POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast: Recent Episodes
Marc Lynch
On this week's episode of the podcast, Samer Abboud of Villanova University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his book, Betrayal of the Homeland: Disloyal Subjects in Wartime Syria. In the book, Abboud argues that the Syrian regime sought to entrench its rule during wartime through bifurcating society into “loyal” and “disloyal” subjects—and punishing those it deemed treacherous. The regime framed the conflict as a war on terror, portraying its opponents as traitors to the homeland. In the post-2015 period, it established new laws, courts, and legal categories that targeted “betrayal,” which could include anything from military desertion to absenteeism to critical social media posts. Disloyal subjects were subjected to various forms of punishment and denied reentry into the country if they had been displaced. Bringing together the regime’s narratives and rhetoric with the machinery of bureaucratic practices, Abboud traces how the state sculpted the divide between loyalty and disloyalty. Empirically rich and theoretically informed, Betrayal of the Homeland offers a panoramic view of the politics of punishment during the final decade of the Assad regime, with broader implications for understanding how authoritarian states manage conflicts.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sina Azodi of the George Washington University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his book, Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question. The book shows that because the strategic logic of the nuclear program transcends the regimes type, dismantling the Iranian nuclear program is not viable policy option for the United States. Instead, the US must learn to live with a nuclear threshold state and make it a priority to keep Iranian capacity as far away from the bomb as possible.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Samuel Helfont of the Naval War College at the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new edited volume, Ba‘thist Iraq through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities (co-edited with Lisa Blaydes). This volume brings together leading scholars to take stock of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba'thist archives, contributing to a new understanding of Iraq's history, with wider implications for understanding authoritarianism in general. They also discuss Helfont's book, The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction. Please note that the Samuel Helfont joins the podcast in a personal capacity as an academic and not as a representative for the Navy or the US Government.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Kali Rubaii of Purdue University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Resurgency: Outlasting the War on Terror in Iraq. The book expands the temporal and descriptive categories of what war is—and what resistance looks like. By asking what actions and dispositions make sense when conditions of survival are diminished, and when today may be better than tomorrow, Rubaii offers new methods and insights to those concerned about the possibilities of life amid environmental devastation, mass displacement, and the slow violence of the forever wars.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Jason Brownlee of University of Austin-Texas joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Force Without Authority: America's Wars in the Middle East and South Asia. The book explores why the United States' costliest military operations since Vietnam came up short and pushed Republican and Democratic leaders toward withdrawal and retrenchment. The book delivers a bracing audit of America's unipolar moment and a compelling case for statecraft over bluster.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Hossam el-Hamalawy joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic. The book is a rare and comprehensive examination of the structures, hierarchies, and methods of the military, police, and intelligence agencies. Drawing on meticulous research, it reveals the strategies deployed to suppress the revolutionary wave, from propaganda and surveillance to mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. El-Hamalawy traces the power dynamics within these institutions to show how their uneasy unity was both a response to the revolution and a determinant of its eventual fate.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Fırat Bozçalı of University of Toronto joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands. Taking readers from border villages, mountain passes, and road checkpoints to courtrooms, law offices, and forensic laboratories, Fırat Bozçalı examines how Kurdish smugglers, with the help of their lawyers, legally disrupt state sovereignty in criminal courts. The book holds profound relevance in today's world, where ever-expanding regimes of surveillance, oppression, and dispossession unfold in the broader contexts of the global war on terror and data-driven capitalism.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Daniel Neep of the Arab Center Washington DC joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Syria: A Modern History. Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. In the book, Neep offers a gripping narrative of how Syrians have navigated these events. Never losing sight of the fates of ordinary people, it provides a comprehensive account of how a nation born in conflict nevertheless sustained a rich, complex, and diverse society that will now chart its own path into the uncertain future.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Mohammed Soliman of the Middle East Institute joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East. In the book, Soliman argues that it is time for the United States to move decisively away from nation-building and get back to the business of order-building. To do so will require zooming out, in both geographical and historical terms, to build a new regional order across 'West Asia' – from the Middle East to South Asia, connecting Europe to the Indo-Pacific via the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Please note that the views expressed in the episode are those of the article author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or the position of the Naval Postgraduate School, the US Navy, or the US Government.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Stéphane Lacroix of Sciences Po joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Twilight of the Saints: The History and Politics of Salafism in Contemporary Egypt. The book examines the history of Salafism in Egypt from its 1920s emergence in Cairo’s scholarly circles through the present day, shedding new light on the movement’s shifting relationship to politics. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews, Lacroix illustrates how Salafism redefined what it means to be Muslim for Egyptians.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sean Yom of Temple University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible. In the book, Yom provides a concise yet authoritative synthesis of the Hashemite Kingdom's development from its founding over a century ago to the present. He explores Jordan's government, society, economy, and foreign policy in a systematic manner, offering an immersive tour of this vital Arab country. Uniquely, he combines theoretical work from political science, sociology, and other scholarly fields with firsthand knowledge of Jordan garnered over decades of study. His insights show how Jordan's political experiences form a microcosm for understanding the entire Middle East.This year, in addition to the book conversations, POMEPS Director and podcast host Marc Lynch will be providing more context on the book itself or topics related to the book. Each week you'll hear about published academic research and other interesting material on the topic that Marc wants to share. You'll be able to find all of the citations and links at the end of the weekly podcast post.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Killian Clarke of Georgetown University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed. Clarke explains both why counterrevolutions emerge and when they are likely to succeed. He forwards a movement-centric argument that emphasizes the strategies revolutionary leaders embrace both during their opposition campaigns and after they seize power. Movements that wage violent resistance and espouse radical ideologies establish regimes that are very difficult to overthrow. By contrast, democratic revolutions like Egypt's are more vulnerable, though Clarke also identifies a path by which they too can avoid counterrevolution. By preserving their elite coalitions and broad popular support, these movements can return to mass mobilization to thwart counterrevolutionary threats. In an era of resurgent authoritarianism worldwide, Return of Tyranny sheds light on one particularly violent form of reactionary politics.You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud:Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Steven Monroe of the National University of Singapore joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World. Monroe uses the case of Jordan to discuss the broader failures of economic reform across the Middle East. He develops a theoretical framework focused on the ability of connected elites to shield themselves from the effects of reforms enacted on paper.The liner notes for this episode focus on the political economy side of the ledger. We already highlighted a wide range of books about Jordan in our recent episode on Sean Yom's Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible. Anyone interested in Monroe's topic should also read Yom's book, as well as Curtis Ryan's Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, Jillian Schwedler's Protesting Jordan, and Scott Williamson's The King Can Do No Wrong. On Jordanian/Palestinian identity politics, my book State Interests and Public Sphere: The International Politics of Jordan's Identity.On the failures of economic reform, Peter Moore's Doing Business in the Middle East is in many ways a direct ancestor of Mirages of Reform, and still highly relevant today. The same is true for Melani Cammett's Globalization and Business Politics in the Middle East, Clement Henry and Robert Springborg's Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, and the authoritative textbook authored by Cammett and Ishac Diwan (taking over from Alan Roberts and John Waterbury for the fourth edition), A Political Economy of the Middle East.On this week's episode of the podcast, Steven Monroe of the National University of Singapore joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World. Monroe uses the case of Jordan to discuss the broader failures of economic reform across the Middle East. He develops a theoretical framework focused on the ability of connected elites to shield themselves from the effects of reforms enacted on paper.POMEPS Director Marc Lynch recommends that anyone interested in Monroe's topic and political economy should read Sean Yom's book Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible, as well as Curtis Ryan's Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, Jillian Schwedler's Protesting Jordan, and Scott Williamson's The King Can Do No Wrong. On Jordanian/Palestinian identity politics, Marc Lynch's book State Interests and Public Sphere: The International Politics of Jordan's Identity.On the failures of economic reform, Peter Moore's Doing Business in the Middle East is in many ways a direct ancestor of Mirages of Reform, and still highly relevant today. The same is true for Melani Cammett's Globalization and Business Politics in the Middle East, Clement Henry and Robert Springborg's Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, and the authoritative textbook authored by Cammett and Ishac Diwan (taking over from Alan Roberts and John Waterbury for the fourth edition), A Political Economy of the Middle East.Amr Adly's Cleft Capitalism traces similar dynamics in Egypt, while Steffen Hertog's Locked Out of Development: Insiders and Outsiders in Arab Capitalism, Robert Kubinek's Making Democracy Safe for Business, and Ferdinand Eibl's Social Dictatorships expand the scope to multiple countries.
