Steven Brooke
Assistant Professor of Political Science, The University of Louisville
My Research
My research focuses on religion and politics, goods provision, and political mobilization and voting behavior, and authoritarianism, with a regional focus on the Middle East. My first book, Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage (Cornell University Press, 2019), examines social service provision in authoritarian regimes, the relationship between social service provision and political mobilization, and the precise nature of the linkage social service provision generates between provider and recipient. The empirical material for the book is drawn from an in-depth study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood from the 1970s to 2013.
I have two major research projects than will mature into books. One, with Neil Ketchley of the University of Oslo, musters a variety of new data from interwar Egypt to examine why some new social movements succeed and others fail. Preliminary research for this project has been funded by a TRE grant from the Project on Middle East Political Science, an American Political Science Association Centennial research grant and a Victor Olorunsola Endowed Research Award from the University of Louisville. An article version of one chapter was published in 2018 in the American Political Science Review.
A second project, with David Buckley of the University of Louisville, examines how and why religious institutions can protect civilians from state violence, with a focus on the Catholic Church and the ongoing “Drug War” in the Philippines. Preliminary research for this project has been funded by the Program on Governance and Local Development, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and an American Political Science Association Centennial research grant. A paper based on one chapter from this book won the 2019 Paul Weber Best Conference Paper award from the APSA organized section on Religion and Politics.
My research has also been supported by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and The University of Louisville. While in Egypt, the Department of Political Science at the American University of Cairo and the French Center for Economic, Legal, and Social Studies and Documentation offered research support. You can hear me discuss some aspects of my research on a podcast with Marc Lynch of the Project on Middle East Political Science here.
Whenever possible, I situate my research in multiple methodological approaches. I combine historical research and qualitative fieldwork, including interviews and extensive readings in Arabic, with quantitative approaches. I also believe that studying the spatial relationships between phenomena is a profitable and understudied method of sociopolitical inquiry, and in my work I frequently make use of spatial analysis. Finally, I am interested in survey, lab, and natural experimental research and the potential to supplement observations with data produced by the manipulation of key variables.
article manuscripts (under review)
Sparks and Firewalls
Friday Effect
Ezbets
“Religious Infrastructure and Electoral Mobilization in Egypt’s 2012 Presidential Elections”
What accounts for advantage Islamist parties seemingly hold over their non-Islamist opponents on election day? Tarek Masoud and I couple web-scraped locational data on thousands of mosques and churches in Cairo and Alexandria with a comprehensive set of geolocated ballot-box level electoral returns to show how Egypt’s embedded infrastructure of religious institutions predicts local-level electoral outcomes.
“Voting After Democratic Backslide”
How do citizens engage with electoral institutions that have been recently stripped of their ability to arbitrate policy? In these conditions, which particular types of citizens tend to abstain from voting, show up but spoil their ballots, or vote for the incumbent’s opponent? Elizabeth Nugent and I compare district-level voting patterns for presidential elections prior to (2012) and following (2014) Egypt’s military coup to identify how the legacies of liberalized political competition shape politics in the authoritarian era that follows.
working papers
I have a number of papers in various stages of development on tribal voting in Tunisia, the growth of organized Salafism in Egypt, citizen preferences for religious and non-religious goods provision, the similarities and differences of face-to-face, telephone, and internet surveys, and religion and populist movements.
peer-reviewed articles
“Reading the Ads in al-Daʿwa Magazine: Commercialism and Islamist Activism in al-Sadat’s Egypt,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3 (July 2020), (With Aaron Rock-Singer).
“Exclusion and Violence After the Egyptian Coup,” Middle East Law and Governance, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 2020), (With Elizabeth Nugent).
“Social and Institutional Origins of Political Islam,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 112, No. 2 (May 2018) (With Neil Ketchley). Download here.
“Sectarianism and Social Conformity: Evidence from Egypt,” Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 2017). Download here.
