Lindsay J. BensteadPortland State University | PSU · Mark O. Hatfield School of Government
Lindsay J. Benstead
Ph.D. Pub. Policy & Pol. Sci.
About
67
Publications
17,202
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417
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
A North Africanist and survey methodologist, I study parliamentary representation, identity politics (gender, religion) and public opinion in the Arab world. I have conducted surveys in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Jordan and collaborate on the Program on Governance and Local Development, Yale University. I am a Contributing Scholar in the Program on Women's Rights in the Middle East, Rice University. My research has appeared in Governance, Foreign Affairs and Perspectives on Politics.
Additional affiliations
September 2009 - present
September 2008 - August 2009
September 2007 - August 2008
Education
September 2002 - August 2003
August 2001 - August 2008
September 1995 - December 1998
Publications
Publications (67)
Lindsay J. Benstead and Ellen Lust. “Women’s Political Participation in North Africa: Lessons from Recent Research.” Middle East Institute. MAP Essay Series. http://www.mei.edu/content/map/gender-gap-political-participation-north-africa
Under what conditions do individuals who profess to boycott products align actual and intended consumption habits? Inconsistency between self-reported participation and practice can help explain why few boycott campaigns harm targets despite high political consumption rates reported in surveys of Americans and Europeans. Arab boycotts are fertile y...
“Why Quotas Are Needed to Improve Women’s Access to Services in Clientelistic Regimes.” Governance. Forthcoming.
Why Quotas Improve Women’s Access to Services 3Abstract Using data from a survey of 200 Moroccan and Algerian parliamentarians, this paper assesses the relationship between parliamentarian gender, quotas, and constituency service provis...
Governments promote gender-sensitive policies, yet little is known about why reform campaigns evoke backlash. Drawing on social position theory, we test whether marginalized (women’s organizations) or intrusive (Western donors) messengers cause resistance across public rights (quotas) and private rights (land reform). Using a framing experiment imp...
Does electing Islamist parties help or hurt women? Due to Ennahda winning a plurality in the 2011 elections and women from all parties winning 31% of seats, Tunisia offers an opportunity to test the impact of legislator gender and Islamist orientation on women's representation. Using original 2012 surveys of 40 Tunisian parliamentarians (MPs) and 1...
Extant literature suggests that public support for peace accords plays a role in their durability. Yet while the Abraham Accords represent significant rapprochement between governments, the region is marked by the conditions of violence and insecurity that harm social trust and reduce the likelihood of conciliatory views among citizens. Using Arab...
Incumbency advantage and corruption are persistent features of Malawi politics, yet the incumbent Joyce Banda lost the 2014 elections. Drawing on national public opinion surveys and focus groups, we explore why incumbency advantage did not accrue to Banda. We argue that faced with a major corruption scandal, “Cashgate,” Banda paid a heavier price t...
Some Somali majority clan girls and women receive economic and security benefits from marriage to Al-Shabaab fighters. Yet, the literature treats women’s experiences monolithically and misses the role that race plays in determining the circumstances of such unions. The authors argue that one should not refer to the unions of Somali Bantu girls and...
Why do some poor people engage in clientelism whereas others do not? Why does clientelism sometimes take traditional forms and sometimes more instrumental forms? We propose a formal model of clientelism that addresses these questions focusing primarily on the citizen’s perspective. Citizens choose between supporting broad-based redistribution or en...
Does electing Islamists help or hurt women? Due to the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) obtaining 13% of seats in the 2002–2007 legislature and the implementation of an electoral gender quota that resulted in thirty-five women winning seats in 2002, Morocco offers a rare opportunity to explore the intersectional impact of parliamentarians’ ge...
Scholars and democracy promoters often suggest that electoral observers’ (EOs’) assessments impact public opinion in a straightforward manner, yet, research on communication cautions against these sanguine assumptions. We test the impact of EO statements on public opinion in two very different contexts using survey experiments conducted among 3,361...
‘Patriarchy’ is increasingly part of the political science lexicon, particularly in work on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Yet I argue that political scientists often under-conceptualize patriarchy, failing to draw on existing feminist theory. This hinders explanation of the mechanisms sustaining gender inequality. By engaging with Kandiy...
Many studies of women’s electability in the developing world focus on single traits such as gender, ethnicity, or religion. Employing an original survey experiment in Jordan, we examine the impacts of multiple, intersecting candidate identities on voter preferences. We show empirically that existing theories of electoral behavior alone cannot accou...
Tunisia’s 2018 municipal elections, in which a legislated quota was implemented and women won 47 percent of seats, raises questions about whether electing female councilors improves women’s representation in clientelistic settings. Using data from the Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI), an original survey of 3,600 Tunisians conducted in 2015...
