M. Tahir Kilavuz is a former Postdoctoral research fellow at the Middle East Initiative.

While at the Middle East Initiative, his research interests included authoritarianism, regime change, religion and politics, coup d’état, survey analysis, mixed methods research and experimental design, both in the MENA and in the cross-regional setting. More specifically, he examined durability of authoritarian regimes and transitions both to other types of dictatorship and to democracy, with a particular emphasis on how institutions shape and constrain the behavior of political regimes and the masses. In his book project, he focused on the factors behind political regime persistence and change in the MENA comprehensively, both in terms of time period and geographical coverage. He explained the institutional strategies of the leaders to sustain their regimes’ survival through cross-national analysis in the MENA and the impact of opposition challenges during democratization attempts with experimental and qualitative evidence from the case studies of Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame, an MA from Koc University, and a BA from Istanbul Bilgi University. He has worked and/or studied in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Turkey.