“From Medicine to Mobilization: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Egypt,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March 2017). Download here.
“Jihadist Strategic Debates Prior to 9/11,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 31, no. 3 (Spring 2008). Download here.
“The Quantitative Analysis of Terrorism and Immigration: An Initial Exploration,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 18 (Fall 2006) (With Robert S. Leiken). Download here.
book chapters
“How Gender and Local State Capacity Shape Citizens’ Reliance on the Mosque,” in Local Governance in the Middle East, Ellen Lust and Kristen Kao, eds. (Forthcoming). With Monica Komer.
“Islamist Organizations and the Provision of Social Services,” in The Oxford Handbook of Politics in Muslim Societies, Melani Cammett and Pauline Jones Luong, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2020).
“Of Promise and Pitfalls: Experimental Research in the Middle East,” in Doing Research in the Middle East, Janine A. Clark and Francesco Cavatorta, eds., (Oxford University Press, 2018).
“Egypt,” in Rethinking Political Islam, Shadi Hamid and William McCants, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). You can read my working paper (pdf) at the Brookings Institution’s “Rethinking Political Islam” website.
“The U.S. and the Muslim Brotherhood,” in Western Governments and the Islamic Movement after 2011, Lorenzo Vidino, ed. (Dubai: al-Mesbar Center, and Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Center, 2012). العربية English (.pdf)
“The Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and Europe: The Evolution of a Relationship,” in Transnationalizing Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, Roel Meijer, ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Buy it here, or visit your local library!
“The Near and Far Enemy Debate” in Fault Lines in Global Jihad: Organizational, Strategic, and Ideological Fissures, Assaf Moghadam and Brian Fishman, eds., (New York: Routledge Press, 2011). The chapter was earlier published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, available in .pdf here
“The Preacher and the Jihadi,” in Hillel Fradkin et al eds. Current Trends in Islamist Ideology Vol. 3, (Washington, DC: The Hudson Institute, February 2006). Available in .pdf here.
commentaries and reviews
“Local Religious Leaders and the Rise of Political Islam (With Neil Ketchley)” POMEPS Studies #27 (September 2017). Available here.
Review of Abdullah al-Arian’s Answering the Call, in Religion and Society: Advances in Research, Vol. 7, No. 1 (September 2016), pgs. 141-142. Available here.
“Old Questions and New Methods in the Study of Islamism,” POMEPS Memo, February 9, 2016. Available here.
“Did the Arab Uprising Destroy the Muslim Brotherhood?” The Monkey Cage Blog, January 26, 2015. Available here.
“Brotherhood Activism and Regime Consolidation in Egypt,” The Monkey Cage Blog, January 29, 2015. Available here.
“Assumptions and Agendas in the Study of Islamic Social Service Provision,” POMEPS Memo, September 29, 2014. Available here.
“In Egypt, Nasty Business as Usual,” Middle East Research and Information Project, April 29, 2014. Available here.
“Doctors and Brothers,” Middle East Report, No. 269 (February 2014). Available here.
“Why Do Islamists Provide Social Services?” POMEPS Memo, January 2014. Available here.
“Egypt’s Crackdown on Islamist Charities,” Foreign Policy Middle East Channel, December 27, 2013. Available here.
“Don’t Fear the Muslim Brotherhood,” Foreign Policy, February 4, 2011. Available here.
“The Muslim Brotherhood’s Role in the Egyptian Revolution,” February 1, 2011, CTC-Sentinel (With Shadi Hamid). Available here.
“Promoting Democracy to Stop Terrorism, Revisited,” Policy Review, No. 159 (February/March 2010) (With Shadi Hamid). Available here.
“The Muslim Brotherhood Facing Growing Challenges in Egypt,” CTC-Sentinel, March 15, 2009. Available here.
“Jihad 101 (Review Essay),” The American Interest, May 1, 2008. Available here.
“The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007 (With Robert S. Leiken). Available here. الترجمة العربية غير الرسمية