Welcome to Season 15 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast! On this week's episode of the podcast, Rana Khoury of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria's War. Khoury asserts that to understand civilian and refugee activism in war, we must regard the international actors and organizations that enter the scene to help. When these organizations respond to crises, they work with local actors. In so doing, they facilitate the activists' participation in something like a civil society even in the depths of war. Yet as aid imposes its structures and routines, it also leaves activists unprotected from the violence of war and its aftermaths.This year, in addition to the book conversations, POMEPS Director and podcast host Marc Lynch will be providing more context either on the book itself or the topic of the book. Each week you'll hear about related published academic research on the topic or any other interesting material Marc comes across and wants to share. You'll be able to find all of the citations and links at the end of the weekly podcast post.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Yasmin Moll of the University of Michigan joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt. This book challenges conventional accounts of the 2011 revolution and its aftermath as a struggle between secular and religious forces, reconsidering what makes a practice virtuous, a public Islamic, a way of life Godly. Yasmin Moll shows how Islamic media and the social life of theology mattered to contestations over the shape of a New Egypt.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Erik Skare of the University of Oslo joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Road to October 7: A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism. In this book, Erik Skare argues that Palestinian Islamism is far more complex and dynamic than generally assumed. The phenomenon has continuously developed through disputes between moderates and hardliners.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Kristen Kao and Ellen Lust of the University of Gothenburg join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa. This book directs our attention toward the ways in which decentralization is “lived locally” by citizens of the MENA region, underscoring the simultaneous influences of individual-level factors (e.g. gender, education) and local context (e.g. development levels, electoral institutions) on governance processes and outcomes. Mentioned in the podcast:Carnegie-funded Report on Decentralisation Decentralization in the MENA: Representation, Gender, and Civic EngagementDecentralization and Recentralization: Governance Dynamics in the MENA RegionEveryday Choices frameworkSupplemental Materials Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Scott Williamson of the University of Oxford joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, The King Can Do No Wrong: Blame Games and Power Sharing in Authoritarian Regimes. This book stresses the importance of understanding autocratic blame games. Scott Williamson argues that how autocrats share power affects their ability to shift blame, so that they are less vulnerable to the public's grievances when they delegate decision-making powers to other political elites. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Alissa Walter of Seattle Pacific University joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad. . The book offers a history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war, from the oil boom of the 1950s through the withdrawal of US troops in 2011. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Steven Heydemann of Smith College joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Making Sense of the Arab State. This book grapples with enduring questions such as the uneven development of state capacity, the failures of developmentalism and governance, the centrality of regime security and survival concerns, the excesses of surveillance and control, and the increasing personalization of power.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of Rice University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Centers of Power in the Arab Gulf States. This book offers a comparative analysis of military, political, economic and religious power in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as of the power of narrative. Ulrichsen sheds light on the varying concepts of power and authority, the different forms they take, the ways they are projected, and the practical constraints on their exercise.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Austin J. Knuppe of Utah State University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Surviving the Islamic State:Contention, Cooperation, and Neutrality in Wartime Iraq. This book offers an insightful account of how Iraqis in different areas of the country responded to the rise and fall of the Islamic State. Austin J. Knuppe argues that people adopt survival repertoires—a variety of social practices, tools, organized routines, symbols, and rhetorical strategies—to navigate wartime violence and detect threats. He traces how repertoires varied among different communities over the course of the conflict.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Diana Greenwald of the City College of New York joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Mayors in the Middle: Indirect Rule and Local Government in Occupied Palestine. Diana B. Greenwald offers a new theory of local government under indirect rule through a historically informed, empirically nuanced analysis of towns and cities across the West Bank. The book demonstrates that both the indirect rule system itself—as embodied in local policing arrangements—and the political affiliation of Palestinian mayors shape how politicians will govern. This variation, Greenwald argues, depends in part on whether local Palestinian governments are perceived as intermediaries within or opponents of the regime.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Bozena Welborne of Smith College joins Marc Lynch to discuss her book, Women, Money, and Political Participation in the Middle East. This book examines women, money, and political participation in the Middle East and North Africa focusing on women’s capacity to engage local political systems. The research that Welborne presents here expands the discussion of women in rentier political economy and highlights their roles as participants and agents within regional templates for economic development.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Afshon Ostovar of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East. This book offers a sweeping, comprehensive history of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East and the politics that fueled them. Ostovar discusses both the decline of American influence in the Middle East post-9/11 and the rise of Iran, while deftly integrating the United States, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Russia, and Saudi Arabia into the narrative. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Elham Fakhro of the Harvard Kennedy School joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization. In this book, Elham Fakhro demonstrates how shared security concerns, economic interests, and regional political shockwaves led to a surprising strategic convergence between the Gulf states and Israel, setting the stage for covert relations to come out into the open. She examines the role of the Trump administration in negotiating the agreements and shows how the UAE and Bahrain have instrumentalized the accords to burnish their reputations in Western capitals. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
Welcome to Season 14 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast!On this week's episode of the podcast, Jerome Drevon of International Crisis Group joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics. In the book, Drevon offers an examination of the Syrian armed opposition, tracing the emergence of Jihadi groups in the conflict, their dominance, and their political transformation. Drawing upon field research and interviews with Syrian insurgents in northwestern Syria and Turkey, Drevon demonstrates how the context of a local conflict can shape armed groups' behavior in unexpected ways. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Nathaniel Mathews of Binghamton University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Zanzibar Was a Country: Exile and Citizenship between East Africa and the Gulf. This book traces the history of a Swahili-speaking Arab diaspora from East Africa to Oman. The stories of postrevolution exiles and emigrés from Zanzibar provide a framework for the broader transregional entanglements of decolonization in Africa and the Arabian Gulf. Using both vernacular historiography and life histories of men and women from the community, Nathaniel Mathews argues that the traumatic memories of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 are important to nation-building on both sides of the Indian Ocean. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Zachary Lockman of New York University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States. This book reconstructs the origins and trajectory of area studies in the United States, focusing on Middle East studies from the 1920s to the 1980s. Lockman shows how the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations played key roles in conceiving, funding, and launching postwar area studies, expecting them to yield a new kind of interdisciplinary knowledge that would advance the social sciences while benefiting government agencies and the American people. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Courtney Freer of Emory University joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Resilience of Parliamentary Politics in Kuwait: Parliament, Rentierism, and Society. This book provides an unprecedented holistic treatment of grassroots contemporary Kuwaiti politics in English in over two decades, incorporating the country's political dynamics into broader debates about the limits of authoritarianism and the practice of democracy in the Arab world, particularly in oil-wealthy states. Freer includes extensive fieldwork and the use of Arabic and English primary sources to assess and examine the institutional setting that Kuwait presents and traces the dominant ideological strands in the country, considering the comparative mobilizational potential of ascriptive identities like tribe and sect. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sami Hermez of Northwestern University and Sireen Sawalha join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine. This is the story of Palestinian resistance that follows Sireen's family after walking back to Palestine against the traffic of exile. Through the lives of the Sawalha family, and the story of Iyad's involvement with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hermez confronts readers with the politics and complexities of armed resistance and the ethical tensions and contradictions that arise, as well as with the dispossession and suffocation of people living under occupation and their ordinary lives in such times. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Alexander Cooley of Barnard College joins Marc Lynch to discuss Cooley's review essay, The Uprisings of Gaza: How Geopolitical Crises Have Reshaped Academic Communities from Tahrir to Kyiv. This essay reflects upon the contributions of Marc Lynch's edited volume (The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings) to address three occurring central issues at the intersection of regional studies and political science that are affected by geopolitical shocks: how shocks highlight previously neglected topics and actors; how they subsequently discredit and privilege certain disciplines and methods; and how they recast the role of academic research within global communities of knowledge and policy-making. Together, Cooley and Lynch explore the comparisons between political sciences in the Middle East and political science in Eurasia.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Marika Sosnowski of the University of Melbourne Law School joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria. This book explores how ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and state-building. While ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements since 2012, Sosnowski demonstrates the diverse consequences of ceasefires and provides a fuller, more nuanced portrait of their role in conflict resolution. (Starts at 0:10).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Max Gallien of Institute of Development Studies joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at Its Margins. This book examines the rules and agreements that govern smuggling in North Africa, tracing the involvement of states in these practices and their consequences for borderland communities. Gallien demonstrates that, contrary to common assumptions about the effects of informal economies, smuggling can promote both state and social stability. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Cinzia Bianco of the University of Exeter joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Gulf Monarchies After the Arab Spring: Threats and Security. This book applies an original theoretical framework to unpack the threat perceptions and strategic calculus driving the behavior of new impactful regional players in the Middle East and North Africa. Bianco looks at how the small monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) spent the decade between 2011 and 2022 trying to re-shape regional equilibria as protagonists to provide reading keys to the past, present, and future of policy-making in the Gulf monarchies, middle powers destined to play an oversized role in the new multipolar world. (Starts at 0:10).
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sharan Grewal of the College of William and Mary and the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring. The book argues that a military's behavior under democracy is shaped by how it had been treated under autocracy. This scholarly volume illustrates this theory through detailed case studies of Egypt and Tunisia and drawing on over 140 interviews with civilian and military leaders, and three surveys of military personnel. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Maged Mandour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge. His book follows President Sisi's regime in the aftermath of the coup that brought him to power, as a chronology of the devastating political, economic, and social consequences of direct military rule. Mandour explains exactly how Sisi operates and what makes his regime so different, and so dangerous, compared to those that came before. It shows, for the first time, how Egypt has been pushed to the brink of the abyss and why this will change the country for decades to come. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Brahim El Guabli of Williams College joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence. The book shows how Moroccan cultural production has become an other-archive: a set of textual, sonic, embodied, and visual sites that recover real or reimagined voices of these formerly suppressed and silenced constituencies of Moroccan society. The book draws on cultural production concerning the “years of lead”—a period of authoritarianism and political violence between Morocco’s independence in 1956 and the death of King Hassan II in 1999—to examine the transformative roles memory and trauma play in reconstructing stories of three historically marginalized groups in Moroccan history: Berbers/Imazighen, Jews, and political prisoners.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Adam Shatz of Bard College joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Frantz Fanon’s journey as a prominent intellectual activist of the postcolonial era. Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life—and a guide to the books that underlie today’s most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Anita Gohdes of the Hertie School joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence. Gohdes looks at how digital technology supports traditional, violent state repression. Her book draws on theory and evidence to examine the link between censorship, surveillance, and violent repression, with large-scale analyses of fine-grained data on the Syrian conflict, qualitative case evidence from Iran, and the first global comparative analysis of Internet outages and state repression. