Leader personality has a major impact on decisions made and policies chosen, yet the systematic study of political leadership using observational data is challenging. This is particularly true in closed informational settings of authoritarian regimes, where, incidentally, the effects of leader personalities are often more pronounced and less institutionally constrained. I show one way of addressing this challenge by focusing on political ambition, or self-selection into the political career, and exploring how selection rules affect an individual decision to run for office in a lab setting. I argue that certain properties of the selection process lead to self-selection based on risk attitudes.  Using a series of laboratory experiments in Russia, I demonstrate that higher costs of candidacy and public accountability of the selected officials lead to an increased role of risk-seeking in the decision to pursue an office. These findings suggest, for example, that in hybrid regimes, pro-regime candidates would be more risk-averse than the opposition candidates. The study shows the directions for theory development and research within the scholarship on ambition and candidacy under imperfect democracies and non-democratic regimes.

“If you really love Egypt ... listen to only me,” said President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in a memorable televised remark in 2016. Al-Sisi’s comment aptly summarizes the hallmarks of his rule: personalism, nationalist rhetoric, and a complete intolerance for opposing political viewpoints. The latter trend is heavily pronounced in the electoral arena, which the Sisi regime has structured to undermine opponents and reward allies. This chapter examines the strategies Sisi employed to shut serious competitors out of electoral contests, namely the 2014 and 2018 presidential elections, and the 2015 and 2020 legislative elections. It also identifies the political challenges and goals that shaped the regime’s management of each of the four elections.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This Handbook analyzes elections in the Middle East and North Africa and seeks to overcome normative assumptions about the linkage between democracy and elections.

Structured around five main themes, contributors provide chapters detailing how their case studies illustrate specific themes within individual country settings. Authors disentangle the various aspects informing elections as a process in the Middle East by taking into account the different contexts where the electoral contest occurs and placing these into a broader comparative context. The findings from this Handbook connect with global electoral developments, empirically demonstrating that there is very little that is “exceptional” about the Middle East and North Africa when it comes to electoral contests.

Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine all aspects related to elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Through such comprehensive coverage and systematic analysis, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in politics, elections, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Autocratic elections are often marred with systematic intimidation and violence toward voters and candidates. When do authoritarian regimes resort to violent electoral strategies? 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 electoral violence is low. I test these propositions by explaining the subnational distribution of electoral violence during the most violent election in Mubarak’s Egypt (1981-2011): the 2005 Parliamentary Election. 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 lessons for efforts to contain electoral violence in less democratic contexts.

What effect do gender quotas have on political responsiveness? We examine the effect of randomly imposed electoral quotas for women in Mumbai’s city council, using a wide variety of objective and subjective measures of constituency-level public service quality. Quotas are associated with differences in the distribution of legislator effort, with quota members focusing on public goods distribution, while non-quota members focus on individual goods, member perks, and identity issues. These differences in effort seem to influence institutional performance: perceived quality of local public goods is higher in constituencies with quota members, and citizen complaints are processed faster in areas with more quota members. We suggest that men’s more extensive engagement with extralegal and rhetorical forms of political action has led to men and women cultivating different styles of political representation.

AWARDS

Best Paper in Urban or Regional Politics, APSA 2021