[1] His research and writing to date cover three main issue areas: local politics and the persistence of subnational authoritarianism in formally democratic settings; religious violence and mobilization in the name of Islam; and the role of transnational forces in anti-colonial 'nationalist' revolutions.
With the publication of Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), Sidel's work attracted renewed critical attention among scholars, journalists,[3] and policy-makers, especially in the context of rising interest in Islamist terrorism in Southeast Asia.
In an article in Comparative Politics, he linked the diverging trajectories of democratization across Southeast Asia to the variegated pattern of business class formation observed across the region from the mid-19th century to the present.
Forthcoming essays treat such themes as the diverging fates of nationalism across post-independence Southeast Asia, on the one hand, and the emerging body of research on so-called subnational authoritarianism across such settings as southern Italy and post-Soviet Russia.
He has also begun work on a study of intolerance and persecution of religious deviance across the Muslim world, with a special focus on the treatment of the Ahmadiyya minority in a range of countries across Asia and Africa.