Irfan Nooruddin
Biographic Data
| ID | 1534492 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Irfan Nooruddin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Irfan |
| FAMILY NAME | Nooruddin |
| SIGNATURE | NOORUDDIN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9128-2888 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 675 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1920 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Well-Behaved Women
Women form a large part of the voting public in India. In the 2009 Indian National Election post-election survey, 82% of all adult women surveyed reported voting, but only 32% said that they were interested in politics. The paradox between high female turnout but low levels of interest has been noted in multiple developing country contexts, but the phenomenon is under-theorized. We suggest the reason is that women’s ideas (interest in politics) a…
Response to Jason C. Bivins’s Review of The Everyday Crusade
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Trump, Modi, and the illiberal consensus
President Trump and Prime Minister Modi often invoked their two nation’s claims as “oldest and largest” democracies to trumpet the naturalness of the US-India alliance. Shared democratic values was the glue that supposedly bound the two countries together. This contribution argues that the cynical and opportunistic invocation of democratic values by both governments damaged the cause of democracy globally. Both have attacked the independence of t…
The Forum
There is a widespread perception that we are witnessing a period of democratic decline, manifesting itself in varieties of democratic backsliding such as the manipulation of elections, marginalization and repression of regime opponents and minorities, or more incremental executive aggrandizement. Yet others are more optimistic and have argued that democracy is in fact resilient, or that we are observing coinciding trends of democratic decline but…
States living in glasshouses
How do conflicts within a country's borders affect its behavior beyond them? We argue that fighting insurgencies at home shapes a country's human rights posture at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). States often suppress insurgencies using methods that violate their international human rights commitments. They are therefore hesitant to condemn other countries’ alleged violations for fear of reciprocal condemnation of their own actions. This is …
The Everyday Crusade
What is causing the American public to move more openly into alt-right terrain? What explains the uptick in anti-immigrant hysteria, isolationism, and an increasing willingness to support alternatives to democratic governance? The Everyday Crusade provides an answer. The book points to American Religious Exceptionalism (ARE), a widely held religious nationalist ideology steeped in myth about the nation's original purpose. The book opens with a co…
Getting on Track
In 1995, India passed the Persons with Disabilities Act to legislate the principles and requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities. As part of this, the Government of India boldly committed to achieving universal design in its public transit systems. Despite legal provisions for ensuring accessibility of public transport and strong harmonized guidelines, Mumbai’s suburban rail network lacks adequate considera…
Why incumbents perpetrate election violence during civil war
Civil conflict increases incumbents’ vulnerability, expands their coercive capacity, enervates public good provision, and stifles public opposition. Consequently, we expect that elections held during civil conflict will feature more incumbent-perpetrated election violence. We test our argument with disaggregated data on election violence, generating two principal findings. First, elections held during civil conflict are more likely to feature vio…
A Delicate Balancing Act
Historically Arab regimes have played critical roles in securing women’s rights in their societies. Yet regimes remain concerned about domestic, especially Islamist and traditionalist, reactions to women’s rights. When regimes feel they can overcome this resistance they honor commitments to women’s rights. When they fear more domestic opposition they renege. This article argues that Arab regimes are less likely to resist domestic opposition to wo…
Globalization Backlash in Developing Countries
This special issue explores why the globalization backlash is roiling rich industrialized countries. But why is the backlash less salient in developing ones? In this piece, we challenge scholars to consider why the backlash has not diffused widely to the developing world. We argue support for globalization depends on citizens’ expectations of future economic mobility. This is high in the early phases of globalization which encapsulates many devel…
Theories of Democratic Change III
Party system structure and its consequences for foreign direct investment
Studies of foreign direct investment’s (FDI’s) determinants focus on irreversibility as the main source of governments’ credibility problems. Here, we highlight an underexplored source of time-inconsistency dilemmas: geographic agglomeration within a country. FDI’s tendency to agglomerate creates visible inequalities in the country and generates demands for geographic income redistribution. Unchecked, such redistributive pressures can dissuade in…
Proud to be an American
The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq created a sharp increase in expressions of national pride and the invocation of “nation” in political discourse. Using the 1996 and 2004 General Social Surveys, we document these changing patterns of national pride, and ask how they affect conceptions of national identity. We report three main findings. First, the data corroborate the…
Heeding the Sirens
Given similar economic distress indicators, why do some states enter into International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs while others do not? Building on extant studies of IMF program participation that highlight the importance of various economic and political determinants, this article proposes an argument focusing on the political incentives of the IMF and a borrowing country when they engage in IMF program negotiations. Specifically, the study de…