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week’s episode of the podcast, Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland joins Marc Lynch to discuss the Middle East Scholar Barometer. The Middle East Scholar Barometer is a project of University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll and George Washington University’s Project on Middle East Political Science. It aims to probe the assessments of scholars of the Middle East, particularly members of the American Political Science Association specializing on the Middle East and North Africa and members of Middle East Studies Association, on critical issues of the day. Telhami discusses the origins of the Middle East Scholar Barometer, how it’s run and what it measures.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University joins Marc Lynch to discuss some of her latest publications. Her article, The Ghosts of Lebanon: To See What Lies Ahead in Gaza, Look Back to Israel’s 1982 Invasion, in the Foreign Affairs Journal, looks at the lessons of Israel’s disastrous 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon—and what they suggest about the outcome of Israel’s current campaign in Gaza. (Starts at 0:09). The journal article, “It’s Just How Things Are Done”: Social Ecologies of Sexual Violence in Humanitarian Aid, explores how patterns of sexual violence have come to light in crisis zones perpetrated by humanitarian aid workers. Finally, in her journal article, Unreported Realities: The Political Economy of Media-Sourced Data, Sarah Parkinson discusses the gap between scholars’ expectations of media-sourced data and the realities those data actually represent. (Starts at 31:18).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Anne Irfan of University of College London joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System (Starts at 0:33). This book is a groundbreaking international history of Palestinian refugee politics. Irfan traces the history and politics of UNRWA’s interactions with Palestinian communities, particularly in the refugee camps where it functioned as a surrogate state.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sumita Pahwa of Scripps College, joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers. Sumita Pahwa explores the question of why leading Islamist movements like the Egyptian Muslim Brothers embrace electoral politics while insisting that their main goal is “working for God,” and how they reconcile political with spiritual goals. She examines the movement’s internal debates on preaching, activism, and social reform from the 1980s through the 2000s. She explains how framing political work as ethical conduct, essential for building pious Muslim individuals as well as an Islamic political order, became central to the organization’s functioning.Use the code 05PAW23 for 40% off through Nov 15 when purchaisng the book through the linked press site.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sarah El Kazaz of SOAS, University of London, joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Politics in the Crevices: Urban Design and the Making of Property Markets in Cairo and Istanbul. In this transnational ethnography of neighborhoods undergoing contested rapid transformations, Sarah El Kazaz reveals how the battle for housing has shifted away from traditional political arenas onto private crevices of the city. She raises critical questions about the role of market reforms in redistributing resources and challenges readers to rethink neoliberalism and the fundamental ways it shapes cities and polities.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sofia Fenner of Colorado College joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Shouting in a Cage: Political Life After Authoritarian Co-optation in North Africa. The book offers new ways to understand co-optation’s power and its limits by examining two co-opted parties, the Wafd Party in Egypt and the Istiqlal Party in Morocco. Sofia Fenner argues that co-optation is less a corrupt bargain than a discursive contest—a clash of competing interpretations. (Starts at 0:35).Kristian Ulrichsen of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University also joins Marc Lynch to discuss Saudi Arabia and the GCC. (Starts at 32:50).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Dipali Mukhopadhyay of the University of Minnesota join Marc Lynch to discuss her new book (co-authored with Kimberly Howe of Tufts University), Good Rebel Governance: Revolutionary Politics and Western Intervention in Syria. This book moves the scholarship on insurgent rule forward by considering how governing authority arises and evolves during violent conflict, and whether particular institutions of insurgent rule can be cultivated through foreign intervention. Mukhopadhyay explains how United States and its allies embarked on an effort to encourage liberal, democratic politics amid the Syrian conflict. (Starts at 00:52).Imad Alsoos of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology also joins Marc Lynch on a spotlight on Hamas and Gaza. (Starts at 33:00).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Toby Matthiesen of the University of Bristol joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism. This book is an authoritative account of Islam's schism that for centuries has shaped events in the Middle East and the Islamic world. This dispute over who should guide Muslims, the Caliph or the Imam, marks the origin of the Sunni-Shii split in Islam, and Toby Matthiesen sheds light on the many ways that this division has shaped the Islamic world. Lisa Anderson and Rabab El Mahdi of Columbia University also join Marc Lynch to discuss the commission, Research Ethics in the Middle East and North Africa (REMENA). The Special Commission on Social Science Research in the Middle East and North Africa is dedicated to developing guidelines for the conduct of responsible, ethical and constructive social inquiry. The two-year project will animate an interdisciplinary network of scholars to assess the landscape of social science research conducted in the Arab world, particularly some of the ethical, political and economic challenges to conducting such research responsibly.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Ora Szekely of Clark University joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Syria Divided: Patterns of Violence in a Complex Civil War. Szekely draws on sources including in-depth interviews, conflict data, and propaganda distributed through social media to examine how these competing narratives have shaped the course of the conflict. Szekely argues that the competition to control the narrative in the eyes of important audiences at home and abroad has not only influenced the choices of participants, it has also—shaped in part by the use of social media—led many to treat warfare as a kind of performance. Wendy Pearlman of Northwestern University also joins Marc Lynch to discuss the Perspectives on Politics journal, of which she serves as co-editor. The journal aims to foster dialogue and collaboration among political scientists with wide-ranging subfield specializations, epistemological perspectives, analytical approaches, and thematic interests. The journal plays a role as an impactful conduit for political science’s engagement beyond the academy. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Thomas Serres of the University of California, Santa Cruz joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, The Suspended Disaster. In his book, he examines the dynamics of the Algerian political system, offering new insights into the last years of Bouteflika’s rule and the factors that shaped the emergence of an unexpected social movement. He argues that the Algerian ruling coalition developed a mode of government based on the management of a seemingly never-ending crisis, (Starts at 0:49).Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins SAIS also joins Marc Lynch in a conversation about the zoom group that she formed for Syrian and Turkish academics affected by the earthquake. They also discuss Hintz's own research on Turkish pop culture and how you can learn about politics by studying the media. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Alice Wilson of the University of Sussex joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Afterlives of Revolution. Alice Wilson considers the "social afterlives" of revolutionary values and networks, looking particularly at the legacies of officially silenced revolutionaries in Oman. Marsin Al-Shammary, Sajad Jiyad and Fanar Haddad Shia, contributors on Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003–2023, also join Marc Lynch to explore Shia Power. They discuss the radical transformation of Shia Islamist politics in Iraq over the last two decades, as well as the factors that explain politics and the pursuit of power.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
In this week's episode, Robert Kubinec of NYU Abu Dhabi joins Marc Lynch to discuss his book,. Kubinec argues that businesses must respond to changes in how perks and privileges are distributed after political transitions, either by forming political coalitions or creating new informal connections to emerging politicians. Employing detailed case studies and original experiments, Making Democracy Safe for Business advances our empirical understanding of the study of the durability of corruption in general and the dismal results of the Arab Uprisings in particular. (Starts at 2:35).Also this week, due to the American Political Science Association (APSA) annual meeting disruption, Marc Lynch invites four junior scholars from the APSA MENA section panels to put together "virtual posters" describing their work and its significance to our podcast audience. (Starts at 37:18). The four scholars are: Ansar Jasim (Free University of Berlin), "Unmaking Homes: Urban Violence and its Afterlives in Baghdad"; Elizabeth Parker-Magyar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "Workplace, Networks and Social Movements: Evidence from Jordan"; Amir Mahdavi (University of Connecticut), "Iran's 2021 Election: A Turning Point from Electoral to Hegemonic Authoritarianism"; Ameni Mehrez (Central European University), "The Political Legacy of Secular Policies: Evidence from Tunisia."Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Rabab El Mahdi of the American University in Cairo, Janine Clark of the University of Toronto, Laryssa Chomiak of Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT), and Rima Majed of the American University of Beirut join Marc Lynch to discuss the ethical challenges and positionally of research. (Starts at 1:41). Dahlia Scheindlin of Century International and Yael Berda of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to discuss their new article, "Israel’s Annexation of the West Bank Has Already Begun," published in Foreign Affairs. (Starts at 36:37).
Thank you for listening to Season 12 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast!
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud:
On this week's episode, Marc Lynch talks with members of the POMEPS Steering Committee and Advisory Board on a variety of topics at the POMEPS Annual Conference held at GWU in late May 2023. Noora Lori of Boston University, Rima Majed of American University of Beirut, Wendy Pearlman of Northwestern University discuss migration and refugee studies. (Starts at 1:01). Curtis Ryan of Appalachian State University and Andre Bank of German Institute for Global and Area Studies take a look at what's happening in Jordan. (Starts at 30:56). Nathan Brown of George Washington University and Steven Brooke of University of Wisconsin-Madison assess the state of political Islam in the region. (Starts at 50:24).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Stacey Philbrick Yadav of Hobart and William Smith Colleges joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War. The book shows how the transitional process was ultimately overtaken by war, and explains why features of the transitional framework nevertheless remain a central reference point for civil actors engaged in peacebuilding today. (Starts at 1:09).Gregory Gause of Texas A&M University, Waleed Hazbun of the University of Alabama, and Sarah Bush of Yale University join Marc Lynch at this years POMEPS Annual Conference to discuss American primacy, multipolarity and the region's response to changes in the international system. (Starts at 31:34).
In this week's episode, Marc Lynch speaks with Sebnem Gumuscu of Middlebury College about her book, Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia. The author draws upon extensive fieldwork in three countries to explain why some Islamist governments adhered to democratic principles and others took an authoritarian turn following electoral success. (Starts at 0:53).Today's episode also includes a roundtable discussion of the upcoming Turkish elections, with Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University, Şebnem Yardımcı Geyikçi of University of Bonn, and Harun Ercan of Binghamton University. (Starts at 31:22).
Samuel Helfont of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order. In the book, Helfont offers a new narrative of Iraqi foreign policy after the 1991 Gulf War to argue that Saddam Hussein executed a political warfare campaign that facilitated this disturbance to global norms. The book explores how the move away from post-Cold War unipolarity and the rise of revisionist states like Russia and China pose a rapidly escalating and confounding threat for the liberal international order. (Starts at 0:52).Khalid Mustafa Medani of McGill University discusses the current situation in Sudan and prospects for moving forward. Medani is the author of Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and North Africa. (Starts at 33:47).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Rita Stephan of North Carolina State University and Maro Youssef of the University of Southern California join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, COVID and Gender in the Middle East. Stephen, editor of the book, gathers an impressive group of local scholars, activists, and policy experts, to provide empirical evidence of COVID’s gendered effects. The book examines a range of national and localized responses to gender-specific issues around COVID’s health impact and the economic fallout and resulting social vulnerabilities, including the magnified marginalization of Syrian refugees; the inequitable treatment of migrant workers in Bahrain; and the inadequate implementation of gender-based violence legislation in Morocco.Mai Hassan of Massachusetts Institute of Technology also joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss the recent developments in Sudan's civil war crisis.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
David Roberts of King’s College London joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies: Continuity and Change. Roberts offers a definitive guide to continuity and change in the Gulf region. He explores the forces challenging and bolstering the status quo across the political, social, economic, military, and environmental dimensions of security.Jeroen Gunning of King's College London, also joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new paper, Who you gonna call? Theorising everyday security practices in urban spaces with multiple security actors – The case of Beirut's Southern Suburbs . This paper explores the ways in which residents and security actors – state and nonstate – negotiate everyday (in)security in contested urban spaces with multiple security actors .Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Sarah Bush of Yale University and Lauren Prather of the University of California, San Diego join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections. Bush and Prather explain how and why outside interventions influence local trust in elections, a critical factor for democracy and stability. Marsin Alshamary of the Harvard University Kennedy School and Hamzeh Hadad of the European Council of Foreign Relations also join Marc Lynch to discuss their article, The Collective Neglect of Southern Iraq: Missed Opportunities for Development and Good Governance. They conceptualize southern Iraq as an imagined region, whose identity has been shaped by the collective neglect it has suffered from both internal and external actors.
