Amanda Edgell, Ph.D.
abedgell@gmail.com
Assistant Professor
The University of Alabama
About Me:
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama and a Research Fellow at the V-Dem Institute (University of Gothenburg, Sweden). My research focuses on political institutions in diverse settings, as well as, international norms, foreign aid, and gender politics. I have conducted fieldwork in D.R. Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda. My work has appeared in the European Journal of Political Research, Democratization, and the African Studies Review. My current reasearch projects focus on democratization and autocratization, gender quotas, and violations of democratic standards during Covid-19. I am a P.I. for the Pandemic Backsliding Project. I received a PhD in Political Science at the University of Florida in May 2019 and also hold a Master’s in International Affairs from Texas A&M University (2011) and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Appalachian State University (2008). As a consultant, I have provided expertise on democratic governance, program initiation, survey design, and impact assessment for Michigan State University, Princeton University, USAID, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). I am a managing partner at 417 Research & Analytics. My favorite video games are Stata and R. In my free time, I enjoy rock climbing, brewing beer, and training my dogs Simcoe and Barley.
Research Interests
African Politics
Comparative Democratization
Comparative Political Institutions
Gender and Politics
Elections, Election Administration, and Voting Behavior
Research Methods & Research Design
Foreign Aid
Covid-19
Countries of Interest
Kenya
Uganda
Rwanda
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By ‘institutionalisation’, it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete‐time event‐history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.
This article examines how the independence of the judiciary influences the development of civil liberties. Using data on 130 countries between 1981 and 2010, there is a significant positive relationship between judicial independence and adherence to civil liberties. These findings extend the scope of previous research by including new measures, cases, and time periods. Using qualitative content analysis and historical perspectives, the article then assesses the development of civil liberties before and after the advent of multiparty politics in Kenya. The results suggest that judiciaries in transitional democracies like Kenya hold the potential to catalyze the development of civil liberties law given certain legal, constitutional, and institutional dynamics. As such changes unfold, precedence-setting or groundbreaking judicial decisions, or both, with regard to civil liberties become more likely.
This article explores the impact of gender quotas on sustainable representation in Africa. Sustainable representation is broadly defined as viable and substantial political representation secured for the long run. The research draws on evidence from cross-national election data and two case studies, Uganda and Kenya, which demonstrate that women rarely exceed the minimum thresholds set by gender quotas. This suggests that these quotas may have a ceiling effect on women’s representation. For gender quotas to generate long-term representational outcomes, they must be designed to account for other characteristics of the electoral context that affect women’s participation outside the quota mandate.
Successive multiparty elections in sub-Saharan Africa are associated with incremental democratization. Yet tests in other regions are less than encouraging. Non-significant findings on Latin America and post-communist Eurasia, as well as conceptual criticism regarding the theory’s application in the contemporary Middle East, suggest that this may be a case of African exceptionalism. This article moves these debates forward by posing a comprehensive, global set of tests on the democratizing effect of elections. We seek to establish the scope conditions of the argument geographically, temporally, and substantively. Although we find a correlation between reiterated multiparty elections and improvements in the liberal-democratic components of electoral regimes globally since 1900, the relationship is only substantial in the period since the onset of the third wave of democracy. Experiences with iterated multiparty elections have substantive importance for democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, the post-communist region, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia. For the Middle East and North Africa, the relationship is weaker and less robust. Finally, the results suggest that reiterated sequences of multiparty elections are associated with improvements to liberal and deliberative components of democracy more so than egalitarian components.
Why do so many developing countries have gender quota policies? This article argues that foreign aid programmes influence developing countries to adopt policies aimed at fulfilling international norms regarding gender equality. This relationship is driven by two causal mechanisms. On the one hand, countries may use gender quotas as a signal to improve their standing in the international hierarchy, possibly as an end unto itself, but more likely as a means towards ensuring future aid flows. On the other, countries may adopt gender quotas as a result of successful foreign aid interventions specifically designed to promote women’ s empowerment. I test thesetwo causal mechanisms using data on foreign aid commitments to 173 non-OECD countries from 1974 to 2012. The results suggest that while programmes targeting women’s empowerment may have some influence on quota adoption, developingcountries dependent on United States foreign aid are also likely to use gender quotas as signalling devices rather than as a result of ongoing liberalization efforts.
Media Appearances:
Newspaper Quotes:
A candidate’s message for Nigerian politics: Make way for women