I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at McGill ​University, specializing in comparative politics and international ​relations.

Before joining McGill for my doctoral studies, I received my Bachelor of ​Science in Foreign Service (BSFS) degree with honours from Georgetown ​University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Q) in 2015. As part of ​my undergraduate studies, I spent a semester studying at the Edmund A. ​Walsh School of Foreign Service from January to May 2013. Beyond ​academia, I'm an avid fan of cricket, cinema, and South Asian music.

Please email me for a copy of the most recent version of my CV at ​bilal.shakir[at]mail[dot]mcgill[dot]ca

Hear my name pronounced by clicking here.

16-2, Rue McTavish 3610, Montreal, QC H3A 1Y2

Header from Institut Montaigne 2021

Research

Dissertation Summary, Publications, ​and Working Papers.

Teaching

Courses Taught as Instructor and ​Teaching Assistant.

CV

Click here to view a copy of my CV.

Dissertation Project

Divergent Mobilization: Explaining the Disjuncture ​Between Social Mobilization and Electoral Sucess of ​Islamist Political Parties in Pakistan (1947-2024)

My dissertation analyzes what accounts for variation in the relationship between ​social mobilization and the electoral success of ideological political parties and ​groups. It proposes the novel concept of “divergent mobilization” to capture the ​disjuncture wherein some parties exhibit high levels of social mobilization but low ​levels of electoral mobilization at the national level. Divergent mobilization ​provides analytical purchase over a wide range of empirical observations across ​the world. To analyze divergent mobilization, the study probes two central ​questions: why are some ideological parties and groups unable to convert their ​robust social mobilization into electoral mobilization by transforming into mass ​electoral machines at the national level, but other parties can? Why can some ​ideological groups and political parties punch above their electoral weight in ​facets of social mobilization, such as street protests, but other groups cannot? ​The study innovatively proposes that the disjuncture in social and electoral ​mobilization can be explained by variation along two interconnected dimensions: ​organizational effectiveness and structural fragmentation. Divergent mobilization ​can be explained by two key variables that vary along these dimensions: 1) large ​mobilization cores that are zealously committed to political parties independent of ​the party’s contingent political oscillations along the dimension of organizational ​effectiveness, and 2) high levels of ideological and political fragmentation due to ​constraints imposed by the social structure along the dimension of structural ​fragmentation. The relationship of these variables with divergent mobilization is ​moderated by the relative strength and incentives of a state’s ruling elite.

Empirically, this dissertation focuses on Islamist mobilization in Muslim-Majority ​Countries like Pakistan, a country of 241 million people, where my research finds ​that the high social mobilization of Islamists has not been matched by strong ​political parties electorally at the national level. I measure the social and electoral ​mobilization of Islamist parties in Pakistan through two main approaches. For ​electoral mobilization, I constructed one of the most comprehensive datasets of ​Pakistani election results at the aggregate level to date, spanning ten election ​cycles from 1970-2018. For social mobilization, I used social mobilization data using ​the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) dataset on protest events in ​Pakistan (n=77,517). Crucially, the dissertation relied on 11 months of in-depth ​fieldwork in Pakistan, encompassing 60 semi-structured interviews at the elite ​level with previously under-accessed informants that included practitioners such ​as high-ranking former officers of Pakistan’s secretive intelligence agencies, ​senior bureaucrats, national and local politicians, experts, and two focus groups at ​the non-elite level that were conducted in two representative administrative units ​of Pakistan. Ethnographic insights gathered from three different sites that refer to ​major cities of Pakistan were used as data sources by visiting mosques, Islamic ​schools, and state facilities. The dissertation also uses newspaper reports and ​archival sources from the 1940s onwards as data sources.

For analyzing the data, the dissertation utilized a mixed-methods research design ​that employs rigorous case-analysis methods, principally process tracing and ​historical periodization, to describe, contextualize and explain the divergent ​mobilization of Islamist parties in Pakistan. This is complemented with statistical ​analysis to triangulate the findings and test alternative explanations.

Working

Papers

Islam‘s State-Within-a-State

This review article ventures the claim that political scientists need to pay greater ​attention to accounts theorizing Islam’s influence on policy by building frameworks that ​are relatively specific to Islamic polities rather than superimposing templates of state-​religion dynamics from Christian ones. ‘Islam’s state-within-a-state’ is proposed as a ​heuristic term that provides a clearer description and understanding of state-religion ​dynamics in the context of Islam. It encompasses a situation wherein Islamic religious ​entities that comprise religious ‘society’ are often able to mimic, albeit not necessarily ​exist in parallel with, the modern state in a variety of aspects such as having features of ​coercive power, institutional rule-making capacity, symbolic power, revenue generation ​capabilities, and affiliations with structures that shape individual and collective choice. ​It thus captures rather well the sense of endemic unsettledness in some Muslim-​majority democracies and semi-democracies that exist due to tension between Islamic ​entities and the state. Crucially, a focus on Islam’s state-within-a-state can explain the ​disproportionate influence on state policy of Islamic organizations and parties in some ​contexts.

Politics of Pakistan

A comprehensive survey of Pakistan's political landscape that examines the key ​dimensions shaping Pakistani politics. This analysis encompasses civil-military relations, ​the architecture and functioning of political institutions—including political parties, the ​judiciary, and the national parliament—the interplay between Islam and politics, as well ​as Pakistan's political economy. The study also analyzes Pakistan's foreign policy and ​international relations while critically assessing contemporary challenges and future ​trajectories.

