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 Africa and the Middle East with a special focus on Morocco. Papers are available upon request.

Dissertation Work

Competition and Cohesion Among Elites in Authoritarian Legislatures
Abstract: Elite cohesion offers the best counterbalance to autocratic rulers in power-sharing regimes and enters the ruler's calculation in nearly every theory of democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes. Yet, the same theories focus exclusively on the relationship between the ruler and the elites as a collective, not the intra-elite relationships that are essential to acting cohesively. Using original data from 22,966 questions collected from the lower house of the Moroccan parliament, I look at how authoritarian elites interact with each within formal institutions. I find the ``ruling elites" participating in the legislature can be sorted into opposition and regime allied elites, and that opposition elites act far less cohesively than regime allied elites. My results suggest more attention should be paid to the composition of democratic institutions when trying to understand their effects on authoritarian regimes.

How Women Become Politicians
Abstract: How do female politicians convince their male colleagues to take them seriously? Much of the previous work on women in politics focuses on the relationship between female politicians and voters, not female politicians and their influential colleagues. However, political elites play an important role in determining how many and which female politicians are elected. I argue in order to prove women belong in the legislature, female politicians demonstrate competency by questioning policy. As women are motivated by the desire to demonstrate competency, given the option between privately addressing a government minister or speaking in front of their peers, women choose the latter. I support my argument by analyzing the rate of questioning policy of male and female members of the Moroccan parliament. The data comes from an original data set, collected from the question records of Morocco's lower house of parliament from 2011-2018. I find that women do question policy at a greater rate than men and prioritize public speaking over written questions. Although the gap in questioning rates decreases overtime, this is due to men asking significantly more questions, not women asking fewer. This paper offers the first politician-level analysis of gendered behavior in authoritarian regimes.

Non-Consecutive Executives: Changing Preferences in a Changing World
Abstract: 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.

Working Papers and Works in Progress

A Little Birdie Told Me: Modeling Experimental Learning with Martingales
Abstract: In this paper I develop a model of how a legislator learns the multi-dimensional policy preferences of her colleagues in circumstances of extreme uncertainty. Using the property of martingale convergence, I identify the conditions under which improvements can be made to the status quo while remaining ambivalent regarding whether the legislative colleagues are acting sincerely or strategically.