About

Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is also an affiliated faculty member at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, as well as at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on political science topics related to international security, repression, and Middle Eastern politics. Professor Blaydes is the author of the book 'State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein' published by Princeton University Press in 2018, and 'Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt' published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association. Her scholarly articles have been published in prominent journals including the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and both a BA and MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Sociology
• Political economy
• Law
• Criminology
• Archaeology
• Geography
• Engineering
• Economic growth
• Development economics
• Economic geography
• Economy
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Understanding Intimate Partner Violence

  Annual Review of Political Science · 2025-04-10 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Violence against women occurs at high rates in societies across the world. The most common form is intimate partner violence, abuse perpetrated against a spouse or intimate relationship partner. We present a household bargaining model that seeks to clarify causal mechanisms and to identify key pathways by which economic, political, legal, and cultural factors external to households influence domestic abuse rates, gender equity within relationships, and rates of relationship dissolution. We relate key parameters to factors that differ across societies and over time, including economic opportunities for women, laws that criminalize domestic abuse, and social norms associated with gender equality. We review research associated with these topics to establish what we know and do not know about violence against women in households. While much of this literature is outside of the field of political science, we highlight opportunities for political scientists to contribute to our understanding of how and why domestic violence persists in the world today.

  PublisherDOI

• “Selling” China in the Arab Gulf States: Economic Insecurity and Attitudes Toward Chinese Growth

  Studies in Comparative International Development · 2025-05-06

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Historical State Formation within and beyond Europe

  World Politics · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  abstract: State formation is a critical concern for comparative politics. Much of the most influential literature has focused on the politically fragmented setting of early modern Europe, where warmaking fostered state consolidation and the development of institutions of representation and taxation. More recently, scholars have expanded this perspective by emphasizing the state-building implications of alternative forms of competition, interstate cooperation, and emulation, as well as the influence of a broader set of societal actors beyond belligerent rulers. The authors review recent scholarship on state formation that suggests that the canonical bellicist path is only one pathway to state consolidation, both in Europe and beyond. This article draws attention to the importance of geography and to new insights regarding the organization of state-society relations and the influence of regional and global economic engagements on state formation.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding Intimate Partner Violence

  CrimRxiv · 2025-04-22

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Violence against women occurs at high rates in societies across the world. The most common form is intimate partner violence, abuse perpetrated against a spouse or intimate relationship partner. We present a household bargaining model that seeks to clarify causal mechanisms and to identify key pathways by which economic, political, legal, and cultural factors external to households influence domestic abuse rates, gender equity within relationships, and rates of relationship dissolution. We relate key parameters to factors that differ across societies and over time, including economic opportunities for women, laws that criminalize domestic abuse, and social norms associated with gender equality. We review research associated with these topics to establish what we know and do not know about the production of violence against women in households. While much of this literature is outside of the field of political science, we highlight opportunities for political scientists to contribute to our understanding of how and why domestic violence persists in the world today.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Historical State Formation Within and Beyond Europe

  World Politics · 2024-05-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  State formation is a critical concern for comparative politics. Much of the most influential literature has focused on the politically fragmented setting of early modern Europe, where warmaking fostered state consolidation and the development of institutions of representation and taxation. More recently, scholars have expanded this perspective by emphasizing the state-building implications of alternative forms of competition, interstate cooperation, and emulation, as well as the influence of a broader set of societal actors beyond belligerent rulers. The authors review recent scholarship on state formation that suggests that the canonical bellicist path is only one pathway to state consolidation, both in Europe and beyond. This article draws attention to the importance of geography and to new insights regarding the organization of state-society relations and the influence of regional and global economic engagements on state formation.

  PublisherDOI

• Constraints on Female Labor Force Participation in Qatar: Understanding the Effects of Marriage, Family, and Traditional Values

  Middle East Law and Governance · 2024-10-17 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper examines constraints to female labor force participation in Qatar, a country where state revenue from natural resource rents means any citizen can secure a public sector job should they seek employment. Using data from an original survey and focus groups, we find that although Qataris are generally in support of female labor force participation – both in principle and for their own relatives – concerns remain about the impact of women working for marriage, family, and traditional values. These concerns may be especially salient for younger Qatari men – a constituency particularly impacted by erosion of traditional gender norms at a time when they are establishing their own households. We also find that Qataris with a larger percentage of male children tend to be less supportive of women working outside of the home, suggesting forms of family-level variation in investment in patriarchal values and child rearing practices.

  PublisherDOI

• The Politics of Legal Pluralism in a Muslim Society

  Nationalities Papers · 2024-05-13

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Egor Lazarev has offered us a book of uncommon ambition and erudition. At its core, State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya explores how elites and ordinary citizens pursue their interests by weighing the costs and benefits of using alternative legal frameworks in postwar Chechnya. By describing how politicians encourage nonstate legal remedies to build political coalitions—and how everyday Chechens engage in forum shopping when trying to manage their own legal issues—Lazarev teaches us about the challenges associated with the extension of state legal institutions in the wake of prolonged, nationalist conflict. Although Lazarev treats his exploration of legal pluralism as the theoretical framing for the book, such a reading belies what I view as his primary empirical contribution: a meticulous exploration of gender politics in the North Caucasus. In this review, I describe Lazarev’s arguments about elite and citizen legal strategies, discuss his understanding of gender disputes in a postconflict Muslim society, and offer a provocation for future research that would situate the study of Chechnya in a broader literature on autocratic politics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Authoritarian State Repression of Women and Girls

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-05-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Repression is among the most powerful strategies used by autocratic regimes to control their populations. Despite a growing literature on its causes and effects in autocracies, little of this research examines state repression using a gendered lens. Although most victims of authoritarian state repression are men, this chapter argues that women experience repression in ways that are distinct. It discusses two forms of state repression of women and girls: gendered custodial abuse and reproductive repression. In both cases, gender identity motivates the nature of abuse while having specific social and personal implications for women. This chapter provides examples of these two forms of gendered state repression from authoritarian China, Egypt, Peru, and Sudan, showing that gendered forms of state repression are particularly common and damaging in societies with conservative, patriarchal social norms where a woman’s social position depends on her reputation as a wife and value as a mother.

  PublisherDOI

• Arab identity and attitudes toward migration in Kuwait and Qatar

  Research & Politics · 2023-10-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper explores the attitudes of expatriate workers towards the future of migration to the Arab Gulf states. We conduct an online survey and framing experiment administered to more than 2900 expatriate workers in Kuwait and Qatar. We find that Arab migrants are less supportive of future migration than other migrants and also exhibit high levels of ethnic-group bias in favor of fellow Arabs. Evidence from the framing experiment suggests that Arab migrants disfavor Indian workers, even though workers from South Asia are less likely to pose competition for jobs. Our findings provide empirical evidence for ethnic boundary policing within the migrant community and speak to the conditions that encourage anti-migrant sentiment and in-group favoritism among Arab expatriate workers in the Gulf region.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for "Arab Identity and Attitudes toward Migration in Kuwait and Qatar"

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-11-14

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication data for "Arab Identity and Attitudes toward Migration in Kuwait and Qatar"

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ala’ Alrababa’h

  Bocconi University

  35 shared

• Christopher Paik

  25 shared

• Roberta P. Glick

  5 shared

• Justin Grimmer

  5 shared

• Éric Chaney

  4 shared

• Safinaz El Tarouty

  3 shared

• Justin Gengler

  Amazon (United States)

  3 shared

• Drew A. Linzer

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field…