Do voters count? Institutions, voter turnout, and public goods provision in India
Are Developing Countries Really Defying the Embedded Liberalism Compact
This study evaluates the embedded liberalism hypothesis in a broad swath of less developed countries (LDCs). The authors find that LDC governments pursue a distinct welfare state policy that protects citizens from economic insecurities associated with global market expansion. Specifically, governments use public employment—and particularly employment in civil services and administration—to foster domestic stability alongside market expansion. How…
Making Surveys Work Better
The Effect of Elections on Postconflict Peace and Reconstruction
Divine Boundaries
How does religion affect one’s attitudes toward immigrants? Scholars have shown that members of minor religious groups are less anti-immigrant than members of majority affiliations and that Evangelical Protestants are particularly hostile. Other scholars have demonstrated that increased religiosity reduces immigrant animus. Here, we argue that religion affects immigration attitudes via a distinct religiously informed interpretation of America’s n…
The Democratic Utility of Trust
Studies of political culture have long emphasized the importance of generalized trust for effective democratic governance. Individual-level models continue to treat generalized trust as a crucial predictor of more democratic political cultures, leading some scholars to suggest that building generalized trust is an important means of developing democratic prerequisites, like the appreciation of democratic values, in the nondemocratic world. In thi…
Dynamics of influence in international politics
In 2002, the USA asked all countries to sign agreements exempting US citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatened economic sanctions if they refused. Some countries yielded to this pressure even after ratifying the ICC Statute, while others chose to honor their original commitments. Why were some countries more responsive to US influence than others? This article provides an explanation of state vulnerability…
Democracy under the Gun Understanding Postconflict Economic Recovery
Increasingly, scholars studying civil conflicts believe that the pace of postconflict economic recovery is crucial to a return to peaceful politics. But why do some countries' economies recover more quickly than others'? The authors argue that the inability of politicians to commit credibly to postconflict peace inhibits investment and, hence, slows recovery. In turn, the ability of political actors to eschew further violence credibly depends on …
Openness, Uncertainty, and Social Spending
We extend the literature on openness and spending in developing countries arguing that the effect of increasing openness depends on both regime type and the level of openness. Democracies respond to increases in openness by increasing spending while dictatorships respond by decreasing spending. However, the degree to which countries pursue the strategy of choice depends on the level of openness. In autarkic countries, an increase in import compet…
The Political Economy of National Debt Burdens, 1970–2000
Why did developing country governments find themselves mired in high debt by the end of the twentieth century? This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between political institutions, resource wealth, and debt burdens. Hypotheses generated are tested on a time-series cross-section data set of developing countries from 1970--2000. Three main findings are reported: oil wealth has a positive relationship with debt; …
Unstable Politics
What explains variations in electoral volatility? The authors argue that fiscal space—availability of financial resources to enact policy initiatives and provide public programs—possessed by governments can explain the level of electoral volatility. Where governments have fiscal space, citizens reward incumbent parties with their continued support. But when fiscal space is constrained, the incumbent government's ability to provide state resources…
Do Party Systems Count
Delivery of public goods varies significantly across the Indian states. This article argues that differences in state government expenditures are largely the result of differences in their party systems. Using macroeconomic data from 1967 to 1997 as well as postelection voter surveys, we demonstrate that states with two-party competition provide more public goods than states with multiparty competition, which, we argue, reflects differing mobiliz…
Divine Boundaries
How does religion affect one’s attitudes toward immigrants? Scholars have shown that members of minor religious groups are less anti-immigrant than members of majority affiliations and that Evangelical Protestants are particularly hostile. Other scholars have demonstrated that increased religiosity reduces immigrant animus. Here, we argue that religion affects immigration attitudes via a distinct religiously informed interpretation of America’s n…
The Effect of Elections on Postconflict Peace and Reconstruction
Democracy under the Gun Understanding Postconflict Economic Recovery
Increasingly, scholars studying civil conflicts believe that the pace of postconflict economic recovery is crucial to a return to peaceful politics. But why do some countries' economies recover more quickly than others'? The authors argue that the inability of politicians to commit credibly to postconflict peace inhibits investment and, hence, slows recovery. In turn, the ability of political actors to eschew further violence credibly depends on …
Modeling Selection Bias in Studies of Sanctions Efficacy
Sanctions rarely work but they continue to be used frequently by policymakers. Previous research on the determinants of sanctions identifies various factors that are thought to contribute to sanctions success but do not give us an answer to the original puzzle of why this ineffective policy is so commonly used. I argue that this is because studies of sanctions have ignored the problem of strategic censoring by focusing only on cases of observed s…
