2022 Summer Graduate Research Fellow: Feyaad Allie

Feyaad Allie is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and received a 2022 summer graduate research fellowship from the Center for South Asia. 

Learn more about the fellowships here

Allie's project, Power, Exclusion, and Identity: The Politics of the Muslim Disadvantage in India, studies how and why the representation of Muslims in Indian politics can harm their future political prospects. Allie proposes and tests a theory of the representation trap which highlights the role of majority group consolidation and marginalized group divisions in driving the underrepresentation of Indian Muslims. 

Project Summary:

In the past several decades India’s democracy has promoted the upliftment and inclusion of marginalized groups including members of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) members of the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and women. Still the over 200 million Muslims in India stand in stark contrast to this narrative of progress for marginalized groups. Allie’s dissertation studies the process that drives the sustained underrepresentation of Muslims in Indian politics. Existing work finds that for marginalized groups in democracies gaining political representation can often generate positive effects in subsequent elections. Using data on state elections since Indian independence Allie finds that for Indian Muslims winning political office in one election cycle lowers the likelihood of winning in the next cycle.

With funding from the Center for South Asia, Allie conducted a large-scale survey of almost 5000 voters this summer which will contribute to a core empirical component of Allie's dissertation. The survey will provide an understanding of the individual-voter dynamics driving the sustained exclusion of Muslims in Indian politics. It will also serve as one of few surveys with a large enough sample size to characterize the often-overlooked heterogeneity among marginalized groups.