Methods

How can we improve elite sampling for qualitative and survey interviews? Elite interviewing remains a vital methodology for understanding political dynamics to access specialized populations and hidden networks, yet suffers from sampling biases that undermine the validity of research that aims for generalizability. This paper identifies three systematic distortions in elite research: hidden biases emerging from elites' strategic calculations about granting access, detectable biases stemming from researchers' positionality and perceived ideology, and network topology problems creating structural blindness to certain elite subgroups. We introduce a novel network-based probabilistic sampling protocol designed to counteract these biases by combining network mapping, community detection algorithms, and probability-based selection procedures. Unlike traditional referral-based approaches that inadvertently reproduce existing power dynamics, our methodology provides researchers with a systematic means to identify and access previously invisible segments of elite networks. We validate this approach using a comprehensive dataset of 15,940 elite actors in Tunisia, demonstrating how it successfully overcomes the limitations of conventional sampling methods. This contribution advances both theoretical understanding of sampling biases in elite contexts and provides practical methodological tools for producing more representative research.

Presented at: Emerging Methodologists Workshop
Early version published in QMMR (Fall'25 issue)

How does gender shape access to political information among elites? I argue that even as formal institutions advance gender equality, men preserve de facto political power by maintaining structurally advantageous positions in elite networks that grant them superior control over information flows. Drawing on Acemoglu and Robinson's distinction between de jure and de facto power, I propose that when gender regimes shift through quotas, parity clauses, and expanded access to elite education, historically dominant groups preserve advantage through informal channels of informational control. Using a novel dataset of 15,940 elite entities in Tunisia, I operationalize gendered informational inequality through betweenness centrality, which captures an individual's structural capacity to broker information between otherwise disconnected network segments. Women occupy significantly less central brokerage positions than men, a finding that holds across multiple model specifications and survives controls for network size, reach, local density, and ethnic background. Comparing the gap across centrality measures locates it in brokerage: it is largest for betweenness, exceeds the degree gap in the predicted direction, and coincides with higher local clustering among women, the structural signature of ties that close existing groups instead of bridging disconnected ones. Women, in this sense, are positioned within the network where their ties fail to bridge.

 
Presented at: APSA, APSA MENA Workshop, POMEPS Workshop, PolNet,  WZB MoPED
Latest version accessible here. 

How can researchers estimate the reliability of death toll estimates in ethnicized armed conflicts targeting minority populations? This article offers three key contributions to addressing this critical methodological challenge. Methodologically, the study develops a novel approach to estimating deaths in marginal conflict zones, leveraging synthetic control and counterfactual methods to estimate the death toll against ethnic minorities when historical accounts are contested.  Substantively, the article resolves historiographical debates about Jewish Tunisian casualties during the Nazi occupation (1942-1943). Existing accounts oscillate between minimalist claims of 100 deaths in labor camps and maximalist estimates of 2,500, mainly attributed to the Allies' bombing campaign. The analysis reveals a death toll exceeding 1,000, challenging both extreme interpretations and providing the most comprehensive demographic reconstruction of this understudied historical episode to date. Finally, the paper invites critical reconsideration of conflict measurement practices.

Presented at : APSA Virtual Research Meeting

How do symbolic interactions between former colonies and colonial powers affect public attitudes? Despite extensive research on contact theory in social psychology, we know remarkably little about its applicability in post-colonial contexts where historical power asymmetries persist. This knowledge gap is particularly concerning given the proliferation of Sports for Development and Peace (SDP)—a global industry investing in sports-based interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations and social cohesion. These programs operate assuming that sporting events facilitate positive contact between groups, yet rarely implement the conditions theorized as necessary for prejudice reduction: equal status, cooperation toward common goals, and institutional support. This paper bridges social psychology and international relations by examining how a high-stakes soccer match between France and Algeria—a visible moment of post-colonial interaction—influences Algerians’ attitudes toward French people and France as a nation. Using a quasi-experimental design leveraging survey data collected before and after an unexpected French victory, I find that the match’s outcome significantly decreased Arab Algerian men’s favorability toward French people while having no effect on their views of France as a country or economic cooperation. Importantly, these effects were absent among Amazigh men, suggesting that domestic ethnic identities mediate responses to symbolic post-colonial interactions. The results challenge traditional contact theory and prevailing SDP practices by showing how competitive symbolic encounters can reinforce rather than reduce outgroup prejudice in post-colonial settings, particularly among groups most strongly identified with the post-colonial national project. These findings advance our understanding of how colonial legacies continue to shape contemporary international relations and suggest that sports-based interventions may have unintended consequences when theoretical conditions for positive contact are not systematically implemented in post-colonial contexts.

