About

Amaney A. Jamal is the Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics, and Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is the former Director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice and currently directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development and the Bobst-American University of Beirut Collaborative Initiative. Her research focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, political development and democratization, mass and political behavior, inequality and economic segregation, Muslim immigration in the US and Europe, as well as issues related to gender, race, religion, and class. Jamal has authored several books, including 'Barriers to Democracy,' which explores the role of civic associations in promoting democracy in the Arab world and received the 2008 American Political Science Best Book Award in the Comparative Democratization section. Her work has been published in prominent journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Perspectives on Politics. She has also contributed to edited volumes and has been recognized with numerous awards, including being named a Carnegie Scholar in 2006. Her research and public commentary address topics such as civic and political development, democratization, and the political implications of social and religious identities.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Economics
• Social psychology
• Law
• Sociology
• Labour economics
• Demographic economics
• Criminology
• Geography
• Political economy
• Microeconomics
• Gender studies
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• Mapping and Explaining Arab Attitudes toward the Islamic State: Findings from an Arab Barometer Survey and Embedded Experiment

  2021-01-13

  reference-entrySenior author

  This chapter uses data from Arab Barometer surveys and an embedded experiment carried out in seven Arab countries in 2016–2017 to examine views about the Islamic State held by ordinary Sunni Muslim citizens. The data show that attitudes toward the Islamic State are very negative. There is some variance, however, and this is considered in hypotheses and associated causal stories in which the dependent variables are attitudes toward the goals of the Islamic State; toward the organization’s methods, meaning its use of violence; and about whether the organization’s actions are compatible with the teachings of Islam. A significant finding is that greater personal religiosity pushes toward the view that the actions of the Islamic State are not compatible with the teachings of Islam. Another is that a low level of political trust pushes toward negative views of the Islamic state on all three dimensions: goals, methods, and compatibility with Islam. The experiment randomly assigned respondents to a control group and one of four treatment groups, each of the latter priming with a different kind and amount of information about the Islamic State. In general, the treatments did not have a significant effect on respondent attitudes. Among the few instances where the treatment did make a difference is the finding that primes describing both the Islamic State’s use of violence and its political objectives significantly lowered agreement with the organization’s use of violence. Another is that receiving information about the organization’s methods alone significantly reduced agreement with its goals.

  PublisherDOI

• Islam and Mass Preferences Toward Foreign Direct Investment in Tunisia

  Journal of Experimental Political Science · 2021-04-22 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Are FDI and Islam in conflict with one another in the eyes of Tunisians? Does support for globalization fall or increase when it embraces or challenges Islamic dress, prayer, and other practices? We examine through different experimental tests how Tunisians react to foreign direct investment when it accommodates or conflicts with Islamic norms. Using three original sources of data, including a large representative survey (N = 4,986), a conjoint survey experiment (N = 1,502), and an original survey experiment with experimental social vignettes (N = 504), we examine how threats (and non-threats) from FDI to Islamic norms affect support for FDI. We find strong support for FDI, but these levels of support are not stable. We find the support for FDI falls by almost 32% if it is seen to clash with female Islamic dress. Support is highest when it accommodates Islamic practices, especially the female hijab and lowest when it is perceived to disregard these practices.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: A Delicate Balancing Act: Women’s Rights and US Military Intervention in the Arab World

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-07-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Appendix and all replication materials for Jamal, A., and Nooruddin, I. 2021. "A Delicate Balancing Act: Women’s Rights and US Military Intervention in the Arab World." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, vol. 17, no. 3 (Nov).

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-01-04

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Replication materials for "Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting."

  PublisherDOI

• A Delicate Balancing Act

  Journal of Middle East Women s Studies · 2021-10-29 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract 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 women’s rights when US military presence increases in the region. The authors test the argument using cross-national data including an original expert-coder scale of Islamist power, and estimate an instrumental variable model to allay concerns of endogeneity. A case study of Jordan explicates their causal argument. The results are robust to different measures of Islamist strength and to different estimation techniques. Understanding this unintended consequence of US military deployments to the Arab world is important for future analysis of female empowerment in the Arab world.

