Welcome! I am an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and a tutorial fellow in Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. I am also the principal investigator of the UKRI-funded ERC Starting Grant Democratic Values and Authoritarian Legitimacy (DEVAL), which studies why people support democracy and how autocrats sometimes use this support to strengthen authoritarianism.
Broadly, my research addresses topics including popular politics in authoritarian regimes, support for democracy and human rights, attitudes toward migration and foreign aid, and the politics of the Middle East. In my book, which is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, I explore how autocrats delegate decision-making powers to shield themselves from blame for governance failures. I have published in academic journals such as the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and the British Journal of Political Science, and I have also written for outlets such as the Washington Post, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Project on Middle East Democracy.
Previously, I was an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University and a postdoctoral associate in the Social Science Division at New York University Abu Dhabi. I also worked in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and studied Arabic as a CASA fellow at the American University in Cairo. I completed my PhD in political science at Stanford University and my BA at Indiana University.
Please feel free to contact me at scott.williamson@politics.ox.ac.uk.