these assumptions by estimating ideal points of political parties in Morocco using data on legislation scraped from Morocco's House of Representatives. I compare the left-right ideological position claimed by the political parties to their ideal points estimated from voting behavior. I investigate whether there is in fact any substantial difference regarding policy preference and analyze the likelihood of parties to co-sponsor bills given their ideological distance.

Elections and Representation in Authoritarian Regimes
When non-democratic states hold elections for the legislature, do political parties actually represent their constituency? Adding to the burgeoning literature on legislative accountability in non-democratic regimes, I compare the political preferences of voter constituencies in Morocco to the ideologies of political parties that represent them. Demographic data from censuses, preference data from the Arabarometer, and voting data from National Democratic Institute, I use multilevel post-stratification regression analysis to estimate the political preference of electoral districts which I then compare to ideological estimates I have developed for the political parties of Morocco. Understanding the depth connection between active opposition political parties and the masses may provide greater insight into the development and dynamics of popular uprisings.

Working Papers and Works in Progress

Non-Consecutive Executives: Changing Preferences in a Changing World
Why would voters re-elect a politician they previously removed from office? That is, if the voters would rather see an untested politician replace the current incumbent, why would they ever bring that former incumbent back instead of choosing another untested politician? Although rare, we do politicians returning to office after their removal and current formal models of elections are unable to deal with this phenomenon. The paper offers setup which both allows politicians to be potentially re-elected after having been removed from office and accounts for the relative rarity of its occurrence. Additionally, I find conditions under which a politician may run for office and loose, only to run again once more and win.