Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Dissenting opinions carry no authority and require the expenditure of resources by their authors. Yet, the Supreme Court has issued a split decision in 60% of its merit decisions over the past 50 terms. Why do justices dissent when they appear to have such limited value? Through a focus on opinion quality, I argue that judges use dissents to secure better policy outcomes from future courts. Dissents are posited to occur as the function of the opinion-writing process, in which judges bargain over policy and quality, and the dissent’s potential for future adoption by providing an intellectual framework that efficiently communicates a preferred legal policy and reduces future opinion writing costs. I present a formal model and derive hypotheses regarding the conditions under which courts will adopt existing dissents. I conceptualize quality as the “thoughtfulness” (standardized word count), “ingenuity” (the use of reasoning from substantively-unrelated areas of the law) and “legal craftsmanship” (weighted citation counts) of the opinion. This theory is tested using the universe of overruled-overruling Supreme Court case dyads in which one judge has dissented in the overruled case (1790-2005, N=237).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Conventional wisdom maintains that dissent (i.e., behavioral threat) increases state repression. Existing research generally ignores, however, the possibility that repressive behavior responds to the efforts of government officials. For example, after identifying a potential challenge, authorities could attempt to eliminate dissent before it emerges or escalates. Analyzing repression within the United States from 1948 to 1982 (the bulk of the Cold War), I examine the relative importance of behavioral and political threats. As found, when authorities identify that international and domestic challenges exist, repression generally increases � regardless of actual dissident behavior. Results further disclose that political threats are more important determinants of state repression than any other explanatory variable included within estimated models. The influence of �bringing politics back into� the study of repression is important because it significantly challenges previous research on the topic and it compels this work to explore new areas.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper represents an exploratory analysis of the relationships between democracy
and different forms of ethnic conflict. Only recently have scholars sought to unpack ethnic
conflict and take seriously the variations in causes and dynamics of different forms of dissent.
This article continues in this direction by considering how institutions interact with various kinds
of ethnic strife. We consider three different forms of ethnic conflict�protest, conflict among
groups, and violence against the state. We focus on whether ethnic conflict rises or falls due to
the dynamics of election cycles, and find that each form of dissent is, indeed, distinct, and that
elections are not as destabilizing as expected. We discuss our results and the implications for
broader debates about political institutions and ethnic conflict.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) is an area where women historically have had little access to the political process and to state power as well as low levels of formal political participation according to statistics collected by the United Nations and World Bank. However, there is a growing mound of evidence by gender and feminist scholars in the region that clearly demonstrate that women are heavily involved both socially and politically in local and international NGOs, local and transnational social movements and networks, including feminist ones, and the media where they are actively working towards women�s empowerment. Therefore civil society and the public sphere is becoming a space that is slowly opening up to women�s participation. With this increase in women�s access to the public sphere, this paper will move beyond country specific case studies and examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit women�s political participation across the MENA region. Using the latest wave of the World Values Survey (1999-2001), this project will compare women�s political participation in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan to order to understand what forces are pushing women into public space and if that differs by country. Although we will explore a number of factors, after carefully reading of the literature, we decided that the roles of religion, secularism, and attitudes towards women�s roles in the family and attitudes toward women�s employment were important in explaining what leads women to become politically active in MENA societies.