Drawing on Arab Barometer data, this article provides the backdrop for understanding continuity and change since the Arab Spring in national-level public opinion attitudes toward economic and political foreign policy issues in North Africa, inclusive of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The article leverages the concepts of differentiati...
Traditional leadership often coexists with modern political institutions; yet, we know little about how traditional and state authority cues—or those from male or female sources—affect public opinion. Using an original survey experiment of 1,381 Malawians embedded in the 2016 Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI), we randomly assign respondents...
Are individuals who view women as less corrupt more likely to vote for women? Drawing on research from the social psychology of gender, this chapter examines whether and how perceptions about women’s incorruptibility shape their electability. Many citizens see female politicians as less corrupt. Others state that men are less corrupt, a view consis...
Survey research has expanded in the Arab world since the 1980s. The Arab Spring marked a watershed when surveying became possible in Tunisia and Libya, and researchers added additional questions needed to answer theoretical and policy questions. Almost every Arab country now is included in the Arab Barometer or World Values Survey. Yet, some schola...
The bulk of voting behavior literature focuses on how single traits—e.g., religion, gender, or ethnicity—affect electability. Using an original 2014 survey experiment conducted among 1,499 Jordanians, we explore the effects of multiple candidate identities—gender, co- ethnicity, and Islamist —on vote choice. Respondents receive statements about mal...
Election observation has spread dramatically, becoming a near rite-of-passage into the international community. Scholars and democracy promoters often suggest that electoral observers’ (EOs’) assessments impact public opinion in a straightforward manner: Positive statements enhance and negative statements undermine perceptions of electoral legitima...
Scholarly literature on clientelism has tended to focus on vote-buying, viewed primarily from the perspective of parties and brokers. The motives that drive clients to engage in clientelism and the different forms of clientelism that result remain relatively unexplored. This paper proposes a formal model of clientelism that focuses primarily on the...
Malawi’s context raises a number of challenges that the government, traditional leader
s, civil
society, and the development community are working to address. One area of particular focus is
gender equality and women’s empowerment. The LGPI supports this effort by providing
evidence
-
based research to inform the extent to which gender inequal
i...
Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) has increasingly been used in developing countries, but literature and training on best practices have not kept pace. Drawing on our experiences using CAPI to implement the Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI) in Tunisia and Malawi and an election study in Jordan, this paper makes practical recomm...
Public opinion is patriarchal in the MENA, leading to low women’s workforce participation and political and economic problems. Efforts to explain attitudes focus on Islam and modernization, but miss employment-based mechanisms. Interest- and exposure-based employment theories, drawn from US sociological studies, argue that employed women and their...
Does electing women and Islamist parties help or hurt women? Due to Ennahda’s plurality in the 2011 Constituent Assembly and women obtaining 31% of the seats as a result of a quota, Tunisia offers an opportunity to test the intersectional impact of female and Islamist deputies on women’s symbolic and service representation. Using surveys of 40 Tuni...
Since the first surveys were conducted in the late 1980s, survey research has expanded rapidly in the Arab world. Almost every country is now included in the Arab Barometer, Afrobarometer, or World Values Survey, while the number of papers on survey research in the Middle East presented at APSA and MESA has expanded. The Arab spring marked a waters...
Benstead, Lindsay J., and Ethan Snyder. 2016. “Is Security at Odds with Democracy? Evidence from the Arab World.” Paper presented November 4, 2016, North African Studies Workshop, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
Fostering responsive government institutions is a pillar of development policy. Yet policymakers lack evidence to pinpoint which...
Using data from a survey of 200 Moroccan and Algerian parliamentarians, this article assesses the relationship between parliamentarian gender, quotas, and constituency service provision to females. The findings suggest that while electing women increases service provision to females, quotas are needed to create mandates in clientelistic, patriarcha...
Lindsay J. Benstead and Lonna Atkeson. “Why Does Dissatisfaction with an Authoritarian Regime Undermine Support for Democracy? Evidence from Six Arab Countries.”
Miquel Pellicer, Eva Wegner, Lindsay J. Benstead. Harold Kincaid, Ellen Lust, and Juanita Vasquez. “The Demand Side of Clientelism: The Role of Client’s Perceptions and Values.”
Lindsay J. Benstead and Megan Reif. “Hearts, Minds, and Pocketbooks: Anti-Americanisms and the Politics of Consumption in the Middle East.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Washington, DC, November 12-22, 2005.
Lindsay J. Benstead. Forthcoming. “Explaining Egalitarian Attitudes: The Role of Interests and Exposure.” Chapter 6 in Empowering Women after the Arab Spring. Edited by Marwa Shalaby and Valentine Moghadam. Palgrave MacMillan.
