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), winner of the 2014 Best Book Award from the APSA European Politics and Society Section and the 2025 George H. Hallett Award from the APSA Representation and Electoral Systems Section. Her new book, "The Regime Question: Foundations of Democratic Governance in Europe and The United States" (Princeton University Press, 2025) examines the history of regime contention in western democracies with a view to understanding the enduring dynamics and long-term impact of fights over the "rules of the game”. She is currently working on a new book entitled Democracies in America: Understanding Conflict Democratic Attitudes, which seeks to understand regime contention in the U.S. today through ground-up investigation of public conceptions of democracy. 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 Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Democratization, Studies 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.