An Autocratic Middle Class? State Dependency and Protest in the Middle East and North Africa
Does public sector employment make graduates less likely to join anti-regime protests? Recent scholarship argues yes, with implications for bottom-up democratization in late-developing economies with expansive public and higher education sectors. This paper examines how that thesis travels to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region marked by segmented labor markets, developed tertiary education, and persistent authoritarianism.
Title TBC
Geopolitics, the EU, and a Fragmenting World Order
This paper advances a “relational geopolitics” account of the European Union’s foreign policy, arguing that the EU exercises power through standards, markets, conditional finance, citizen-centered and institutional ties – not through classic state coercion (Anghel, 2025). Empirically, it anchors the argument in evidence on rising global risks to EU security, first mapped through expert reviews and now tested with embedded expert-survey experiments (Global Risks to the EU Project, 2025). The risk landscape is concrete – from a potential U.S.
Dynamic Democratic Backsliding
Democratic backsliding occurs incrementally, but the empirical study of how citizens respond to undemocratic politicians has been predominantly static. I formulate and test predictions about how different sequences of backsliding shape accountability.
Measuring Racial Avoidance on Virtual Streets
(with Bryce Dietrich)
Does Segregation Produce Local Political Leaders? Evidence from White Ethnic Enclaves
Why do some ethnic groups produce local political leaders while others do not? We argue that the spatial distribution of ethnic groups within cities -- particularly their concentration into ethnic enclaves -- shapes political candidate emergence. Ethnic enclaves facilitate leadership by reducing mobilization costs, enabling targeted public goods provision, and fostering dense social and economic networks. Using a novel approach that combines machine learning classification of candidates' ethnic ancestries with spatial measures of ethnic clustering, we analyze data from 638 U.S.
Treason, Terrorism, and Betrayal: Why Individuals Cross the Line
Why do some individuals choose to betray their country, engage in espionage, or commit acts of terrorism? From Kim Philby to Edward Snowden and from agencies to academia, history is full of figures who have willfully jeopardized national security. What compels people to “cross the line”—and can such dangers be detected in time? In Treason, Terrorism, and Betrayal: Why Individuals Cross the Line, William Costanza employs an interdisciplinary lens to explore the psychological, ideological, and situational factors behind acts of betrayal.
Hidden Frontiers: Emerging Issues, Black Swans in Geopolitics, Defence, and Security
- Read more about Hidden Frontiers: Emerging Issues, Black Swans in Geopolitics, Defence, and Security
Beyond the headlines and the daily churn of crises, what is happening that escapes our notice? What risks are gathering in the corners of our vision? Which “elephants in the room” remain unspoken, and what blind spots may only become obvious to future generations?