The Democratic Utility of Trust
Studies of political culture have long emphasized the importance of generalized trust for effective democratic governance. Individual-level models continue to treat generalized trust as a crucial predictor of more democratic political cultures, leading some scholars to suggest that building generalized trust is an important means of developing democratic prerequisites, like the appreciation of democratic values, in the nondemocratic world. In thi…
The Politics of Hard Choices
A cetitral conipnnetit of International Monetary Ftind (IMF) programs is reducing governmeni budge! delicits. We ask how domestic political consider-ations shape the distribution of cuts made by governments in IMF programs. Our central tinding is that IMF programs shrink the role played by domestic politics. While democracies allocate larger shares of their budgets to public services in the absence of IMF programs, the difference between Jemoctac…
Unstable Politics
What explains variations in electoral volatility? The authors argue that fiscal space—availability of financial resources to enact policy initiatives and provide public programs—possessed by governments can explain the level of electoral volatility. Where governments have fiscal space, citizens reward incumbent parties with their continued support. But when fiscal space is constrained, the incumbent government's ability to provide state resources…
Are Developing Countries Really Defying the Embedded Liberalism Compact
This study evaluates the embedded liberalism hypothesis in a broad swath of less developed countries (LDCs). The authors find that LDC governments pursue a distinct welfare state policy that protects citizens from economic insecurities associated with global market expansion. Specifically, governments use public employment—and particularly employment in civil services and administration—to foster domestic stability alongside market expansion. How…
Openness, Uncertainty, and Social Spending
We extend the literature on openness and spending in developing countries arguing that the effect of increasing openness depends on both regime type and the level of openness. Democracies respond to increases in openness by increasing spending while dictatorships respond by decreasing spending. However, the degree to which countries pursue the strategy of choice depends on the level of openness. In autarkic countries, an increase in import compet…
The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India
The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India
Do voters count? Institutions, voter turnout, and public goods provision in India
Dynamics of influence in international politics
In 2002, the USA asked all countries to sign agreements exempting US citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatened economic sanctions if they refused. Some countries yielded to this pressure even after ratifying the ICC Statute, while others chose to honor their original commitments. Why were some countries more responsive to US influence than others? This article provides an explanation of state vulnerability…
Globalization Backlash in Developing Countries
This special issue explores why the globalization backlash is roiling rich industrialized countries. But why is the backlash less salient in developing ones? In this piece, we challenge scholars to consider why the backlash has not diffused widely to the developing world. We argue support for globalization depends on citizens’ expectations of future economic mobility. This is high in the early phases of globalization which encapsulates many devel…
Party system structure and its consequences for foreign direct investment
Studies of foreign direct investment’s (FDI’s) determinants focus on irreversibility as the main source of governments’ credibility problems. Here, we highlight an underexplored source of time-inconsistency dilemmas: geographic agglomeration within a country. FDI’s tendency to agglomerate creates visible inequalities in the country and generates demands for geographic income redistribution. Unchecked, such redistributive pressures can dissuade in…
The Forum
There is a widespread perception that we are witnessing a period of democratic decline, manifesting itself in varieties of democratic backsliding such as the manipulation of elections, marginalization and repression of regime opponents and minorities, or more incremental executive aggrandizement. Yet others are more optimistic and have argued that democracy is in fact resilient, or that we are observing coinciding trends of democratic decline but…
Heeding the Sirens
Given similar economic distress indicators, why do some states enter into International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs while others do not? Building on extant studies of IMF program participation that highlight the importance of various economic and political determinants, this article proposes an argument focusing on the political incentives of the IMF and a borrowing country when they engage in IMF program negotiations. Specifically, the study de…
The Political Economy of National Debt Burdens, 1970–2000
Why did developing country governments find themselves mired in high debt by the end of the twentieth century? This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between political institutions, resource wealth, and debt burdens. Hypotheses generated are tested on a time-series cross-section data set of developing countries from 1970--2000. Three main findings are reported: oil wealth has a positive relationship with debt; …
Well-Behaved Women
Women form a large part of the voting public in India. In the 2009 Indian National Election post-election survey, 82% of all adult women surveyed reported voting, but only 32% said that they were interested in politics. The paradox between high female turnout but low levels of interest has been noted in multiple developing country contexts, but the phenomenon is under-theorized. We suggest the reason is that women’s ideas (interest in politics) a…