  PublisherDOI

• Islam and Mass Preferences towards Foreign Direct Investment in Tunisia

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-01-23

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Are globalization and Islam in conflict with one another in the eyes of Muslims? Does support for globalization fall or increase when it embraces or challenges Islamic dress, prayer, and other practices? We examine through different experimental tests how Tunisians react to globalization in the form of foreign direct investment in their country when it accommodates or conflicts with Islamic norms. Using three original sources of data, including a large representative survey (N=4986) of Tunisian citizens, a conjoint survey experiment (N=1502), and an original survey experiment with experimental social vignettes (N=504), we examine how threats (and non-threats) from FDI to Islamic norms affect support for FDI. On average, we find strong support for FDI, but these levels of support aren’t stable. We find the support for FDI falls by almost 32% if it is seen to clash with female Islamic dress. Support is highest when it accommodates Islamic practices, especially the female hijab and lowest when it is perceived to disregard these practices.

  PublisherDOI

• The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not My Friend: Arabic Twitter Sentiment toward ISIS and the United States

  International Studies Quarterly · 2021-09-12 · 1 citations

  article

  Abstract A counter-intuitive finding emerges from an analysis of Arabic Twitter posts from 2014 to 2015: Twitter participants who are negative toward the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) are also more likely to hold negative views of the United States. This surprising correlation is due to the interpretations of two sets of users. One set of users views the United States and ISIS negatively as independent interventionist powers in the region. The other set of users negatively links the United States with ISIS, often asserting a secretive conspiracy between the two. The intense negativity toward the United States in the Middle East seems conducive to views that, in one way or another, cause citizens to link the United States and ISIS in a conspiratorial manner.

  PublisherDOI

• Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting

  Comparative Political Studies · 2021 · 57 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political economy
  • Political Science

  As populist radical right parties muster increasing support in many democracies, an important question is how mainstream parties can recapture their voters. Focusing on Germany, we present original panel evidence that voters supporting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the country’s largest populist radical right party—resemble partisan loyalists with entrenched anti-establishment views, seemingly beyond recapture by mainstream parties. Yet this loyalty does not only reflect anti-establishment voting, but also gridlocked party-issue positioning. Despite descriptive evidence of strong party loyalty, experimental evidence reveals that many AfD voters change allegiances when mainstream parties accommodate their preferences. However, for most parties this repositioning is extremely costly. While mainstream parties can attract populist radical right voters via restrictive immigration policies, they alienate their own voters in doing so. Examining position shifts across issue dimensions, parties, and voter groups, our research demonstrates that, absent significant changes in issue preferences or salience, the status quo is an equilibrium.

  PublisherDOI

• Hate Crimes and Gender Imbalances: Fears over Mate Competition and Violence against Refugees

  American Journal of Political Science · 2021 · 53 citations

  • Political Science
  • Criminology
  • Political Science

  Abstract As the number of refugees rises across the world, anti‐refugee violence has become a pressing concern. What explains the incidence and support of such hate crime? We argue that fears among native men that refugees pose a threat in the competition for female partners are a critical but understudied factor driving hate crime. Employing a comprehensive data set on the incidence of hate crime across Germany, we first demonstrate that hate crime rises where men face disadvantages in local mating markets. Next, we complement this ecological evidence with original survey measures and confirm that individual‐level support for hate crime increases when men fear that the inflow of refugees makes it more difficult to find female partners. Mate competition concerns remain a robust predictor even when controlling for anti‐refugee views, perceived job competition, general frustration, and aggressiveness. We conclude that a more complete understanding of hate crime and immigrant conflict must incorporate marriage markets and mate competition.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>Ambiguities of Domination</i>: 20 Years Later and We Are Still Not Getting It Right

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2021-12-21

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Valerie Bunce

  20 shared

• Geoffrey Garrett

  20 shared

• Kristopher W. Ramsay

  Princeton University

  20 shared

• Robert W. Tucker

  20 shared

• Karen L. Remmer

  Duke University

  20 shared

• James Robinson

  Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research

  20 shared

• Andrea Vindigni

  IZA - Institute of Labor Economics

  20 shared

• Evan S. Lieberman

  20 shared

Education

• Phd, Political Science

  Michigan

  2003

Awards & honors

• 2008 Best Book in Comparative Democratization, American Poli…
• Louis Wirth Best Article Award: American Sociological Associ…
• Carnegie Scholar (2006)
• Best Dataset in the Field of Comparative Politics (Lijphart/…