Dawn Murphy of the US National War College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her book, China's Rise in the Global South: The Middle East, Africa, and Beijing's Alternative World Order.The book examines China's behavior as a rising power in two key Global South regions, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Murphy compares and analyzes thirty years of China's interactions with these regions across a range of functional areas: political, economic, foreign aid, and military.Houda Mzioudet of the University of Toronto also spoke on anti-blackness and racial identity in Tunisia. In the Q&A with Houda Mzioudet she spoke on the state of the anti-immigrant and anti-black sentiment in Tunisia in light of President Kais Saied’s fear-mongering statements about migrants last month.
Davis Wight of the University of North Carolina joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his book, Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967-1988. The book is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East–US relations and the geopolitics of globalization. Although petrodollar ties often augmented the power of the United States and its Middle East allies, Wight argues they also fostered economic disruptions and state-sponsored violence that drove many Americans, Arabs, and Iranians to resist Middle East–US interdependence, most dramatically during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. (Starts at 00:50). Simon Mabon of XX discusses his new book, The Struggle for Supremacy in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Starts at 31:06). In this book, Mabon presents a more nuanced assessment of the rivalry [between Saudi Arabia and Iran], outlining its history and demonstrating its impact across the Middle East.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Mohammad Ali Kadivar of Boston College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his book, Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy. The book challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization. (Starts at 0:54). Killian Clarke of Georgetown University discusses his new article, "Ambivalent allies: How inconsistent foreign support dooms new democracies." (Starts at 32:53). Shreya Parikh discusses the recent wave of anti-African/anti-immigrant/anti-black sentiments unleashed by President Khais Said in Tunisia. You can read her recent article, "Making Tunisia non-African again – Saied’s anti-Black campaign" here. (Starts at 50:02).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Andrew Simon joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt. The book investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households.Also on this week's podcast are Hasret Dikici Bilgin of Istanbul Bilgi University, Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University, Rana Khoury of the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champagne, and Reva Dhingra of Harvard University and Brookings Institution, to discuss Turkey/Syria Earthquake relief.
On this week's episode, Marc Lynch is joined by the editors and authors of the new book, The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution. The book includes include stories about specific events and struggles, views of the uprising from various regions of the country, and reflections on topics such as the labor struggle, disability, the student movement, foreign interventions, the struggle for preserving environmental spaces, the role of refugees and non-Lebanese within the movement, and women and queer participation.The podcast features: Rima Majed, Jeffery G Karam, Sana Tannoury, Grace Khawam, Sara Mourad, Moné Makkawi, Roland Riachi, and Lama Karamé.Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud:
David Siddhartha Patel of Brandeis University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Order out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq. Combining rational choice approaches, ethnographic understanding, and GIS analysis, this book reveals the interconnectedness of the enduring problem of how societies create social order in a stateless environment, the origins and limits of political authority and leadership, and the social and political salience of collective identity. (Starts at 0:42)Jessica Barnes of the University of South Carolina discusses her book, Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt, which explores the process of sourcing domestic and foreign wheat for the production of bread and its consumption across urban and rural settings. (Starts at 38:15).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud.
Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Beyond the Lines: Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon. The book shows that most militants approach asymmetrical warfare as a series of challenges centered around information and logistics, characterized by problems such as supplying constantly mobile forces, identifying collaborators, disrupting rival belligerents' operations, and providing essential services like healthcare. (Starts at 0:48). Wendy Pearlman of Northwestern University discusses her article, "Emotional Sensibility: Exploring the Methodological and Ethical Implications of Research Participants’ Emotions," published by Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 35:58).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud.
Ch12 Triumph over Adversity: Reflections on the Practice of Middle East Political Science by Marc Lynch
Tobias Zumbragel of University of Hamburg joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Political Power and Environmental Sustainability in Gulf Monarchies. The book analyzes the political dynamics behind the sustainable transformation in the oil and gas-rich Gulf and explains the political factors behind the green transformation. (Starts at 1:02). Nermin Allam of Rutgers University discusses her research on women's participation in the Egyptian uprising and the afterlives of that protest. Check out her articles: "The afterlife goes on: The biographical consequences of women's engagement in the 2011 Egyptian uprising," & "Women’s Unveiling in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising: Political Opportunities and Modesty Politics." You can also listen to one of our previous podcast posts about her book, "Women and the Egyptian Revolution: Engagement and Activism During the 2011 Arab Uprisings." (Starts at 32:09). Steffen Hertog of the London School of Economics discusses his chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on political economy and development (co-authored with Ferdinand Eibl and Shimaa Hatab). (Starts at 57:43).Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Munira Khayyat of The American University in Cairo joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon. The book analyzes life along the southern border of Lebanon, where resistant ecologies thrive amid a terrain of perennial war. (Starts at 1:45). Neil Ketchley of the University of Oxford discusses his new article, Burnings, Beatings, and Bombings: Disaggregating Anti-Christian Violence in Egypt, 2013-2018 (co-authored with Christopher Barrie and Killian Clark). (Starts at 45:27).
Also, POMEPS is thrilled to release our latest Professional Development Seminar - Hidden Curriculum: How to Publish Your First Book. In the fourth POMEPS Professional Development Seminar, Marc Lynch and Jillian Schwedler discuss how to submit a book as a first time author. This webinar gives advice to junior scholars who want to turn their dissertation into a book in an effort to demystify the process. They are joined by Caelyn Cobb of Columbia University Press, Kate Wahl of Stanford University Press, and David McBride of Oxford University Press. To watch the webinar, click here.
For more on turning a dissertation into a university press book, read Abu Aardvark's recent blog post, "Hidden Curriculum: Publishing Your First Book." For information on publishing in journals, read Abu Aardvark's “Hidden Curriculum: Publishing in Academic Journals" blog post here.
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Dalia Ghanem of the European Union Institute for Security Studies joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria. The book analyzes the secrets behind the Algerian regime’s survival and the pillars of its longevity. (Starts at 0:42). Sammy Zeyad Badran of The American University of Sharjah, discusses his new book, Killing Contention: Demobilization in Morocco during the Arab Spring. The book deepens our understanding of modern political movements and the complicated factors that lead to their demise. (Starts at 35:41).
Aaron Rock-Singer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East. The book analyzes how Salafism is a creation of the twentieth century and how its signature practices emerged primarily out of Salafis’ competition with other social movements. (Starts at 0:55). Rana Khoury of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Lama Mourad of Carleton University, and Rawan Arar of the University of Washington discuss their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on how the region has governed and been affected by migration after the Arab Uprisings in 2011 (co-authored with Laurie Brand, Noora Lori, and Wendy Pearlman). (Starts at 28:29). Lindsay Benstead of Portland State University and Kristin Kao of the University of Gothenburg discuss female electability in the Arab world and the benefits of intersectionality. (Starts at 45:46).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Jessica Watkins of the London School of Economics joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Creating Consent in an Illiberal Order: Policing Disputes in Jordan. The book focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are first and foremost concerned with order. (Starts at 1:02). Killian Clarke of Princeton University and Chantal Berman of Georgetown University discuss their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on the eruption of Arab protests in 2011 and the recent wave of Arab uprisings in 2019 (co-authored with Jillian Schwedler and Nermin Allam). (Starts at 30:13). Jeannie Sowers of the University of New Hampshire discusses environmental politics in Egypt and the potential implications of the COP27 conference. You can find her book: Environmental Politics in Egypt: Activists, Experts and the State. (Starts at 53:17).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Marc Owen Jones Hamad bin Khalifa University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media. The book analyzes how social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities in the Middle East. (Starts at 0:45). Andre Bank of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Sean Yom of Temple University discuss their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on how authoritarianism has remained the predominant form of government in the MENA (co-authored with Eva Bellin, Michael Herb, Lisa Wedeen, and Saloua Zerhouni). (Starts at 35:27).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Hesham Sallam of Stanford University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt. The book offers an account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of “more identity, less class.” (Starts at 0:59). You can read Marc Lynch's review of the book on his blog. Jeff Colgan of Brown University discusses new OPEC+ policies and how U.S.-Saudi relations have been impacted. (Starts at 30:29). You can find his book, Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order on Amazon and other retailers. Ora Szekely of Clark University and Devorah Manekin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discuss their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on organized political violence since the Arab Uprising (co-authored with Kevin Koehler and Holger Albrecht). (Starts at 44:41).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Nazanin Shahrokni of the London School of Economics joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran. The book offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies and women’s rights in contemporary Iran. (Starts at 1:07). Tarek Masoud of Harvard University discusses his chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on Islam and the study of religion and politics in the Middle East (co-authored with Khalil al-Anani, Courtney Freer, and Quinn Mecham). (Starts at 36:46). Michael Robbins of the Arab Barometer discusses the seventh wave that captures the attitudes of citizens across the MENA since the onset of COVID. (Starts at 56:49).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
Michael Christopher Low of the University of Utah joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. The book analyzes the late Ottoman hajj and Hijaz region as transimperial spaces, reshaped by the competing forces of Istanbul’s project of frontier modernization and the extraterritorial reach of British India’s steamship empire in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. (Starts at 1:07) Mohammad Ali Kadivar of Boston College discusses the current waves of protests in Iran. (Starts at 32:23) Sarah El-Kazaz of the University of London and Lana Salman of Harvard University discuss their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on a relational approach to local politics and the lack of subnational literature that engages with the MENA region. (co-authored with Mona Harb and Janine Clark). (Starts at 47:13)
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
In this week's podcast, Marc Lynch begins the episode by announcing the winners of the American Political Science Association MENA Politics Section Awards. (Starts at 0:56) Maya Mikdashi of the Rutgers University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Sectarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon. The book analyzes how sex, sexuality, and sect shape and are shaped by law, secularism, and sovereignty in Lebanon. (Starts at 5:47). On today's episode, March Lynch speaks with Greg Gause of Texas A&M University, Curtis Ryan of Appalachian State University, and Waleed Hazbun of the University of Alabama about their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on the U.S.'s declining geopolitical leverage in the Middle East. (Starts at 36:41).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
On the first episode of Season 12 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Jillian Schwedler of City University of New York, and Sean Yom of Temple University about their co-edited volume, The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings. The volume is a definitive overview of what political scientists are working on within the Middle East and North Africa. Its dozen chapters cover an exhaustive array of topics, including authoritarianism and democracy, contentious politics, regional security, military institutions, conflict and violence, the political economy of development, Islamist movements, identity and sectarianism, public opinion, migration, and local politics. (Starts at 02:26). This season of the podcast will also include conversations with the authors of each chapter from the book. On today's episode, Bassel Salloukh of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and Alexandra Siegel of University of Colorado at Boulder talk about their chapter on identity and sectarianism (co-authored with Fanar Haddad, Lisel Hintz, Rima Majed, and Toby Matthiesen). (Starts at 32:55). Michael Robbins of Arab Barometer discusses his chapter on public opinion survey research (co-authored with Lindsay Benstead and Justin Gengler). (Starts at 51:24).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.