Public opinion is strongly patriarchal in the MENA, leading to low women’s workforce participation and political and econo...
Benstead, Lindsay J. "Gender Gaps in Service Provision: Explaining Women's Access, Participation and Electability," Service Delivery Memo, AIMS Workshop on Linking Public Opinion and Political Action, May 30-June 1, 2015, Tunis, Tunisia.
Do voters regard male and female candidates equally? Does apparent religiosity of candidates help or hurt their electoral chances? Where biases exist, what explains them? We present a novel explanation of political bias, drawing from role congruity theory. It posits that political contexts shape citizens' perceptions of qualities that make a “capab...
Why are women more able to access parliamentary clientelism and club goods in some patriarchal settings? Using original surveys from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan and the Arab Barometer from six countries, this paper assesses the link between parliamentarian gender, regime type, and women’s service and allocation representation. Due...
Few studies examine religiosity-of-interviewer effects, despite recent expansion of surveying in the Muslim world. Using data from a nationally-representative survey of 800 Moroccans conducted in 2007, this study investigates whether and why interviewer religiosity and gender affect responses to religiously-sensitive questions. Interviewer dress af...
Lindsay J. Benstead. 2014. “Why Do Some Arab Citizens See Democracy as Unsuitable for Their Country?” Democratization. First published online September 3, 2014. doi: 10.1080/13510347.2014.940041.
Why do some Arab citizens regard democracy favourably but see it as unsuitable for their country? Modernization theory contends that economic development...
Despite the expansion of surveying in the Middle East, no published studies examine interviewer gender effects. Using data from a nationally-representative survey of Moroccans conducted in 2007, this study investigates whether interviewer gender affects responses and item non-response for questions about women and politics and whether the effect de...
Each political transition underway since the Arab Spring has its own characteristics, reports a group of researchers who conducted post-election surveys in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The international community should resist applying stereotypical responses. “A one-size-fits-all approach to the transition processes – and particularly to development...
Lindsay J. Benstead, Ellen Lust, and Jakob Wichmann. “It’s Morning in Libya: Why Democracy Marches On.” Foreign Affairs. August 6, 2013.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2013-08-06/its-morning-libya
Lindsay J. Benstead, Ellen Lust, Dhafer Malouche, Gamal Soltan, and Jakob Wichmann. “Islamists Aren’t the Obstacle: How to Build Democracy in Egypt and Tunisia.” Foreign Affairs. February 14, 2013.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/tunisia/2013-02-14/islamists-arent-obstacle
Muslim and Arab identities have long been instrumentalized to forge unifying national and regional identities. The impact of Algeria's post-colonial Arabization policies that educated people in Standard Arabic (to the exclusion of dialectal Arabic, Berber, or French) on economic cleavages and attitudes has been underexplored. Algeria has been descr...
Despite the recent expansion of surveys in the Muslim world, no published studies examine interviewer gender effects. Research on the interaction of interviewer and respondent gender, largely from US samples, finds contradictory evidence. Using data from a nationally-representative survey of 400 Moroccans conducted in 2007, this study investigates...
Women face a myriad of barriers to labor force participation in the Arab world, including discriminatory social attitudes which hinder their access to elected office (Norris & Inglehart, 2001). Scholars differ about why women’s empowerment lags behind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Inglehart and Norris (2003a)argue that the gender gap...
Despite the recent expansion of surveying in the Muslim world, few published studies have addressed methodological questions, including how observable interviewer characteristics affect responses and data quality. Although there are a limited number of studies on interviewer dress effects, none examine interviewer gender. This study asks whether an...
Why do legislatures lengthen the tenure of authoritarian regimes? In order to gain insight into this question, this dissertation examines how parliamentary institutions influence members??? participation in debate and provision of casework and how the representative link shapes constituent attitudes toward the parliament. It argues that public opin...
Susan Waltz and Lindsay Benstead. 2006. “When the Time is Ripe: The Struggle to Protect and Promote Human Rights in Morocco.” In Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices, pp. 174-195. Pennsylvania University Press.
Arab boycotts of American products intensified after 9-11. Scholarly neglect of this form of political action reflects an assumption that people do not change buying habits for political causes. Many studies of political consumption view it as a phenomenon of advanced democracies. We propose hypotheses about why and under what circumstances it occu...
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Projects
Project (1)
The Program on Governance and Local Development aims to explain variation in governance and local development in an effort to promote human welfare globally. It seeks to develop insights into the role of state and non-state actors, to consider the relationship between local level factors (e.g., poverty, gender relations, elite dynamics, ethnic diversity, etc.) and governance, and to provide policy-relevant findings based on scientifically rigorous research.