Presented at : MPSA, APSA Virtual Research Meeting

Political elites routinely attempt to mobilize mass attitudes through strategic messaging, yet we know surprisingly little about the conditions under which these efforts prove ineffective. This paper examines a case of elite messaging failure following the 2013 assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid in Tunisia. Despite a sustained campaign by opposition elites to blame the ruling Islamist party (Ennahda) for the violence, with media coverage increasingly associating Ennahda with assassination and political violence, public trust in Ennahda-controlled institutions (parliament, cabinet, police) actually increased rather than decreased. Using an Unexpected Event During Survey design and systematic analysis of media content, I demonstrate that elite informational cues failed to achieve their intended mobilization effect. The findings reveal important scope conditions for elite influence in new democracies: when crises trigger psychological needs for stability, mass responses can override elite messaging, rendering even coordinated political campaigns ineffective. This challenges theories that assume elite cues reliably shape mass opinion and contributes to our understanding of democratic accountability mechanisms in fragile institutional contexts.

Presented at: MPSA, APSA Virtual Research Meeting, Just Research, Violence Instability and Peace Workshop

Major geopolitical events may reshape public attention to intellectuals, but causal evidence remains scarce. Exploiting the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel as a nat- ural experiment, I use regression discontinuity design with Google Trends data for 65 public intellectuals to estimate crisis effects on intellectual attention. I find large, immediate increases (15-60+ points) in searches for thinkers addressing colonialism, violence, and Israel-Palestine. Effects appear for both deceased (Fanon, Said) and living intellectuals (Papp´e, Khalidi), contradicting platform-based theories. However, sustained attention concentrates asymmetrically: 60% of those with lasting effects are pro-Palestinian/critical voices, while canonical left intellectuals (Said, Chomsky) return to baseline. These patterns suggest crises activate selective intellectual retrieval based on topical relevance, with sustained incorporation depending on specialized rather than general frameworks.

Research on foreign policy attitudes has long treated elites as a unified stratum whose internationalist preferences anchor hegemonic alignment, yet the elite category itself has received less scrutiny than the elite-mass gap it defines. I argue that the social world from which a person enters the elite, not the credential that admits them, conditions how they evaluate the actors who sustain or challenge the international order. Two ideal-typical pathways to elite status follow: intramural traditional elites, whose standing is ascribed through proximity to the capital’s power networks, and extramural rising elites, who reach the upper stratum through educational or economic achievement from the social periphery. Using Arab Barometer Wave VIII data from Kuwait, where oil wealth, compactness, and US alignment should suppress attitudinal divergence, I find a monotonic geographic gradient in approval of counter-hegemonic leaders (Putin, Erdogan, Xi, Khamenei, Assad) running outward from the historic merchant core of the capital, with no comparable gradient on the hegemonic patron (Biden). Traditional elites express significantly greater aversion to counter-hegemonic leaders than rising elites, while education alone predicts almost nothing. The divide survives coarsened exact matching, alternative attainment thresholds, and every attitudinal mechanism the instrument measures. Rising elites are, however, less supportive of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consistent with multipolarity over revisionism. Where elites come from, not what they possess, shapes hegemonic alignment from within.

Presented at: APSA
Latest version accessible here.