Articles and Book Manuscripts
Below is an overview of previous and ongoing scholarly projects and writings. Complete manuscripts available upon request.
Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism.
(with Dr. Nathan Brown, Steven Schaaf, and Julian Waller). Book. Forthcoming with University of Michigan Press. 2024.
Authoritarianism seems to be everywhere in the political world—even the definition of authoritarianism as any form of non-democratic governance has grown very broad. Attempts to explain authoritarian rule as a function of the interests or needs of the ruler or regime can be misleading. Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want argues that to understand how authoritarian systems work we need to look not only at the interests and intentions of those at the top, but also at the inner workings of the various parts of the state. Courts, elections, security force structure, and intelligence gathering are seen as structured and geared toward helping maintain the regime. Yet authoritarian regimes do not all operate the same way in the day-to-day and year-to-year tumble of politics.
In Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want, the authors find that when state bodies form strong institutional patterns and forge links with key allies both inside the state and outside of it, they can define interests and missions that are different from those at the top of the regime. By focusing on three such structures (parliaments, constitutional courts, and official religious institutions), the book shows that the degree of autonomy realized by a particular part of the state rests on how thoroughly it is institutionalized and how strong its links are with constituencies. Instead of viewing authoritarian governance as something that reduces politics to rulers’ whims and opposition movements, the authors show how it operates—and how much what we call “authoritarianism” varies.
This article examines the relationship between emergent LGBTQ movements and the state in the Arab world over the past two decades. Focusing on the legal fight toward gay rights in Lebanon and Tunisia—and the Arab region more broadly—the article seeks to (re)examine the spurious relationship between democracy and gay rights. It interrogates a set of prevalent assumptions about the effect of regime type (democracy vs authoritarianism) on gay rights activism and litigation. Moving away from inadequate structural explanations that are regime-centric, the article explains why some LGBTQ Arab movements have successfully relied on strategic litigation to confront the state while others took on a different set of tactical approaches to securing gay rights and eschewed legal mobilization in favor of mobilizing international allies and activist networks beyond their state borders. The paired comparison between Tunisia and Lebanon shifts our focus back to the agency of rulers, judges, and social movement leaders in shaping legal outcomes for LGBTQ rights in the Arab world.
LGBTQ Activism and the Politics of Altering Public Perceptions of Sexual Minorities Across Arab States.
Book Manuscript based on my PhD dissertation.
In this project, I investigate the conditions under which LGBTQ movements can successfully challenge anti-LGBTQ laws and change attitudes toward sexual minorities. I analyze the variation in how queer movements in the MENA region frame LGBTQ rights claims as well as the impact these movements have. The project emphasizes three empirical cases—Tunisia, Lebanon, and Palestine. Based on four years of research, my analysis leverages over 80 in-depth interviews and more than a 150 hours of field observations participating in formal and informal events with activists and organizations. I also rely on hundreds of newspaper articles, social media posts, and official statements sampled from LGBTQ groups and partner NGOs.
Imagined Treason and Post-Lavender Scare Politics: How LGBTQ Communities Respond
to Fifth Column Accusations.
Book chapter in Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns, edited by Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz. 2022. Online
The framing of sexual minorities as a fifth column is ubiquitous. In many parts of the world, LGBTQ people have been historically associated with betrayal of the nation and accused of being easy prey for recruitment by a foreign enemy. But how do LGBTQ groups respond to such damaging narratives which constitute them as a threat to national security? And what consequences do various responses have on sexual minorities and the viability of rights movements that emerge among them? This chapter explores how target groups make discursive framing choices vis-à-vis political homophobia and their stigmatization as fifth columns. It posits that LGBT groups’ claim-making stands as a major determinant of their movement’s viability in the long run and its ability to withstand populist episodes and queerphobic backlash. To understand variation in group response, the chapter leverages a paired comparison between the LGBT movement’s response to the Lavender Scare in the United States during the cold war and the Palestinian LGBT movement’s response to a strikingly similar “scare” episode during the First Intifada in the 1980s. The process-tracing approach allows us to understand the mechanism by which tactically chosen counter-narratives can reposition sexual minorities vis-à-vis the nation and reconstitute their relationship to the national interest in the popular imaginary. The chapter concludes by highlighting how a serious treatment of fifth column narratives can advance the study of social movement outcomes and further enrich an evolving research program on marginalization and identity politics in the age of populism.
In progress
The Institutionalization of Authoritarian Judiciaries: Bringing Judges Back in—Halfway. Working paper with Dr. Nathan Brown.
Can Religion-Based Discourse Empower Queer Arabs? Experimental Evidence from Tunisia. Working paper.
Analysis and Policy Writings
Why Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian parliament — and what it means for the future.
In The Washington Post Monkey Cage
Palestine’s Emerging National Movement: “Questions On My Mind”
In Carnegie Endowment For International Peace
LGBTQ MOVEMENTS IN THE MENA: Reflection on The Politics of Marginalization and the Need to Move Away From the Margins of the Discipline
In The APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter.