Daniel L. Tavana

Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Penn State. My primary research agenda involves the collection of original survey, electoral, and legislative data to better understand the conditions under which opposition elites succeed in authoritarian elections. My secondary research interests explore related questions in the fields of comparative political behavior and identity and ethnic politics. I am also a specialist in Middle East and North African politics, with field experience in Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Tunisia. My research is animated by a broader interest in understanding the origins of contemporary patterns of mass politics and the dynamics of political opposition in the region.

My first book, Opposition: How Ideology Disrupts Authoritarian Elections (under review at Cambridge University Press), traces how opposition elites in Kuwait use symbolic ideological appeals to build cross-group electoral coalitions and constrain the ruling family’s policymaking agenda. Related work appears in the American Journal of Political Science, and, in joint work with Erin York, in the British Journal of Political Science, where we examine cooptation and legislative behavior in the Kuwait National Assembly. My work has also been published in the Journal of Politics, Party Politics, and elsewhere. Separately, with Kevan Harris, I am Principal Investigator of the Iran Social Survey (ISS), a multi-wave study of social, economic, and political life in contemporary Iran.

Before joining Penn State, I was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) and a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale University. I received a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2021. My research has been supported by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the Open Society Foundations, the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), and the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), among others.

I can be reached at tavana@psu.edu. You can also follow me on Bluesky and X (Twitter) or visit my Google Scholar profile.