Pauline Jones

During her fellowship year at CASBS, Pauline Jones will focus on a book project exploring the relationship between religious regulation and autocracy in modern-day Muslim majority countries (MMCs). Scholars have reached a near consensus that religious regulation undermines democracy, that MMCs have much higher levels of religious regulation than non-MMCs, and that this is what explains the “democratic deficit” in the Islamic world. Her research makes two key contributions. First, it questions the metrics used to determine levels of religious regulation and creates alternative indicators both to examine whether MMCs do regulate religion more than non-MMCs and to understand how laws and institutions targeted at specific religious beliefs, practices, leaders and groups are linked to autocracy. Second, it provides a novel theory and empirical evidence linking the colonial experience directly and indirectly to the level and type of religious regulations in modern-day MMCs. This is an important corrective to the existing literature, which emphasizes the influence of either the pre-colonial or post-colonial period on religious repression and autocracy.

Jones is professor of political science at the University of Michigan (UM) and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is also founder and director of the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum. Previously, she served as the director of UM’s International Institute and Islamic Studies Program. She has published articles in several leading academic and policy journals, regularly contributes expert commentary and analysis to media outlets on current events and has authored (or co-authored) five books, including most recently The Oxford Handbook on Politics in Muslim Societies (with Melani Cammett, Oxford 2021). 

For more information, please visit: https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/people/faculty/pjluong.html