Scholarship list
Journal article
The Qualitative Transparency Deliberations: Insights and Implications
Published 03/2021
Perspectives on Politics, 19, 1, 171 - 208
In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu.1
Journal article
Published 09/2018
Political science quarterly, 133, 3, 574 - 576
Journal article
Explaining the Puzzle of Democratic Divergence: Theory Confronts Experience in Tunisia and Egypt
Published Autumn 2018
Political science quarterly : PSQ.
Journal article
The Persistence of Surprise in Middle East Politics
Published 2014
PS., 47, 3
Journal article
The Robustness of Authoritarianism Reconsidered: Lessons of the Arab Spring
Published 2012
Comparative politics., 44, 2, 127 - 149
Journal article
Thinking about Democracy and Revolution in the Middle East: Why Now?
Published Spring 2011
Jewish review of books.
Journal article
Published 12/01/2008
Middle East policy, 15, 4, 134 - 156
Journal article
Democratization and its Discontents: Should America Push Political Reform in the Middle East?
Published 2008
Foreign Affairs, 87, 4, 112 - 119
Journal article
Faith in Politics. New Trends in the Study of Religion and Politics
Published 01/2008
World politics, 60, 2, 315 - 347
Studies of religion and politics have begun to force their way into the mainstream of the discipline thanks to their increasing methodological sophistication and theoretical ambition in addition to the push of real-world events. In comparative politics, puzzle-driven structured comparison has yielded new insights into the rationality of religious behavior, the weight of path dependence in shaping religious values, and the play of socioeconomic factors in shaping religion's vitality. In international relations, recognition of the importance of religious identities and values in the play of international affairs has spelled an advance over realist caricatures that long discounted ideas as epiphenomenal and focused on the quest for wealth and power as the sole driver of international politics. But notable lacunae remain. The comparative subfield still needs to reckon with the noninstrumental aspect of religious behavior, the power of religion as an independent variable, and the differential appeal, persuasiveness, and political salience of religious ideas over time. The IR subfield must move beyond “paradigm wars” focused on whether religion matters in international politics in favor of more empirically grounded, structured comparison to illuminate when and why religion matters in international affairs.
Journal article
The robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East: exceptionalism in comparative perspective
Published 2004
Comparative politics, 36, 2, 139 - 157