Amel Ahmed, Political Science,  was announced as a 2023-2024 ISSR scholar. ISSR Scholars receive resources and mentoring to allow them to develop innovative new research and funding proposals that have the potential to shape social theory and policy. ISSR Scholars participate in a year-long seminar and mentorship program. In addition to attending in-depth sessions on grant writing and receiving valuable peer feedback on their proposals, ISSR Scholars are given unique opportunities to consult with nationally recognized experts about their proposals. Professor Ahmed’s project is titled “Framing Democracy: Can Democracy Frames Impact Support for Competition and Inclusion?” Recent scholarship has warned that the American public’s democratic commitments are weakening, a phenomenon that could pose serious threats of democratic backsliding in the U.S. In this project, she will address these concerns with special attention to the complexity of conceptualizing backsliding as a phenomenon and the difficulties of querying the public about potential backsliding events. Using a mixed method approach, she examines whether explicitly framing and strongly signaling that a policy is good for democracy increases support for the policy. (ISSR Website,4/6/23)