José Ciro Martínez of the University of Cambridge joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan. The book argues that the state is best understood as the product of routine practices and actions, through which it becomes a stable truth in the lives of citizens. (Starts at 0:57). Jessica Barnes of the University of South Carolina and author of Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt discusses the politics of bread in Egypt (Starts at 31:21).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Megan Brown of Swarthmore College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. The book combats understandings of Europe’s “natural” borders by emphasizing the extracontinental contours of the early union. The unification vision was never spatially limited, suggesting that contemporary arguments for geographic boundaries excluding Turkey and areas of Eastern Europe from the European Union must be seen as ahistorical. (Starts at 0:44). Sami Atallah of The Policy Initiative and Christiana Parreira of Princeton University discuss the results of recent elections in Lebanon (Starts at 33:27). Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Foreign Relations discusses the succession of Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in the United Arab Emirates. (Starts at 53:31).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
On this week's episode of the podcast, Jeannie Sowers of University of New Hampshire joins Marc Lynch to discuss POMEPS's newest publication, POMEPS Studies 46:Environmental Politics in the Middle East and North Africa. (Starts at 0:36). Mariam Salehi of Freie University Berlin discusses her new book, Transitional justice in process: Plans and politics in Tunisia. The book discusses the development and design of the transitional justice mandate, and looks at the performance of transitional justice institutions in practice. It examines the role of international justice professionals in different stages of the process, as well as the alliances and frictions between different actor groups that cut across the often-assumed local-international divide. (Starts at 32:24).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Jannis Julien Grimm of the Freie University of Berlin joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Contested Legitimacies: Repression and Revolt in Post-Revolutionary Egypt. The book explores this resilience of contentious politics through a multimethod approach that is attuned to the physical and discursive interactions among key players in Egypt’s protest arena. (Starts at 0:46). Marwa Fatafta of Access Now discusses digital authoritarianism, content moderation, and the potential impact of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. (Starts at 33:13). Thanassis Cambanis of Century International discusses their new project on citizenship, armed groups, and comparing the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. (Starts at 48:22).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Jillian Schwedler of Hunter College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent. In the book, Schwedler examines protests as they are situated in the built environment, bringing together considerations of networks, spatial imaginaries, space and place-making, and political geographies at local, national, regional, and global scales. (Starts at 0:31). Deen Sharp of the London School of Economics discusses climate change in the Gulf, and references his report, "The Quiet Emergency: Experiences and Understandings of Climate Change in Kuwait." (Starts at 31:41). Ali Kadivar of Boston College discusses his new article, "Social Development and Revolution in Iran." (Starts at 47:53).
Michael Provence of University of California San Diego joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East. In the book, Provence examines the collapse of the Ottoman empire through popular political movements and the experience of colonial rule. (Starts at 0:39). Gamze Cavdar of Colorado State University discusses her article, "Why Women Support Conservative Parties: The Case of Turkey" published in Political Science Quarterly. (Starts at 32:13). Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland discusses our joint project on the Middle East Scholar Barometer. (Starts at 46:33).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Erin Snider of Texas A&M University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid In the Middle East. In the book, Snider examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco and the limited impact of international aid. (Starts at 0:42). Steven Brooke of the University of Wisconsin-Madison discuss his article, co-authored by Elizabeth Nugent of Yale University, "Who votes after a coup? Theory and evidence from Egypt" published in Mediterranean Politics. (Starts at 29:15). Mai El-Sadany of The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy discusses the problem with Egyptian prisoners and human rights. (Starts at 43:17).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Ora Szekely of Clark University and Peter Krause of Boston College join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science. In the book, political scientists from a diverse range of biographical and academic backgrounds describe research in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The contributors reflect not only on their own experiences but also on larger questions about research ethics, responsibility, and the effects of their personal and professional identities on their fieldwork. (Starts at 0:45). Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed of Columbia University discusses his latest article, "Political Budget Cycles in Autocracies: The Role of Religious Seasons and Political Collective Action" published in Politics and Religion by Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 34:47). Hadil al-Mowafak of the Yemen Policy Center discusses the current ceasefire in Yemen. (Starts at 47:48).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Andrea Wright of the college of William and Mary joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil. In the book, Wright analyzes how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colonial capitalism. (Starts at 0:42). Basileus Zeno of Amherst College discusses his latest article, "The making of sects: Boundary making and the sectarianisation of the Syrian uprising, 2011–2013" published in Nations and Nationalism. (Starts at 31:22). Renad Mansour of the Chatham House discusses the current issues in the Iraqi government formation process. (Starts at 50:40).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Hatim El-Hibri of George Mason University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure. In the book, El-Hibri analyzes how the creation and circulation of images have shaped the urban spaces and cultural imaginaries of Beirut. (Starts at 0:44). Kevin Koehler of Leiden University discusses his latest article, "Who fakes support for the military? Experimental evidence from Tunisia" (co-authored with Sharan Grewal and Holger Albrecht) published in Democratization. (Starts at 33:58). Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of the Baker Institute on the ongoing tensions between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. (Starts at 48:58).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Pouya Alimagham of Massachusetts Institute of Technology joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprising. In the book, Alimagham analyzes the history of Iran and the Middle East to highlight how activists contested the Islamic Republic's legitimacy. (Starts at 0:35). Valeria Resta of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of North Africa and the Middle East discusses her latest article, "The ‘myth of moderation’ following the Arab Uprisings: polarization in Tunisia and Egypt’s founding elections," published in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. (Starts at 33:30) Nate Grubman of Stanford University discusses the Tunisian president's transition to a dictatorship. (Starts at 50:54).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
James Shires of Leiden University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. In the book, Shires analyzes how the label of cybersecurity is repurposed by states, companies and other organizations to encompass a variety of concepts. Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Foreign Relations discusses the responses of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and the Gulf Cooperation Council to the Ukraine crisis. Howard Eissenstat of St. Lawrence University discusses Turkey and its response to the Ukraine crisis.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Jill Jarvis of Yale University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and Politics of Testimony. In the book, Jarvis analyzes the magnitude of the legal violence exercised by the French to colonize and occupy Algeria. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl of Leiden University and Kevin Koehler of Leiden University discuss their latest article, "Governing the Covid-19 Pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa: Containment Measures as a Public Good" published in Middle East Law and Governance. Sean Yom of Temple University and Wael Al-Khatib of the Arab Political Science Network discuss the prospects for democratic reform in Jordan. You can read their report from the Project on Middle East Democracy here.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Michael Hoffman of the University of Notre Dame joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Faith in Numbers: Religion, Sectarianism, and Democracy. In the book, Hoffman discusses how religious identities and sectarian interests play a major part in determining regime preferences. (Starts at 0:44). Devorah Manekin of Hebrew University discusses her latest article, "Effective for Whom? Ethnic Identity and Nonviolent Resistance" (co-authored by Tamar Mitts), published in Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 29:25). Gregory Gause of Texas A&M University discusses U.S. relations with the Gulf states and broader Gulf politics. (Starts at 44:17).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Jeff Colgan of Brown University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order. In the book, Colgan offers lessons for leaders and analysts seeking to design new international governing arrangements to manage an array of pressing concerns. (Starts at 0:38). Safa Al-Saeedi of Northwestern University discusses her latest article, "The Arab spring: why did the uprisings miss the monarchies?," published in Contemporary Politics. (Starts at 29:13). Bassel Salloukh of the Doha Institute discusses Lebanon's ongoing political crisis. (Starts at 42:08).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
John Nagle of Queens University Belfast and Tamirace Fakhoury of Aalborg University join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, "Resisting Sectarianism: Queer Activism in Postwar Lebanon." In the book, Nagle and Fakhoury examine feminist and LGBTQ social movements in the context of Lebanon's postwar sectarian system. Reva Dhingra of Harvard University discusses her latest article, "Coordination in practice or performance? The political economy of refugee aid coordination in Jordan," published in the Journal of Refugee Studies. Dana el-Kurd of the University of Richmond about recent Palestinian mobilization in East Jerusalem.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Eskandar Sadeghi of the University of London joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, "Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran." In the book, Sadeghi examines the rise and evolution of reformist political thought in Iran and analyses the complex network of publications in the 1990s. (Starts at 0:44). Adélie Chevée of the European University Institute discusses her latest article, "From Suriyya al-Asad to Souriatna," published in Nations and Nationalism. (Starts at 33:23). Mohamed Dhia-Hammami of Syracuse University discusses recent political developments in Tunisia. (Starts at 48:58).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Asef Bayat of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring. In the book, Bayat seamlessly blends field research, on-the-ground interviews, and social theory to show how the practice of everyday life in Egypt and Tunisia was fundamentally altered by revolutionary activity. (Starts at 0:39). Maro Youssef of University of Southern California discusses her latest article, "Unlikely Feminist Coalitions: Islamist and Secularist Women’s Organizing in Tunisia," published in Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society. (Starts at 33:00). Thomas Juneau of the University of Ottawa discusses the Houthi movement and recent developments in the war in Yemen (Starts at 47:56).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Nadya Hajj from Wellesley College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age. In the book, Hajj finds that Palestinian refugees utilize Information Communication Technology platforms to motivate reciprocity—a cooperative action marked by the mutual exchange of favors and services—and informally seek aid and connection with their transnational diaspora community. (Starts at 0:48). David Steinberg of Johns Hopkins SAIS discusses his latest article, "How Voters Respond to Currency Crises: Evidence From Turkey," published in Comparative Political Studies. (Starts at 29:03). Thomas Serres of the University of California, Santa Cruz discusses the fortunes of Algeria's Hirak movement. (Starts at 44:58).