Drew A. Linzer

The Political Economy of Women's Support for Fundamentalist Islam

Why do some Muslim women adopt fundamentalist islamic value systems that promote gender-based inequalities while others do not? this article considers the economic determinants of fundamentalist beliefs in the Muslim world, as women look to either marriage or employment to achieve financial security. using cross-national public opinion data from eighteen countries with significant Muslim populations, the authors apply a latent class model to characterize respondents according to their views on gender norms, political islam, and personal religiosity. among women, lack of economic opportunity is a stronger predictor of fundamentalist belief systems than socioeconomic class. cross-nationally, fundamentalism among women is most prevalent in poor countries and in those with a large male-female wage gap. these findings have important implications for the promotion of womens rights, the rise of political islam, and the development of democracy in the Muslim world.

Dynamic Bayesian Forecasting of Presidential Elections in the States

I present a dynamic Bayesian forecasting model that enables early and accurate prediction of U.S. presidential election outcomes at the state level. The method systematically combines information from historical forecasting models in real time with results from the large number of state-level opinion surveys that are released publicly during the campaign. The result is a set of forecasts that are initially as good as the historical model, and then gradually increase in accuracy as Election Day nears. I employ a hierarchical specification to overcome the limitation that not every state is polled on every day, allowing the model to borrow strength both across states and, through the use of random-walk priors, across time. The model also filters away day-to-day variation in the polls due to sampling error and national campaign effects, which enables daily tracking of voter preferences toward the presidential candidates at the state and national levels. Simulation techniques are used to estimate the candidates’ probability of winning each state and, consequently, a majority of votes in the Electoral College. I apply the model to preelection polls from the 2008 presidential campaign and demonstrate that the victory of Barack Obama was never realistically in doubt.

Elite Competition, Religiosity, and Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World

The battle for public opinion in the Islamic world is an ongoing priority for U.S. diplomacy. The current debate over why many Muslims hold anti-American views revolves around whether they dislike fundamental aspects of American culture and government, or what Americans do in international affairs. We argue, instead, that Muslim anti-Americanism is predominantly a domestic, elite-led phenomenon that intensifies when there is greater competition between Islamist and secular-nationalist political factions within a country. Although more observant Muslims tend to be more anti-American, paradoxically the most anti-American countries are those in which Muslim populations are less religious overall, and thus more divided on the religious–secular issue dimension. We provide case study evidence consistent with this explanation, as well as a multilevel statistical analysis of public opinion data from nearly 13,000 Muslim respondents in 21 countries.

Household capacities, vulnerabilities and food insecurity: Shifts in food insecurity in urban and rural Ethiopia during the 2008 food crisis

The global food crisis of 2008 led to renewed interest in global food insecurity and how macro-level food prices impact household and individual level wellbeing. There is debate over the extent to which food price increases in 2008 eroded food security, the extent to which this effect was distributed across rural and urban locales, and the extent to which rural farmers might have benefited. Ethiopias food prices increased particularly dramatically between 2005 and 2008 and here we ask whether there was a concomitant increase in household food insecurity, whether this decline was distributed equally across rural, urban, and semi-urban locales, and to what extent pre-crisis household capacities and vulnerabilities impacted 2008 household food insecurity levels. Data are drawn from a random sample of 2610 households in Southwest Ethiopia surveyed 2005/6 and again in mid to late 2008. Results show broad deterioration of household food insecurity relative to baseline but declines were most pronounced in the rural areas. Wealthier households and those that were relatively more food secure in 2005/6 tended to be more food secure in 2008, net of other factors, and these effects were most pronounced in urban areas. External shocks, such as a job loss or loss of crops, experienced by households were also associated with worse food insecurity in 2008 but few other household variables were associated with 2008 food insecurity. Our results also showed that rural farmers tended to produce small amounts for sale on markets, and thus were not able to enjoy the potential benefits that come from greater crop prices. We conclude that poverty, and not urban/rural difference, is the important variable for understanding the risk of food insecurity during a food crisis and that many rural farmers are too poor to take advantage of rapid rises in food prices.

Electoral systems and the balance of consumer-producer power

1. Introduction 2. Electoral systems and consumer power: theoretical considerations 3. Electoral systems and real prices: panel evidence for the OECD countries 4. Electoral systems and real prices around the world 5. A closer look: case studies and mechanisms 6. Socio-economic origins of electoral systems 7. Discussion and conclusion.

Lower Prices: The Impact of Majoritarian Systems in Democracies Around the World

Recent theoretical work has proposed that majoritarian electoral systems, by creating incentives for legislators to favor the interests of consumers over producers, should lead to more consumer-friendly and procompetitive regulatory policies and hence to lower real price levels. Empirical analysis confirming this effect has so far been confined to OECD democracies, but there are reasons to believe that, due to differences in state capacity and consumer-producer preferences, the same price effects might not obtain—or might even be reversed—in less economically developed democracies. Using a generalized estimating equation approach, we find that the expected relationship indeed holds in all democracies worldwide between 1972 and 2000. The marginal long-run price level in majoritarian systems is estimated to be lower by over 10%.