Research
Overview
Book Nielsen, Richard. 2017. Deadly Clerics: Blocked Ambition and the Paths to Jihad. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics series. | cambridge.org |
amazon.com | google books | Summary, replication materials, and photos. | cited by 124 |
Book in progress Islamic Authority in the Internet Age. Summary.
Peer Reviewed Articles
Nielsen, Richard. 2023. "Religious Fieldwork for International Relations Scholars," International Studies Review |
.pdf | .pdf (full forum) |.
Peter Krause, Ora Szekely, Mia Bloom, Fotini Christia, Sarah Zukerman Daly, Chappell Lawson, Zoe Marks, Aidan Milliff, Kacie Miura, Richard Nielsen, Emil Aslan Souleimanov, William Reno, and Aliyu Zakayo. 2021. "COVID-19 and Fieldwork: Challenges and Solutions," PS: Political Science & Politics, 54 (2): 264--269. | .pdf | cited by 37 |.
Roberts, Margaret, Brandon Stewart, and Richard Nielsen. 2020. "Adjusting for Confounding with Text Matching," American Journal of Political Science, 64 (4): 887-903. | .pdf | Supplemental Information | replication archive | cited by 119 |.
Nielsen, Richard. 2020. "Women's Authority in Patriarchal Social Movements: The Case of Female Salafi Preachers," American Journal of Political Science, 64 (1): 52-66. | .pdf | Supplemental Information | replication archive | coverage in Folha (ungated .pdf) (English translation) | cited by 27 |.
King, Gary and Richard Nielsen. 2019. "Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching," Political Analysis, 27 (4): 435-454. | .pdf | appendix | replication data and code | cited by 1,754 |
King, Gary, Christopher Lucas, and Richard Nielsen. 2017. "The Balance-Sample Size Frontier in Matching Methods for Causal Inference," American Journal of Political Science, 61 (2): 473-489. | .pdf | software and examples | replication code and data | cited by 160 |
Nielsen, Richard. 2016. "Case Selection via Matching," Sociological Methods and Research, 45 (3): 569-597. | .pdf | case selection software | data | cited by 140 |
Nielsen, Richard, and Beth Simmons. 2015. "Rewards for Ratification: Payoffs for Participating in the International Human Rights Regime?" International Studies Quarterly, 59 (2): 197-208. | .pdf | appendix | data | coverage on slate.com | cited by 114 |
Lucas, Christopher, Richard Nielsen, Margaret Roberts, Brandon Stewart, Alex Storer, and Dustin Tingley. 2015. "Computer Assisted Text Analysis for Comparative Politics." Political Analysis, 23 (3): 254-277. | .pdf | code and data | cited by 592 | Reprinted in Advances in Political Methodology edited by Robert Franzese. Included in Political Analysis virtual issues on "Recent Innovations in Text Analysis for Social Science" and "Online Research Methods".
Nielsen, Richard. 2013. "Rewarding Human Rights? Selective Aid Sanctions against Repressive States," International Studies Quarterly, 57 (4), 791-803. | .pdf | appendix | data | cited by 192 |
Nielsen, Richard, Michael Findley, Zach Davis, Tara Candland, and Daniel Nielsen. 2011. "Foreign Aid Shocks as a Cause of Violent Armed Conflict," American Journal of Political Science, 55 (2): 219-232. | .pdf | appendix | data | coverage in the Wall Street Journal | coverage by the Monkey Cage blog | cited by 337 | Re-released as part of a virtual issue of the AJPS highlighting NSF-funded research.