Why incumbents perpetrate election violence during civil war
Civil conflict increases incumbents’ vulnerability, expands their coercive capacity, enervates public good provision, and stifles public opposition. Consequently, we expect that elections held during civil conflict will feature more incumbent-perpetrated election violence. We test our argument with disaggregated data on election violence, generating two principal findings. First, elections held during civil conflict are more likely to feature vio…
Making Surveys Work Better
Blind Justice
Racial disparities in the justice system, particularly as they relate to the death penalty, have received increasing scholarly and public-policy scrutiny recently. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of the defendant's sex in cases of violent crime, though research has been conducted on how the victim's sex affects court decisions. This article seeks to extend this line of inquiry by asking how women accused of killing their …
States living in glasshouses
How do conflicts within a country's borders affect its behavior beyond them? We argue that fighting insurgencies at home shapes a country's human rights posture at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). States often suppress insurgencies using methods that violate their international human rights commitments. They are therefore hesitant to condemn other countries’ alleged violations for fear of reciprocal condemnation of their own actions. This is …
A Delicate Balancing Act
Historically Arab regimes have played critical roles in securing women’s rights in their societies. Yet regimes remain concerned about domestic, especially Islamist and traditionalist, reactions to women’s rights. When regimes feel they can overcome this resistance they honor commitments to women’s rights. When they fear more domestic opposition they renege. This article argues that Arab regimes are less likely to resist domestic opposition to wo…
Elections in Hard Times
Why are 'free and fair' elections so often followed by democratic backsliding? Elections in Hard Times answers this critical question, showing why even clean elections fail to advance democracy when held amidst challenging structural conditions. The book opens with a comprehensive, accessible synthesis of fifty years of research on elections and democratization, a resource for experts, policymakers, and students. It then develops a new theory of …
Modeling Selection Bias in Studies of Sanctions Efficacy
Sanctions rarely work but they continue to be used frequently by policymakers. Previous research on the determinants of sanctions identifies various factors that are thought to contribute to sanctions success but do not give us an answer to the original puzzle of why this ineffective policy is so commonly used. I argue that this is because studies of sanctions have ignored the problem of strategic censoring by focusing only on cases of observed s…
The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India
The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India
Do Party Systems Count
Delivery of public goods varies significantly across the Indian states. This article argues that differences in state government expenditures are largely the result of differences in their party systems. Using macroeconomic data from 1967 to 1997 as well as postelection voter surveys, we demonstrate that states with two-party competition provide more public goods than states with multiparty competition, which, we argue, reflects differing mobiliz…
The Politics of Hard Choices
A cetitral conipnnetit of International Monetary Ftind (IMF) programs is reducing governmeni budge! delicits. We ask how domestic political consider-ations shape the distribution of cuts made by governments in IMF programs. Our central tinding is that IMF programs shrink the role played by domestic politics. While democracies allocate larger shares of their budgets to public services in the absence of IMF programs, the difference between Jemoctac…
Blind Justice
Racial disparities in the justice system, particularly as they relate to the death penalty, have received increasing scholarly and public-policy scrutiny recently. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of the defendant's sex in cases of violent crime, though research has been conducted on how the victim's sex affects court decisions. This article seeks to extend this line of inquiry by asking how women accused of killing their …
The Political Economy of National Debt Burdens, 1970–2000
Why did developing country governments find themselves mired in high debt by the end of the twentieth century? This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between political institutions, resource wealth, and debt burdens. Hypotheses generated are tested on a time-series cross-section data set of developing countries from 1970--2000. Three main findings are reported: oil wealth has a positive relationship with debt; …
Unstable Politics
What explains variations in electoral volatility? The authors argue that fiscal space—availability of financial resources to enact policy initiatives and provide public programs—possessed by governments can explain the level of electoral volatility. Where governments have fiscal space, citizens reward incumbent parties with their continued support. But when fiscal space is constrained, the incumbent government's ability to provide state resources…
Democracy under the Gun Understanding Postconflict Economic Recovery
Increasingly, scholars studying civil conflicts believe that the pace of postconflict economic recovery is crucial to a return to peaceful politics. But why do some countries' economies recover more quickly than others'? The authors argue that the inability of politicians to commit credibly to postconflict peace inhibits investment and, hence, slows recovery. In turn, the ability of political actors to eschew further violence credibly depends on …
Openness, Uncertainty, and Social Spending