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Abdelmajid Hannoum of the University of Kansas discusses his latest book, The Invention of the Maghreb, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines how colonialism made extensive use of translations of Greek, Roman, and Arabic texts and harnessed high technologies of power to invent the region. (Starts at 0:41). Hannes Baumann of the University of Liverpool speaks about his new article entitled, "Avatars of Eurocentrism in international political economy textbooks: The case of the Middle East and North Africa" published in the Political Studies Association. (Starts at 36:07). Ammar Shamailah of the Doha Institute talks about recent trends in the Syrian regime and stability in Syria. (Starts at 50:00).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Khalid Medani of McGill University discusses his latest book, Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines the political and socio-economic factors which give rise to youth recruitment into militant organizations. (Starts at 0:56). Kristen Kao of the University of Gothenburg and Mara Revkin of Georgetown University speak about their new article entitled, "To Punish or to Pardon? Reintegrating Rebel Collaborators After Conflict in Iraq," published in X. (Starts at 32:55). Jonathan Fulton of Zayed University talks about the factors that explain China's relations with the Gulf monarchies. (Starts at 55:33).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Shamiran Mako of Boston University and Valentine Moghadam of Northeastern University discuss their latest book, After the Arab Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines the key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings. (Starts at 0:51). Salma Moussa of Yale University and William Marble of Princeton University speak about their new article entitled, "Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes," published at Yale University. (Starts at 32:21). Mai Hassan of the University of Michigan talks about Sudan's civil resistance. (Starts at 48:32).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Nils Hagerdal of Tufts University discusses his latest book, Friend or Foe: Militia Intelligence and Ethnic Violence in the Lebanese Civil War, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines the Lebanese civil war to offer a new theory that highlights the interplay of ethnicity and intelligence gathering. (Starts at 0:42). Emily Scott of McGill University speaks about her new article entitled, "Compromising Aid to Protect International Staff: The Politics of Humanitarian Threat Perception after the Arab Uprisings," published in the Journal of Global Security Studies. (Starts at 32:30). Esfandyar Batmanghelidj of the European Council on Foreign Relations talks about the Iranian economy under sanctions and the possible return of the JCPOA. (Starts at 50:09).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Nathan Brown of The George Washington University discusses his latest book (co-authored with Shimaa Hatab and Amr Adly), Lumbering State, Restless Society: Egypt in the Modern Era, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book highlights ways in which Egypt resembles other societies around the world, drawing from and contributing to broader debates in political science. (Starts at 0:41). Daniel Neep of Brandeis University speaks about his new article entitled, "‘What have the Ottomans ever done for us?’ Why history matters for politics in the Arab Middle East," published in International Affairs. (Starts at 26:24). Wolfram Lacher of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs talks about Libya's upcoming elections. (Starts at 44:28).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Dana Moss of University of Notre Dame discusses her latest book, The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism, examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions. (Starts at 0:42). Wendy Pearlman of Northwestern University speaks about her new article entitled, "Mobilizing From Scratch: Large-Scale Collective Action Without Preexisting Organization in the Syrian Uprising," published in Comparative Political Studies. (Starts at 30:23). Salah Ben Hammou of University of Central Florida talks about the crisis unfolding in Sudan following the military coup. (Starts at 47:17).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Nicholas Danforth of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy discusses his latest book, The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book demonstrates how transformations such as the birth of a multi-party democracy and NATO membership helped consolidate a consensus on the nature of Turkish modernity that continues to shape current political and cultural debates. (Starts at 0:47). Lucy Abbott of the University of Edinburgh and Vincent Keating of the University of Southern Denmark discuss their latest article, "Entrusted norms: security, trust, and betrayal in the Gulf Cooperation Council crisis," published in the European Journal of International Affairs. (Starts at 33:16). Kristian Ulrichsen of Rice University talks about the GCC reconciliation. (Starts at 49:00).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Raphael Lefevre of University of Oxford discusses his latest book, Jihad in the City: Militant Islam and Contentious Politics in Tripoli, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book shows how militant Islamist groups are impacted by their grand ideology as much as by local contexts – with crucial lessons for understanding social movements, rebel groups and terrorist organizations elsewhere too. (Starts at 0:34). Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University speaks about her new article entitled, "(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research," published in Comparative Political Studies. (Starts at 29:07). Mohamed Daadaoui of Oklahoma City University talks about Morocco's election and the PJD. (Starts at 46:38).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud:
Benjamin Smith of University of Florida & David Waldner of University of Virginia discuss their latest book, Rethinking the Resource Curse: Elements in the Politics of Development, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book includes results of the authors' own research, showing that a set of historically contingent events in the Middle East and North Africa are at the root of what has been mistaken for a global political resource curse. (Starts at 0:36). Kevan Harris of UCLA & Rasmus Elling of University of Copenhagen speak about their new article entitled, "Difference in difference: language, geography, and ethno-racial identity in contemporary Iran," published in Ethnic and Racial Studies. (Starts at 38:54). Marsin Alshamary of the Brookings Institution talks about the upcoming Iraqi election. (Starts at 58:31).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Raffaella Del Sarto of Johns Hopkins SAIS Europe talks about her latest book, Borderlands: Europe and the Mediterranean Middle East, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book proposes a profound rethink of the complex relationship between Europe-defined here as the European Union and its members-and the states of the Mediterranean Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Europe's 'southern neighbours'. (Starts at 0:49). Lucia Ardovini of Swedish Institute of International Affairs speaks about her latest article, "Re-Thinking the Tanzim: Tensions between Individual Identities and Organizational Structures in the Muslim Brotherhood after 2013," published in the Middle East Law and Governance Journal. (Starts at 29:01). Toby Dodge of The London School of Economics discusses the upcoming Iraqi elections. (Starts at 44:36).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Zaid al-Ali of Princeton University talks about his latest book, Arab Constitutionalism: The Coming Revolution, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. He deconstructs the popular demands that were made in 2011 and translates them into a series of specific actions that would have led to freer societies and a better functioning state. (Starts at 0:43). Marsin Alshamary of the Brookings Institution speaks about her new article entitled, "Religious Peacebuilding in Iraq: Prospects and Challenges from the Hawza," published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. (Starts at 30:11). James Shires, of Leiden University, talks about his work on digital authoritarianism. (Starts at 42:43).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Kevin Mazur, a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University, talks about his latest book, Revolution in Syria: Identity, Networks, and Repression, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book shows that the challenge to the Syrian regime did not erupt neatly along ethnic boundaries, and that lines of access to state-controlled resources played a critical structuring role; the ethnicization of conflict resulted from failed incumbent efforts to shore up network ties and the violence that the Asad regime used to crush dissent by challengers excluded from those networks. (Starts at 0:48). Faten Ghosn of the University of Arizona joins the podcast to discuss her article, "The Journey Home: Violence, Anchoring, and Refugee Decisions to Return" (co-authored by Tiffany Chu, Miranda Simon, Alex Braithwaite, Michael Frith, and Joanna Jandali), published by Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 30:32). Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis group discusses Lebanon's banking crisis. (Starts at 45:43).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade (playing Ney) and Farah Kaddour (on Buzuq). You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
Mona El Ghobashy of New York University talks about her latest book, Bread and Freedom: Egypt's Revolutionary Situation, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book is a multivocal account of why Egypt's defeated revolution remains a watershed in the country's political history. (Starts at 1:28). Killian Clarke of Georgetown University speaks about his new article entitled, "Which protests count? Coverage bias in Middle East event datasets," published by Mediterranean Politics. (Starts at 31:48). Laryssa Chomiak, the Director of Centre d'Etudes Maghrébines à Tunis, to talk about recent political developments in Tunisia. (Starts at 47:05).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Bashir Saade playing Ney, along with Farah Kaddour on Buzuq. You can find more of Bashir's work on his YouTube Channel.
This special episode features a round-table discussion from the POMEPS 12th Annual Conference, which was held on June 9-10, 2021.
The panel, "Confronting Old and New Obstacles to Political Science Research," features five scholars:
Nermin Allam, Assistant Professor of Politics at Rutgers University
Mert Arslanalp, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bogazici University
Laryssa Chomiak, Director of the Centre d'Etudes Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT)
Jannis Julien Grimm, Freie Universität Berlin, Member of the Executive Board and Associated Researcher at the Institute for Protest and Social Movement Studies in Berlin (ipb)
Sarah Parkinson, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Maha Nassar of the University of Arizona talks about her book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book is the first book to reveal how Palestinian intellectuals forged transnational connections through written texts and engaged with contemporaneous decolonization movements throughout the Arab world, challenging both Israeli policies and their own cultural isolation. Nassar reexamines these intellectuals as the subjects, not objects, of their own history and brings to life their perspectives on a fraught political environment. (Starts at 0:40).
Also, Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania talks about his book, Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality, with Marc Lynch. The book argues that negotiations for a two-state solution between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River are doomed and counterproductive. Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can enjoy the democracy they deserve but only after decades of struggle amid the unintended but powerful consequences of today's one-state reality. (Starts at 29:37).
Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Omar Ashour of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies talks about his latest book, How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book analyses the military and tactical innovations of ISIS and their predecessors in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt. Ashour shows how their capacity to mix conventional military tactics with innovative guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism strategies allowed ISIS to expand and endure beyond expectations. (Starts at 30:52). Max Gallien of the University of Sussex talks about his article, "Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa." (Starts at 0:45). Aytuğ Şaşmaz of the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative talks about his article, "Navigating welfare regimes in divided societies: Diversity and the quality of service delivery in Lebanon" (co-authored by Melani Cammett). (Starts at 16:22).
This is a special edition of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast. Our program typically hosts conversations with scholars about recent books and academic publications. But the ongoing war in Gaza and the broader political crisis among Israelis and Palestinians impacts so many members of our scholarly field and the people and communities we study that we felt both an intellectual and a moral obligation to put together something different: a special edition of the podcast featuring short research based conversations with a wide range of scholars from within the POMEPS network.
Marc Lynch
The podcast includes contributions from the following scholars. For more from these scholars, see below:
Yousef Munayyer, University of Maryland and Arab Center Washington – “There Will Be a One-State Solution But What Kind of State Will It Be?”