King, Gary, Richard Nielsen, Carter Coberly, James Pope, and Aaron Wells. 2011. "Avoiding Randomization Failure in Program Evaluation, with Application to the Medicare Health Support Program," Population Health Management, 14: S11-S22. | .pdf | cited by 32 |
Book Chapters
Nielsen, Richard. 2020. "The Rise and Impact of Muslim Women Preaching Online," in Oxford Handbook of Politics in Muslim Societies, Melani Cammett and Pauline Jones, eds., New York: Oxford University Press. | .pdf | gated version at OUP | replication archive |
Nielsen, Richard. 2020. "Recite! Interpretive Fieldwork for Positivists," in Stories from the Field:
A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science, Peter Krause and Ora Szekely, eds., New York: Columbia University Press. | .pdf | gated version | related "Stories From the Field" podcast episode | cited by 6 |
Nielsen, Richard. 2020. "Statistical Matching with Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data: Magic, Malfeasance, or Something in Between?" In The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations, Robert Franzese and Luigi Curini, eds., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. | .pdf | cited by 1 |
Nielsen, Richard. 2015. "Ethics for Experimental Manipulation of Religion," in Ethics and Experiments: Problems and Solutions for Social Scientists and Policy Professionals, Scott Desposato, ed., New York: Routledge. | .pdf | preview available via Google books | cited by 28 |
Other Writings Nielsen, Richard. 2019. What Counting Words Can Teach Us about Middle East Politics, MENA Politics Newsletter, 2(2), Fall 2019. | code and data for footnote 1 | full newsletter |
Santiago Segarra, Ali Jadbabaie, and Nielsen, Richard. "Baghdadi's Martyrdom Bump" Foreign Policy. October 29, 2019.
Nielsen, Richard. "Women will soon be issuing fatwas in Saudi Arabia. This isn’t as groundbreaking as you’d think." Monkey Cage, washingtonpost.com. October 10, 2017.
Nielsen, Richard. "Anatomy by Memory: Sassoon on the Politics of Arab Authoritarianism" H-Diplo Roundtable Review, Vol. XIX, No. 6. October 9, 2017.
Nielsen, Richard. "The Changing Face of Islamic Authority in the Middle East" Middle East Brief, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University. May 9, 2016.
Nielsen, Richard. "Does the Islamic State Believe in Sovereignty?" Monkey Cage, washingtonpost.com. February 6, 2015.
Nielsen, Richard. Thoughts on the Ethics of Interventions When Studying Religion and Politics in the Middle East. In "The Ethics of Research in the Middle East," POMEPS Studies 8, July 2, 2014. | .pdf |
King, Gary, Richard Nielsen, and Aaron Wells. 2012. "Letter to the Editor (on McCall and Cromwell)," New England Journal of Medicine, 366 (7): 667. | .pdf | full exchange |
Working Papers
"How the Rhetoric of Women in the Alt-Right Broadens the Movement’s Appeal" | .pdf | With Eliza Oak. Version: 25 January, 2024
"Combining Interpretivist and Positivist Approaches in Social Science Research" | .pdf | With Jasmine English. Version: 19 October, 2023.
"The Supply of Conspiracy Theories in State-Controlled Media" |
.pdf | appendix | With Gabriel Koehler-Derrick and David Romney. Version: 2 September, 2023.
"What Makes a Jihadist Text Popular?" |
.pdf | Analysis on foreignpolicy.com | With Santiago Segarra and Ali Jadbabaie. Version: 7 August, 2019.
"Comparative Effectiveness of Matching Methods for Causal Inference" | .pdf | With Gary King, Carter Coberly, James Pope, and Aaron Wells. Version: 9 December 2011. See further developments in "The Balance-Sample Size Frontier in Matching Methods for Causal Inference" (AJPS 2017) and "Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching" (PA 2019).
"Why Are All the Interesting Questions Hard to Answer?" | .pdf | A short think piece that might expand. Version: 27 December, 2015.
Software
arabicStemR: stem Arabic text in R. (See "Deadly Clerics: Blocked Ambition and the Paths to Jihad".)
caseMatch: Select qualitative cases using matching using a web app or R. (See "Case Selection via Matching".)
MatchingFrontier: Calculate the matching frontier: R. (See "The Balance-Sample Size Frontier in Matching Methods for Causal Inference".)
Articles are posted under the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.
