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Department of Political Science

Erin York

Assistant Professor
C Family Dean’s Faculty Fellow in Political Science

I study how the rules governing autocratic institutions influence political outcomes, with a focuse on legislative institutions and opposition participation. Additional research interests include the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as ethnicity and migration. My studies and individual projects have been generously supported by the National Science Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Columbia Department of Political Science. 

My work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics.


I previously held fellowships at Princeton University's Niehaus Center and the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. Before entering academia, I was a research associate at the RAND Corporation and a Fulbright fellow in Syria.

Representative publications

  • Preferences Over Foreign Migration: Testing Existing Explanations in the Gulf. (2022). World Politics, 74(3), 443-475.
  • Ministries matter: technocrats and regime loyalty under autocracy. (2023). Political Science Research and Methods, 1-13
  • "A Dynamic Model of Primaries." The Journal of Politics 82.4 (2020): 1443-1457. (with Tara Slough and Michael Ting)
  • "Sectarian Framing in the Syrian Civil War." American Journal of Political Science 62.2 (2018): 441-455. (with Daniel Corstrange)
  • View Curriculum Vitae