Dana el-Kurd, University of Richmond – Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine
Nadav Shelef, University of Wisconsin –Evolving Nationalism: Homeland, Identity, and Religion in Israel, 1925–2005 and Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes
Maha Nassar, University of Arizona – Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World
Nathan Brown, George Washington University – The Old Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Is Dead—Long Live the Emerging Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Tariq Baconi, International Crisis Group and University of Western Cape – “Gaza and the One-State Reality” and Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance
Imad Alsoos, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology – “What explains the resilience of Muslim Brotherhood movements? An analysis of Hamas’ organizing strategies” and “From jihad to resistance: the evolution of Hamas’s discourse in the framework of mobilization”
Abdalhadi Alijla, Orient Institute in Beirut – “Gazzawi as bare life? An auto-ethnography of borders, siege, and statelessness” and “Palestine and the Habeas Viscus: An Auto-ethnography of Travel, Visa Violence, and Borders”
Diana Greenwald, City College of New York – “Military Rule in the West Bank”
Yael Berda, Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative – Living Emergency: Israel’s Permit Regime in the Occupied West Bank
Noura Erekat, Rutgers University – Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine
Nadya Hajj, Wellesley College – Protection Amid Chaos: The Creation of Property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps and “Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age“
Marwa Fatfafta, Access Now
Gershon Shafir, University of California, San Diego – A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict and Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship
Michael Barnett, George Washington University – The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews
Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland – “Here’s how experts on the Middle East see the region’s key issues, our new survey finds” (with Marc Lynch) and “Changing American Public Attitudes On Israel/Palestine: Does It Matter For Politics?“
Nicola Pratt of the University of Warwick talks about her latest book, Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book demonstrates how the production and regulation of gender are integrally bound up with the exercise and organization of geopolitical power, with consequences for women’s activism and its effects. (Starts at 25:11). André Bank of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Jan Busse Bundeswehr University Munich talk about their special issue, "MENA political science research a decade after the Arab uprisings: Facing the facts on tremulous grounds," published in Mediterranean Politics. (Starts at 0:44).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Paola Rivetti of Dublin City University talks about her latest book Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book examines the unintended consequences of top-down reforms in Iran, analyzing how the Iranian reformist governments (1997–2005) sought to utilize gradual reforms to control independent activism, and how citizens responded to such disciplinary action. (Starts at 31:48). Alexandra Siegel of the University of Colorado, Boulder talks about her article, “Tweeting Beyond Tahrir: Ideological Diversity and Political Intolerance in Egyptian Twitter Networks,” co-authored with Jonathan Nagler, Richard Bonneau, and Joshua A. Tucker, and published in World Politics. (Starts at 0:52). Konstantin Ash of the University of Central Florida talks about his latest article, “How did Tunisians react to Ennahdha’s 2016 reforms? Evidence from a survey experiment,” published in Mediterranean Politics. (Starts at 17:35).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Ewan Stein of University of Edinburgh talks about his latest book, International Relations in the Middle East: Hegemonic Strategies and Regional Order, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book demonstrates how the sources of regional antagonisms and solidarities are to be found not in the geopolitical chessboard, but in the hegemonic strategies of the region's pivotal powers. (Starts at 35:11). Steven Schaaf of George Washington University speaks about his new article entitled, "Contentious Politics in the Courthouse: Law as a Tool for Resisting Authoritarian States in the Middle East," published by Law and Society Review. (Starts at 0:53). Zahra Ali of Rutgers University discusses her new article, "From Recognition to Redistribution? Protest Movements in Iraq in the Age of ‘New Civil Society," published in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. (Starts at 19:23).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Jesse Wozniak of West Virginia University talks about his latest book, Policing Iraq: Legitimacy, Democracy, and Empire in a Developing State, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book demonstrates how police are integral to the modern state’s ability to effectively rule and how the failure to recognize this directly contributed to the destabilization of Iraq and the rise of the Islamic State. (Starts at 32:51). Alexei Abrahams of Harvard University speaks about his new article entitled, "Hard traveling: unemployment and road infrastructure in the shadow of political conflict," published by Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 0:53). Adam Lichtenheld of Yale University discusses his new article, "The consequences of internal displacement on civil war violence: Evidence from Syria," (co-authored with Justin Schon of University of Virginia) published in Political Geography. (Starts at 18:24).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
John Waterbury of Princeton University talks about his latest book, Missions Impossible: Higher Education and Policymaking in the Arab World, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book seeks to explain the process of policymaking in higher education in the Arab world, a process that is shaped by the region’s politics of autocratic rule. (Starts at 33:42). Irene Weipert-Fenner of the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt talks about her article, "Go local, go global: Studying popular protests in the MENA post-2011," published in Mediterranean Politics. (Starts at 0:59). Mariam Salehi of Berlin Social Science Center discusses her new article, "Trying Just Enough or Promising Too Much? The Problem-Capacity-Nexus in Tunisia’s Transitional Justice Process," published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. (Starts at 20:24).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Stephanie Dornschneider of University College Dublin talks about her latest book, Hot Contention, Cool Abstention: Positive Emotions and Protest Behavior During the Arab Spring, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book traces how decisions about participating in the Arab Spring were made, using psychology literature on reasoning and political science literature on protest. (Starts at 29:47). Matthew Lacouture of Wayne State University speaks about his new article entitled, "Privatizing the Commons: Protest and the Moral Economy of National Resources in Jordan," published by Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 0:54). Maria Josua of the German Institute of Global Affairs and Mirjam Edel of University of Tubingen discuss their new article, "The Arab uprisings and the return of repression," published in Mediterranean Politics. (Starts at 15:11).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Emy Matesan of Wesleyan University talks about her latest book, The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, she argues that Islamist groups alter their tactics in response to the perceived need for activism, shifts in the cost of violent versus nonviolent resistance, and internal or external pressures on the organization. (Starts at 31:05). Giulia Cimini of University of Bologna speaks about her new article entitled, "Learning mechanisms within an Islamist party: Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement between domestic and regional balances," published in Contemporary Politics. (Starts at 0:50). Jana Belschner of University of Bergen discusses her new article, "Electoral Engineering in New Democracies: Strong Quotas and Weak Parties in Tunisia," published in Government and Opposition, an International Journal of Comparative Politics. (Starts at 15:11).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Somdeep Sen of Roskilde University talks about his latest book, Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book considers the case of the Palestinian struggle for liberation from its settler colonial condition as a complex psychological and empirical mix of the colonial and the postcolonial. (Starts at 27:13). Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University discusses her new article, "The empire’s opposition strikes back: popular culture as creative resistance tool under Turkey’s AKP," published in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. (Starts at 0:54). Also, Michaelle Browers joins the podcast to discuss her article "Beginnings, Continuities and Revivals: An Inventory of the New Arab Left and an Ongoing Arab Left Tradition," published in Middle East Critique. (Starts at 14:50).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or SoundCloud
Justin Schon of the University of Virginia talks about his latest book, Surviving the War in Syria: Survival Strategies in a Time of Conflict, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, he emphasizes that civilian behavior in conflict zones includes repertoires of survival strategies, instead of migration alone; he utilizes a microanalysis of civilian self-protection strategies during armed conflict in Syria. (Starts at 32:01). Tarek Masoud of the Harvard Kennedy School and the Director of the Middle East Initiative speaks about his new article entitled, "The Arab Spring at 10: Kings or People?," published in the Journal of Democracy. (Starts at 1:03). Justin Gengler of Qatar University discusses his new article (co-authored with Mark Tessler of University of Michigan, Russell Lucas of Michigan State University and Jonathan Forney of the George Washington University), "Why Do You Ask?’ The Nature and Impacts of Attitudes towards Public Opinion Surveys in the Arab World," published in the British Journal of Political Science. (Starts at 16:20).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Marc Owen Jones of Hamad bin Khalifa University talks about his latest book, Political Repression in Bahrain, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book explores Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, and spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. (Starts at 26:28). Drew Kinney of Tulane University discusses his article, "Sharing Saddles: Oligarchs and Officers on Horseback in Egypt and Tunisia," published in International Studies Quarterly. (Starts at 0:47). Chad Raymond of Salve Regina University talks about his article, "Old Wine in a New Bottle: How to Teach the Comparative Politics of the Middle East with Fiction," published in the Journal of Political Science Education. (Starts at 14:36)
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Devorah Manekin of Hebrew University of Jerusalem talks about her latest book, Regular Soldiers, Irregular War: Violence and Restraint in the Second Intifada, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book presents a theoretical framework for understanding the various forms of behavior in which soldiers engage during counterinsurgency campaigns—compliance and shirking, abuse and restraint, as well as the creation of new violent practices. (Starts at 32:41). Jeannie Sowers of University of Hampshire and Erika Weinthal of Duke University speak about their new article entitled, "Humanitarian challenges and the targeting of civilian infrastructure in the Yemen war," published in International Affairs. (Starts at 0:54). Joshua Freedman of Oberlin College discusses his new article, "The Recognition Dilemma: Negotiating Identity in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," published in International Studies Quarterly. (Starts at 18:17).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Dara Conduit of Deakin University talks about her book, The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book explores the Muslim Brotherhood's history to understand why it failed to capitalize on its advantage as the most prominent opposition group in Syria as the conflict unfolded, addressing significant gaps in accounts of the group's past to assess whether its reputation for violence and dogmatism is justified. (Starts at 29:05). Marwa Shalaby of the University of Wisconsin joins to talk about her article, "Women in Legislative Committees in Arab Parliaments" (co-authored by Leila Elimam), published in Comparative Politics. (Starts at 0:47). Bozena Welborne of Smith College discusses her article, "On Their Own? Women Running as Independent Candidates in the Middle East," published in Middle East Law and Governance. (Starts at 15:35).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Robert Springborg of the Naval Postgraduate School talks about his latest book, Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, he discusses the economic future of the [MENA] region by examining the national and regional political causes of its contemporary underperformance. (Starts at 37:19). May Darwich of the University of Birmingham, Waleed Hazbun of University of Alabama, Adham Saouli of University of St. Andrews, and Karim Makdisi of the American University of Beirut speak about their new collection of essays entitled, "The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World: Reading Walt in Beirut, Wendt in Doha, and Abul-Fadl in Cairo," published in International Studies Perspectives. The collection also includes pieces by Morten Valbjorn of Aarhus University, Bassel Salloukh of the Lebanese American University, Amira Abu Samra of Cairo University, Said Saddiki of University of Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah, and Hamad Albloshi of Kuwait University. (Starts at 0:55).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Avital Livny of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne talks about her latest book, Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book shows that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity, and presents a new argument for conceptualizing religion as both a personal belief system and collective identity. (Starts at 27:01). Ala' Alrababa'h discusses the article, Attitudes Toward Migrants in a Highly Impacted Economy: Evidence From the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Jordan (co-authored by Andrea Dillon, Scott Williamson, Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner, Jeremy M. Weinstein) published in Comparative Political Studies. (Starts at 0:58). Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl of Leiden University talks about his article, On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria, published in the Rationality and Society journal. (Starts at 12:58).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Glenn Robinson of the Naval Postgraduate School talks about his latest book, Global Jihad: A Brief History, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: whether a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qa'ida's call to drive the United States out of the Muslim world; ISIS using "jihadi cool" to recruit followers; or leaderless efforts of stochastic terror to "keep the dream alive." (Starts at 24:22). Dina Bishara of Cornell University discusses her new article, "Precarious Collective Action: Unemployed Graduates Associations in the Middle East and North Africa." (Starts at 0:50). Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University talks about "Practical Ideology in Militant Organizations." (Starts at 10:17).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Ahmed Khanani of Earlham College talks about his latest book, All Politics are God’s Politics: Moroccan Islamism and the Sacralization of Democracy, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book enables readers to understand and appreciate the significance of dimuqrāṭiyya [democracy] as a concept alongside new prospects for Islam and democracy in the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) (Starts at 22:49). Kaoutar Ghilani of Oxford University speaks about her new article, "The legitimate’ after the uprisings: justice, equity, and language politics in Morocco," published in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. (Starts at 0:56). Chantal Berman of Georgetown University discusses her new article, "Policing the Organizational Threat in Morocco: Protest and Public Violence in Liberal Autocracies," published in the American Journal of Political Science. (Starts at 11:41).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Aaron Rock-Singer of University of Wisconsin-Madison talks about his latest book, Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book shows how Islamic activists and institutions across the political spectrum reshaped daily practices [in Egypt] in an effort to persuade followers to adopt novel models of religiosity. (Starts at 27:42). Bassel Salloukh of Lebanese-American University speaks about his new special issue article, "Consociational Power‐Sharing in the Arab World: A Critical Stocktaking," published in the Journal of Studies of in Ethnicity and Nationalism. (Starts at 1:13). Carolyn Barnett, graduate student at Princeton University, and Steve Monroe of Yale-NUS College discuss their new piece (co-authored with Amaney Jamal of Princeton University), "Earned Income and Women’s Segmented Empowerment: Experimental Evidence from Jordan," published in the American Journal of Political Science. You can also read their piece on Remote work and women’s employment in MENA: opportunity or pitfall?" posted in the Economic Research Forum. (Starts at 11:36).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud:
Alex Thurston of the University of Cincinnati talks about his latest book, Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book studies cases of jihadist movements in North Africa and the Sahel, examining them from the inside, uncovering their activities and internal struggles over the past three decades. (Starts at 19:50). Michael Robbins, Director of the Arab Barometer, introduces the Arab Barometer and discusses recent polling work on themes including the normalization of Arab states with Israel, and the effects of COVID-19. (Starts at 1:14). Christiana Parreira of Stanford University discusses her recent article, "Power politics: Armed non-state actors and the capture of public electricity in post-invasion Baghdad," published in the Journal of Peace Research. (Starts at 10:10).
