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Allison Hartnett, Ph.D.
allison.hartnett@yale.edu
Postdoctoral Associate
Yale University
About Me:
I am a post-doctoral associate in the Yale MacMillan Center's Leitner Program on Comparative and International Political Economy. Previously, I was a predoctoral fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (2017-2018), and received my DPhil (PhD) in politics from the University of Oxford in March 2019. My work in comparative politics focuses primarily on redistributive politics in autocracies with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. My research interests include the historical legacies of colonialism, the political economy of state building and development, and quantitative methodology. My dissertation forms the basis of a book project which examines the relationship between colonial legacies, elite coalition formation, and redistributive conflict in the MENA region. I hold an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern studies (2013) from St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and a BA in Islamic studies and Middle East history from Boston University (2009). My research has been supported by the American Center for Oriental Research and the Centre for British Research in the Levant, among others. I have conducted archival and field work in Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Research Interests
Development
Political Economy
Middle East & North African Politics
Research Methods & Research Design
Class, Inequality, and Labor Politics
Redistribution
Autocracy
Quantitative Methods
Political Elites
Comparative Sub-state Politics
State Building
State-society Relations
Political Regimes
Tribal Politics
Middle East Studies
Rural Politics
Political Violence
Decoloniality/decolonization
Panel Data Analysis
Machine Learning
Food And Agriculture
Property Ownership
Economic Development
Economic Sociology
Bayesian Inference
Countries of Interest
Jordan
Iraq
Egypt
Poland
Morocco
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Before the Syrian civil war, Egyptians were the single largest migrant labor community in Jordan. Labor market pressures and changes to the Jordanian work permit system have resulted in the increasing vulnerability of Egyptian labor, who have been the primary labor force on Jordanian farms and construction sites since the late 1970s. Using new data from the 2015 Jordanian census, the 2010 and 2016 Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey, and field interviews conducted in Jordan from 2014 to 2018, I show that higher concentrations of Syrians at the subdistrict level are associated with higher rates of informal labor market participation for Egyptians. Furthermore, higher proportions of Syrians do not correlate with negative impacts on the formality or household wealth of Jordanian citizens, suggesting that Syrian labor does not directly compete with the Jordanian labor force. Given the importance of supporting host communities during refugee crises, this analysis sheds light on how mass forced migration affects other vulnerable segments of the migrant labor force in the Global South.
Other:
Co-authored with Kristin Fabbe and Steve L. Monroe. Why do regimes allow some low-income business owners to avoid taxes by operating informally? Electoral incentives are central to prevailing explanations of governments’ forbearance of informal enterprise. Yet many unelected regimes host large informal economies. This article examines forbearance in non-democracies. We argue that unelected regimes forbear their supporters’ informal businesses. We test this argument in Jordan. Using survey data of over 3,800 micro and small enterprises (MSEs), we find that informal businesses are more likely to operate in districts with higher rates of public sector employment, the crown jewel of the Jordanian regime’s patronage. Interviews with over sixty of the surveyed firm owners across four strategically paired districts illustrate that business owners covet forbearance, and that kinship ties to public sector employees limit forbearance to regime supporters. Communities that attract higher rates of public sector employment forfeit higher levels of fiscal revenue by permitting informality. This complementarity between public sector employment and forbearance amplifies inequalities between regime supporters and opponents in non-democracies.
Co-authored with Nicholas Lotito and Elizabeth Nugent. Robust coercive apparatuses are credited for the Middle East’s uniquely persistent authoritarianism, but little work exists analyzing their origins. In this paper, we present an original theory regarding the origins of coercive institutions in contemporary authoritarian regimes like those in the Middle East. More specifically, we argue that post-independence authoritarian coercive capabilities are shaped by pre-independence institution-building, largely dictated by the interests of colonial powers who dictated state development projects. We depart from existing general theories about the origins of coercive institutions, in which authoritarian leaders have full autonomy in constructing coercive institutions when they come to power, and in which the military is the primary source of the state’s institution. Instead, we argue that authoritarian leaders coming to power in the twentieth century, after major state building occurred, inherit states with certain predetermined resources and capabilities, and coercive institutions. We support our theory with preliminary budgetary and employment data from 1880 to 1960 in Egypt. Our results demonstrate significant continuity rather than disruption through the 1952 Free Officers Coup that effectively liberated Egypt from British influence.