Under Contract with Oxford University Press.

Power and Piety from Mecca to Multan and Medan: ​Transnational Islamic Linkages and Islamic Reformism in ​Indonesia and Pakistan (1945-2019)

How is piety transmitted transnationally? This paper underlines the key pathways ​contributing to the transmission of authority of transnational Islamist actors since the ​turn of the late 20th century. It identifies the conduits encompassing the pathways of ​Islamic piety transmission. The paper contributes to a deeper appreciation of the ​discrete historical pathways associated with the increasing political salience of Islamist ​actors following the 1979 Iranian revolution. The paper makes two central claims: first, ​piety can resemble a form of liquid authority that is transmitted transnationally by a ​variety of transnational actors; second, this piety can be actualized into socially ​productive outcomes. It uses the case of piety transmission between the Middle-​Eastern Gulf and South Asia (SA) and Southeast Asia (SEA), which together comprise ​approximately 40 percent of the world’s population, to illuminate how Islamic piety has ​been transmitted historically through pan-Islamic connections between these under-​analyzed yet politically significant regions of the world. Specifically, the paper uses the ​political histories of Pakistan and Indonesia as critical cases to analyze the variety of ​ways through which pan-Islamic linkages have contributed to Islamic resurgence. It ​underlines that the process of piety transmission and its actualization into policy ​outcomes was, by and large, political and historically contingent.

Policy

Reports

• “Human Rights in Southeast Asia: How should Canada engage?” (2019) ​International Development Research Center (IDRC) Myanmar Program

• “A country in transition: a learning event on Myanmar” (2018) International ​Development Research Center (IDRC) Myanmar Program with others
  

Conferences

and Invited Talks

Academic Conferences

• Canadian Political Science Association – Online | 2024, 2022
• International Political Science Association 75th Anniversary Meeting – ​Montreal | 2024
• International Studies Association – San Francisco; Hawaii (Cancelled) | 2024, ​2020
  
• American Political Science Association Virtual Research Meeting (Online) | ​2023
  
• Canadian Council on Southeast Asian Studies – Quebec City; Montreal | 2023, ​2019
  
• Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID) – Montreal | 2023
  
• Field Chronicles Workshop – Montreal | 2023
  
• New York Southeast Asia Network – New York City | 2016
  
• Midwest Political Science Association – Chicago | 2016
  
• Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference – Doha | 2013
  
• World Congress on Middle Eastern Studies – Ankara | 2013
  

Invited Talks and Lectures

• “Ethical Dilemmas in Research in Developing Contexts,” INTD 350 — Gender ​and Development, McGill University | Fall 2023
• “Political Parties and Institutions” - American Government, Texas A & M Qatar ​| Summer 2016
• “Lobbying and Interest Groups” - American Government, Texas A & M Qatar | ​Summer 2016
• “Bureaucracy” - American Government, Texas A & M Qatar | Spring 2016
  

POLI 227: Introduction to the Politics of Developing Areas, McGill University, ​Department of Political Science | Summer 2024

Course Description: This course is an introduction to central themes in Comparative ​Politics concerning the developing world, also known as the Global South or the Third ​World. Thematically, the course focuses on the legacies of colonialism and the ​contemporary dynamics of political and socio-economic development in the ​developing world. Some of the topics covered in this course include modernization, ​state-building, national integration, social movements, regime change, autocratic ​resilience as well as religion and democratization. The empirical materials for this ​course reflect a focus on the developing regions and areas of the developing world ​such as the states and peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the ​South Pacific.

You can view a copy of the syllabus here.

McGill University, Max Bell School of Public Policy

• Comparative Governmental Structures with Professor Narendra Subramanian | ​Summer 2023
  

Undergraduate Courses

McGill University, Department of Political Science

• Southeast Asian Politics with Professor Erik Kuhonta | Winter 2024, 2018
• Religion and Politics with Professor Erik Kuhonta | Winter 2023, 2019
  
• Political Change in South Asia with Professor Narendra Subramanian | Winter ​2021
  
• Political Science Research Methods with Dr. Arc Zhen-Han | Fall 2018
  
• Research Methods with Professor Dietlind Stolle (Grader) | Fall 2017
  
• US Politics I with Professor Harold Waller | Fall 2016
  

McGill University, Faculty of Arts, Institute for the Study of International ​Development

• Culture and Development with Dr. Kazue Takamura | Fall 2023
• Anthropology of Meaning with Ruth Vine | Winter 2022
  
• Anthropology of Development with Dr. Andrea Moreira | Winter 2022
  
• Climate Change & Development with Dr. Blair Peruniak | Fall 2020
  

McGill University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Anthropology

• Anthropology of Meaning with Dr. Ruth Vine | Winter 2022
  
• Anthropology of Development with Dr. Andrea Moreira | Winter 2022
  

Texas A & M University Qatar, Liberal Arts

• American Government with Professor Hassan Bashir | Summer 2016
• American Government with Professor Hassan Bashir | Spring 2016
  
• Engineering Ethics with Professor Hassan Bashir | Fall 2015
  
• Travel, Tourism & Identity with Professor Hassan Bashir | Fall 2015
  

The best way to contact me is by emailing me at ​bilal.shakir@mail.mcgill.ca

APSA Religion and Democracy Research Group, APSA Virtual ​Conference 2024