Contact details

Location

Thompson Hall

200 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003
United States

Office 406

About

Professor Ahmed's main area of specialization is democratic studies, with a special interest in elections, voting systems, legislative politics, party development, and voting rights. She examines these issues in historical and comparative perspective and her work combines a regional focus on Europe and the United States.  

She is author of “Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance” (Cambridge University Press, 2013) which won the Best Book Award from the European Politics and Society Section of the American Political Science Association. She is currently completing a new book entitled Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional Sequencing, Legislative Politics and Democratic Stability, which examines the long-term impact of institutional sequencing on party formation, legislative dynamics, and political development. She also has a special interest in research methods and has written about mixed-method research designs, the position of historical analysis within the social sciences, and comparative areas studies.

Her work has appeared in various journals including: Comparative Political StudiesPerspectives on PoliticsDemocratizationStudies in Comparative International Development, and Journal of Politics. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of Comparative Politics, West European Politics, American Political Development, Democratization, Electoral Studies, and Research Methods.