Welcome! I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University. I specialize in the comparative politics and international relations of the Middle East and North Africa, where I research democracy, dictatorship, and US foreign policy. I am also a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

Research interests: Advancing early work on authoritarian regime durability, my current research in the MENA is eclectic. I remain focused on the politics of Jordan, but also work on Kuwait and the Gulf. Another strand covers the limits of American hegemony. My ongoing work extends beyond the MENA to explore the nature of transnational repression and the dynamics of patron-client relationships in the international system.

Educational interests: I am engaged in educational and disciplinary issues. In recent years, I have engineered an ambitious duo of textbooks — Societies of the MENA (now in its 2nd edition) and Government/Politics of the MENA (now in its 9th edition). I am also interested in the methodological problems of transparency, as in this essay on “radical honesty” for PS: Political Science and Politics. Finally, in recent years, I have become deeply worried about how notions of race and whiteness silently shape the enterprise of comparative politics. This latter interest animates a new set of working papers.

Professional interests: I occasionally analyze breaking developments in the Arab world for popular outlets like the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, industry venues like Oxford Analytica, and through POMED or FPRI.

Updated 3.1.23