About

Dina Bishara is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Labor at Cornell University. Her research interests include authoritarianism, state-labor relations, social and protest movements, and transitions from authoritarian rule. She has authored the book 'Contesting Authoritarianism: Labor Challenges to the State in Egypt,' published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. Her articles have been published in various academic journals such as Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and Middle East Law and Governance. She has been awarded research fellowships from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Her teaching interests encompass social and protest movements, state labor relations, labor and employment in the Middle East and North Africa, authoritarianism, and Middle East politics. Her research explores aspects of contentious politics under authoritarian regimes, focusing on how seemingly stable authoritarian institutions begin to break down and the dynamics of protest and mobilization in such contexts.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Political economy
• Law

Selected publications

• Navigating international scrutiny: Algeria and Tunisia at the international labor organization

  The Journal of North African Studies · 2026-02-25

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• When citizens look backwards: retrospective understandings of grievance in post-revolutionary societies

  Acta Politica · 2023-11-21

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• Introduction to a Special Issue on Labor in the Middle East and North Africa: Precarity, Inequality, and Migration

  Industrial and Labor Relations Review · 2023-07-06 · 2 citations

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  Despite its political and strategic importance, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been largely absent from cross-regional comparative treatments of industrial and labor relations. This special issue builds on a rich, multidisciplinary, and methodologically diverse body of research on labor and employment in the MENA, bringing together a collection of cutting-edge work in this field. The goal is to bring the study of the MENA into conversation with international and comparative scholarship on industrial and labor relations and to encourage more systematic inclusion of the MENA in comparative work. Drawing on research on Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, and the Gulf states, contributors to this special issue advance comparative scholarship on migration, labor market outcomes, worker agency, and the relationship between unions and precarious workers. This introductory essay situates these contributions in the context of three bodies of research in the study of labor in the MENA: resistance and contentious activism, labor market challenges, and migration.

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• Citizens’ understanding of the social contract: Lessons from Tunisia

  World Development · 2023-04-20 · 3 citations

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• Political, Not Partisan: The Tunisian General Labor Union under Democracy

  Comparative Politics · 2021-08-07 · 5 citations

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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.

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• The Generative Power of Protest: Time and Space in Contentious Politics

  Comparative Political Studies · 2021 · 21 citations

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  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  How do social movements sustain themselves under authoritarian rule? This remains a crucial puzzle for scholars of comparative politics. This article gains traction on this puzzle by foregrounding the generative power of protest, namely the power of protest experiences themselves to deepen and broaden movements. Some studies have started to draw attention to those questions without yet systematically examining how the form of protest differentially affects those outcomes. I argue that different forms of protest have varying effects on movements depending on their duration and geographic scope. While short, multiple-site actions, such as marches, can broaden movements by expanding their base, extended, single-site actions, such as sit-ins, are more likely to deepen movements by fostering collective identities and building organizational capacities. This article is based on field research in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and Morocco and interviews with more than 100 movement participants and civil society activists.

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• Popular support for military intervention and anti-establishment alternatives in Tunisia: Appraising outsider eclecticism

  Mediterranean Politics · 2021 · 16 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political economy

  Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation and the stability of new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors in Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens support alternatives to the elites in power and the institutional infrastructure of a new democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey in Tunisia administered in 2017, this article examines three categories of popular attitudes in support of political outsiders.Military interventionism appears in people’s preferences for anti-system politics—the most immediate challenge to the country’s stability and democratic transition. Anti-political establishment sentiments are shown in people’s preferences for an enhanced role of the country’s main trade union as a civil-society alternative to political party elites. Finally, outsider eclecticism is the seemingly incoherent phenomenon of concurrent support for a civil society actor and the military as an ‘authoritarian alternative.’ Anti-establishment sentiments will continue to be an important element in Tunisian post-authoritarian politics, evidenced by the rise to power of Kais Said in the 2019 presidential elections and his 2021 decision to dismiss parliament. In turn, popular support for military intervention may have implications for the country’s domestic security and peaceful transition.

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• Mobilizing without the masses: Control and contention in China, DianaFu. Cornell University, New York, USA

  Governance · 2020-06-29

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• Precarious Collective Action: Unemployed Graduates Associations in the Middle East and North Africa

  Comparative Politics · 2020-08-29 · 9 citations

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  Why did unemployed university graduates form collective associations in some countries in the Middle East and North Africa but not in others? Despite similar levels of grievances around educated unemployment, reversals in guaranteed employment schemes, and similarly restrictive conditions for mobilization, unemployed graduates' associations formed in Morocco and Tunisia but not in Egypt. Conventional explanations — focused on grievances, political opportunities, or pre-existing organizational structures — cannot account for this variation. Instead, I point to the power of ideologically conducive frames for mobilization around the time that grievances become salient. A strong Leftist oriented tradition of student unionism in Morocco and Tunisia was necessary for the emergence of a rights-based discourse around the "right to work." This was not the case in Egypt, where Islamists, not Communists, dominated student politics at the time that grievances around educated unemployment became salient. This article offers one of the first comparative studies of the mobilization of the unemployed in a non-Western, non-democratic context.

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• Kira D. Jumet, Contesting the Repressive State: Why Ordinary Egyptians Protested during the Arab Spring (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Pp. 296. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780190688462

  International Journal Middle East Studies · 2019-08-01

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  Kira D. Jumet, Contesting the Repressive State: Why Ordinary Egyptians Protested during the Arab Spring (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Pp. 296. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780190688462 - Volume 51 Issue 3

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Frequent coauthors

• Holger Albrecht

  University of Alabama

  3 shared

• Chantal Berman

  Georgetown University

  2 shared

• Kevin Koehler

  Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna

  2 shared

• Michelle Jurkovich

  University of Massachusetts Boston

  2 shared

• Michael Bufano

  East Tennessee State University

  2 shared

• Sharan Grewal

  American University

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor's Award for E…
• Best Fieldwork, Middle East and North Africa Politics Sectio…
• SERMEISS 2019 Book Prize, Honorable Mention, Southeast Regio…