We extend the literature on openness and spending in developing countries arguing that the effect of increasing openness depends on both regime type and the level of openness. Democracies respond to increases in openness by increasing spending while dictatorships respond by decreasing spending. However, the degree to which countries pursue the strategy of choice depends on the level of openness. In autarkic countries, an increase in import compet…
The Democratic Utility of Trust
Studies of political culture have long emphasized the importance of generalized trust for effective democratic governance. Individual-level models continue to treat generalized trust as a crucial predictor of more democratic political cultures, leading some scholars to suggest that building generalized trust is an important means of developing democratic prerequisites, like the appreciation of democratic values, in the nondemocratic world. In thi…
Dynamics of influence in international politics
In 2002, the USA asked all countries to sign agreements exempting US citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatened economic sanctions if they refused. Some countries yielded to this pressure even after ratifying the ICC Statute, while others chose to honor their original commitments. Why were some countries more responsive to US influence than others? This article provides an explanation of state vulnerability…
Divine Boundaries
How does religion affect one’s attitudes toward immigrants? Scholars have shown that members of minor religious groups are less anti-immigrant than members of majority affiliations and that Evangelical Protestants are particularly hostile. Other scholars have demonstrated that increased religiosity reduces immigrant animus. Here, we argue that religion affects immigration attitudes via a distinct religiously informed interpretation of America’s n…
The Effect of Elections on Postconflict Peace and Reconstruction
Are Developing Countries Really Defying the Embedded Liberalism Compact
This study evaluates the embedded liberalism hypothesis in a broad swath of less developed countries (LDCs). The authors find that LDC governments pursue a distinct welfare state policy that protects citizens from economic insecurities associated with global market expansion. Specifically, governments use public employment—and particularly employment in civil services and administration—to foster domestic stability alongside market expansion. How…
Making Surveys Work Better
Heeding the Sirens
Given similar economic distress indicators, why do some states enter into International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs while others do not? Building on extant studies of IMF program participation that highlight the importance of various economic and political determinants, this article proposes an argument focusing on the political incentives of the IMF and a borrowing country when they engage in IMF program negotiations. Specifically, the study de…
Do voters count? Institutions, voter turnout, and public goods provision in India
Proud to be an American
The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq created a sharp increase in expressions of national pride and the invocation of “nation” in political discourse. Using the 1996 and 2004 General Social Surveys, we document these changing patterns of national pride, and ask how they affect conceptions of national identity. We report three main findings. First, the data corroborate the…
Party system structure and its consequences for foreign direct investment
Studies of foreign direct investment’s (FDI’s) determinants focus on irreversibility as the main source of governments’ credibility problems. Here, we highlight an underexplored source of time-inconsistency dilemmas: geographic agglomeration within a country. FDI’s tendency to agglomerate creates visible inequalities in the country and generates demands for geographic income redistribution. Unchecked, such redistributive pressures can dissuade in…
Theories of Democratic Change III
A Delicate Balancing Act
Historically Arab regimes have played critical roles in securing women’s rights in their societies. Yet regimes remain concerned about domestic, especially Islamist and traditionalist, reactions to women’s rights. When regimes feel they can overcome this resistance they honor commitments to women’s rights. When they fear more domestic opposition they renege. This article argues that Arab regimes are less likely to resist domestic opposition to wo…
Globalization Backlash in Developing Countries
This special issue explores why the globalization backlash is roiling rich industrialized countries. But why is the backlash less salient in developing ones? In this piece, we challenge scholars to consider why the backlash has not diffused widely to the developing world. We argue support for globalization depends on citizens’ expectations of future economic mobility. This is high in the early phases of globalization which encapsulates many devel…
The Everyday Crusade
What is causing the American public to move more openly into alt-right terrain? What explains the uptick in anti-immigrant hysteria, isolationism, and an increasing willingness to support alternatives to democratic governance? The Everyday Crusade provides an answer. The book points to American Religious Exceptionalism (ARE), a widely held religious nationalist ideology steeped in myth about the nation's original purpose. The book opens with a co…
Getting on Track
In 1995, India passed the Persons with Disabilities Act to legislate the principles and requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities. As part of this, the Government of India boldly committed to achieving universal design in its public transit systems. Despite legal provisions for ensuring accessibility of public transport and strong harmonized guidelines, Mumbai’s suburban rail network lacks adequate considera…
Political science (30 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Economics (19 works) · Law (19 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Democracy (10 works) · Development economics (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works)