What drives some Islamists to become “Muslim Democrats,” downplaying religion and accepting secular democracy? This article hypothesizes that one channel of ideological change is migration to secular democracies. Drawing on an ideal point analysis of parliamentary votes from the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda, I find that MPs who had lived in secular democracies held more liberal voting records than their counterparts who had lived only in Tunisia. In particular, they were more likely to defend freedom of conscience and to vote against enshrining Islamic law in the constitution. Interviews with several of these MPs demonstrate that they recognize a causal effect of their experiences abroad on their ideologies, and provide support for three distinct mechanisms by which this effect may have occurred: socialization, intergroup contact, and political learning.

Political life in many Muslim-majority countries has been marked by the electoral dominance of Islamist parties. Recent attempts to explain why have highlighted their material and organizational factors, such as the provision of social services. In this article, we revive an older literature that emphasizes the appeal of these parties' religious nature to voters experiencing economic hardship. Individuals suffering economic strain may vote for Islamists because they believe this to be an intrinsically virtuous act that will be met with divine rewards in the afterlife. We explore this hypothesis through a series of laboratory experiments in Tunisia. Individuals assigned to treatment conditions instilling feelings of economic strain exhibit greater support for Islamist parties, and this support is causally mediated by an expectation of divine compensation in the hereafter. The evidence suggests that the religious nature of Islamist parties may thus be an important factor in their electoral success.

Nonviolent campaigns against repressive regimes often turn on the military’s decision to either defend the ruler or make common cause with the ruled. Yet surprisingly little scholarship investigates opposition expectations for the military’s likely response to mass protest. We theorize that some determinants of the military’s willingness to repress are more observable to activists than others. In particular, we identify conscription as a highly salient indicator that soldiers will refuse to fire on protesters and hypothesize that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to materialize against regimes with conscripted armies than those with volunteer forces. We substantiate this theory with two sources of evidence: (1) a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Algerian Revolution and (2) a cross-national analysis of the positive association between conscription and nonviolent campaign onset from 1945 to 2013.

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In April 2019, mass uprisings toppled two longtime dictators: Algeria's Abdelaziz Bouteflika ) and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir . However, protesters in both countries soon discovered that ousting a dictator was not enough to initiate a political transition. They therefore remained in the streets, demanding the dismantling of the authoritarian regime and a genuine transition to democracy. But from there, the paths of the two countries diverged.By August 2019, Sudanese protesters had secured a power-sharing agreement with the remnants of Bashir's regime, initiating a transition to democracy shepherded by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. In Algeria, by contrast, protesters continued to demonstrate until May 2021, but were unable to compel the regime to begin a transition. What explains this divergence? Why were protesters in Sudan able to secure a transition to democracy, while Algerians were not, despite both having overthrown their dictators?The answer lies in the ability of all sides in Sudan to negotiate and embark on a "pacted transition," to borrow language from Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter's classic work Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. 1 Although pacts and revolutions are generally considered to be distinct pathways of democratization, the cases of Algeria and Sudan suggest that where the military remains a powerful political force, pacts between it and the opposition may be critical to initiating a transition even after deposing a dictator. Yet the conditions under which such pacts emerge are less clear: O'Donnell and Schmitter argued that pacts arise not due to any structural precondition but rather to leaders' agency and statecraft. While later scholars have identified structural

Unlike other political leaders, leaders coming to power through military coups face a dual legitimation challenge: they must justify not only why they should rule but also how they came to power. Little attention has been paid to how coup leaders solve this legitimacy deficit and even less to the audiences of this legitimation. We ask: why do some coup leaders legitimate their coups by holding elections while others do not? Counterintuitively, we argue that coup leaders who oust democratically elected leaders are less likely to hold elections, except when tied to US military aid. We test these hypotheses through a data set of military coup regimes from 1946 to 2014 and trace out mechanisms through case studies of the Nigerian coup of 1983 and the Egyptian coup of 2013. This argument provides a new explanation for the emergence of authoritarian elections and a new perspective on the international dimensions of dictatorship.

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Under what conditions do trade unions participate in elections during democratic transitions? Conventional explanations focus on unions’ economic interests, organizational power, and militancy in the lead-up to democratization. The behavior of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), however, challenges these expectations. Despite its organizational strength and prominent role in the country’s transition, as well as the presence of economic incentives for participation, the UGTT has eschewed formal electoral participation. This article leverages this case to theorize an additional factor shaping electoral behavior: internal cohesion. Drawing on in-depth interviews with union leaders and original survey data of union members, we show how the threat of internal fragmentation acts as a powerful internal constraint, even in situations where unions are otherwise well-positioned to engage in elections.