Research
On this page you can see a list of my articles, books, and other published works (see table of contents on the left) along with associated code and datasets. You can view my CV here. My research has focused on the following questions that span the political economy of development, data science, causal inference and Middle East politics:
How do businesses influence politics in countries with serious issues of corruption and regulatory mismanagement?
How do businesspeople become successful entrepreneurs in countries where personal and political relationships are necessary to grow their firm?
How can we use Bayesian statistical methods to make robust inferences with complex datasets?
How can scientists develop robust measures of concepts they care about and make credible causal inferences that take into account diverse forms of data and evidence?
Often these questions overlap, such as when I use new statistical tools I develop to study corruption in the MENA region and elsewhere. My R packages, ordbetareg and idealstan, both came out of my research in studying online experiments and legislature behavior, and have also been used in other studies to date. I am both a skeptic of data science & AI and a developer of data-scientific methods because I see great promise and peril in quantification.
Please see below for a list of recent publications, though please note that not all of the publications on my CV are listed here as of yet.
Books
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Kubinec, Robert. Making Democracy Safe for Business: Corporate Politics During the Arab Uprisings. Cambridge University Press: 2023. doi:
10.1017/9781009273541
Journal articles
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David Francis and Robert Kubinec, “Beyond Political Connections : A Measurement Model Approach to Estimating Firm-level Political Influence in 41 Countries,” Political Science Research & Methods, doi:
10.1017/psrm.2025.10046 -
Robert Kubinec, Joan Barcelo, Rafael Goldszmidt, Vanja Grujic, Timothy Model, Caress Schenk, Cindy Cheng, Thomas Hale, Luca Messerschmidt, and Anna Petherick, “Cross-National Measures of the Intensity of COVID-19 Public Health Policies,” Journal of Politics Forthcoming, doi:
10.1086/734241 -
Dolan, Lindsay R., Robert M. Kubinec, Daniel L. Nielson, and Jiakun J. Zhang. A Field Experiment on Business Opposition to the U.S.-China Trade War. 2025. Business and Politics, Forthcoming. doi:
10.31235/osf.io/435u9 -
Robert Kubinec and Helen Milner, “Taxes in the Time of Revolution: An Experimental Test of the Rentier State during Algeria's Hirak,” World Politics 76, no. 2 (April 2024): 294-333, doi:
10.1353/wp.2024.a924508
Working papers
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Kubinec, Robert. "Generalized Ideal Point Models for Robust Measurement with Dirty Data in the Social Sciences." February 4, 2025. Working Paper doi:
10.31219/osf.io/8j2bt_v1 -
Kubinec, Robert, Abhit Bhandari, Sekou Jabateh, and Hamza Mighri. "The Political Nature of Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Tunisia and Senegal." May 29, 2024. Working Paper doi:
10.31219/osf.io/unby5
Essays and Op-eds
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Kubinec, Robert. "As Syria ponders a democratic future: 5 lessons from the Arab Spring". January 24, 2025. The Conversationn, link:
https://theconversation.com/as-syria-ponders-a-democratic-future-5-lessons-from-the-arab-spring-246203?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button
Open Peer Reviews
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Kubinec, Robert. "Evaluation 1 of 'Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China.'" August 11, 2023. Public Evaluation, doi:
10.21428/d28e8e57.22756671