Kelsey Norman of Rice University talks about her latest book, Reluctant Reception: Refugees, Migration and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book proposes the concept of 'strategic indifference', where states [such as Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey] proclaim to be indifferent toward migrants and refugees, thereby inviting international organizations and local NGOs to step in and provide services on the state's behalf. (Starts at 28:27). Gail Buttorff of University of Houston speaks about her new report, "COVID-19 Pandemic Compounds Challenges Facing MENA Research," (co-authored with Nermin Allam of Rutgers University and Marwa Shalaby of University of Wisconsin-Madison) published in the American Political Science Association Fall 2020 MENA Politics Newsletter. You can also read their pieces: "A Survey Reveals How the Pandemic Has Hurt MENA Research" and "Gender, COVID and Faculty Service." (Starts at 1:40). Samer Abboud of Villanova University discusses his piece, "Syria, Crisis Ecologies, and Enduring Insecurities in the MENA," published in POMEPS Studies 42: MENA's Frozen Conflicts. You can also read his latest pieces: "Reconciling fighters, settling civilians: the making of post-conflict citizenship in Syria" and "Imagining Localism in Post-Conflict Syria: Prefigurative Reconstruction Plans and the Clash Between Liberal Epistemology and Illiberal Conflict." (Starts at 14:05).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi.
Aaron Jakes talks about his latest book, Egypt’s Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles that raged over the occupation.
Jakes explains, “In the broadest sense, the book, it is a history of the period of British rule in Egypt after the occupation of 1882. And it makes three broad arguments: first, that this particular form of colonial rule was organized around the discourse that I call colonial economist…the second major argument of the book is that under these conditions, Egypt became a crucial laboratory and target for financial investment in the worldwide financial expansion that was characteristic of global capitalism at the end of the 19th century. And finally, I'm sort of interested in the interplay between the discursive claims of the British regime and these dramatic transformations that were taking place…”
He goes on to say, “You have people who, by the early 1900s, are articulating critiques of imperial finance that look logically quite similar to arguments that were more familiar with from people like Lenin...You have people who start to articulate things that look like early instances of dependency theory and those people are all at the same time trying to think through what the implications of these dramatic economic transformations were for the possibilities of different kinds of politics in the country.”
“It was certainly the case that by the early 1900s, the British could, in their annual reports and other modes of publicity around what they were doing in Egypt, claim that they had delivered unprecedented prosperity to the country, and those claims, which had a power to circulate globally, that was much greater than that of most of the people that were contesting them, have a really significant resonance in other places…it's quite interesting that the government of the United States at the moment, which is beginning to think through what American forms of colonial rule in places like the Philippines might look like, looks to Egypt as a possible model for what they might do there,” said Jakes.
Aaron Jakes is an Assistant Professor of History at The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, where he teaches courses on the modern Middle East and South Asia, global environmental history, and the historical geography of capitalism.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook and Instagram page.
Joas Wagemakers talks about his new book, The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores the Muslim Brotherhood’s long history and complex relationship with Jordan, its parliament and society.
“In Jordan [the Muslim Brotherhood] basically had Royal support from the very start, and the reason for that was that the King did not really have a lot of authority within the country of Transjordan, as it was still called in the 1920s and 30s and 40s, and sought sources of authority that would help him gain the status of King or ruler in this new nation” explains Wagemakers.
Wagemakers says, “After 1989, when decisions had to be made about: are we going to participate in elections, are we going to participate in the government if the government asked us to, are we going to be responsible for the decisions that we make. [The Muslim Brotherhood] really had to make political decisions. The existing divisions within the Muslim Brotherhood became clearer and clearer.”
“The brotherhood did radicalize under pressure, let's say in the 1990s, but only by resorting to the means of boycotting the election. It was in the 2010s, so the past few years, when there was quite a bit of repression that the Brotherhood had moderated further simply because they saw in Saudi Arabia, in The United Arab Emirates, in Egypt and in other countries as well, that the Brotherhood was increasingly coming under the fire, was being labeled a terrorist organization… the Islamic Action Front really had only one way left to remain relevant and to remain legal, which was to engage in parliamentary elections,” notes Wagemakers.
Joas Wagemakers is an Associate Professor of Islam and Arabic at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. He obtained his PhD in Nijmegen, received the Erasmus Research Prize in 2011 for his dissertation, was a researcher at Clingendael and a visiting research fellow at Princeton University.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/) page.
Sherine Hafez talks about her latest book, Women of the Midan: Untold Stories of Egypt’s Revolutionaries, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. In her book, she demonstrates how women were a central part of the revolutionary process of the Arab Spring; not only protesting in the streets of Cairo, but also demanding democracy, social justice, and renegotiation of a variety of sociocultural structures that repressed and disciplined them.
Hafez explains, “I just wanted to make sure that the contributions of women in the Midan during the uprisings, and specifically in Egypt, were documented so that…the activism cannot be written off as just part of the revolution…And I wanted so much to make sure that this is a record that can be read by future young activists of all genders, so that they can look back and know that there is a record of their contributions to politics in the Middle East.”
Hafez goes on, “When I decided to write the book, the revolution was in its hey-day…The revolutionaries felt that things can change; they had hope…and everybody was very optimistic, including myself. And it was really easy to talk to women who are in the Midan who were involved in all kinds of activism…It was just very exciting…and then gradually, as you know, the revolution took a shift and the things don't become so easy. It was very difficult to actually find women activists who would like to talk about their experience in Midan, many of them found it very painful; some were even suffering from PTSD…So I realized that this sort of development in the way that I access my interviewees reflected the political scene in Egypt.”
“I was trying to find something more than memory [in my book], because when I was speaking to many of the women who were involved in the uprising, who found themselves for the very first time face-to-face with state violence…I felt that there was something there that was happening during the interview, it wasn't simply that people are sitting here reminiscing or re-telling stories of the past…I could view how their bodies actually changed, their voices changed, the expressions and their eyes changed, the whole demeanor changed as they were re-telling the stories, and some of them always pointed out, you're making us remember what it was like, and it was almost as if they were reliving these experiences, so it wasn't simply just retelling a memory, it was “rememory,” actually, physically experiencing the events that took place,” said Hafez.
Sherine Hafez is Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Riverside. She is the Co-Editor of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS) and served as President for the Association of Middle East Anthropologists (AMEA). Hafez’s research focuses on Islamic movements and gender studies in Arab and Middle Eastern cultures. Hafez lectures on gender studies in the Middle East and Muslim majority countries, Islamic movements, and women’s Islamic activism in the uprisings in the Arab World.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Elizabeth Nugent talks about her new book, After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores how polarization and repression led to different political outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt.
Nugent explains, “When I started my fieldwork in Tunisia, it was clear to me again coming from Egypt with that kind of as my baseline how differently people spoke about each other and so the more I dug in the more that repression - the way in which the Ben Ali regime and the Mubarak regime repressed these different opposition groups - was very key for why these two different places ended up very differently polarized.”
“It’s possible that as repression has come to touch a number of different groups in Egypt in the current moment it’s softening some of these identity politics that have been problematic in the past,” says Nugent.
Nugent says, “What I find is that there are higher levels of both affective and preference polarization, here meaning negative affect in a targeted repressive environment, and lower levels of both in a widespread repressive environment.
Elizabeth Nugent is an assistant professor of political science at Yale University. Her research explores the psychology of political behavior in the Middle East, with a focus on the effects of religion and repression.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Anne Marie Baylouny talks about her latest book, When Blame Backfires: Syrian Refugees and Citizen Grievances in Jordan and Lebanon, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explains how the recent influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and Lebanon has stimulated domestic political action against these countries' governments.
Baylouny explains, “So usually these governments use all kinds of groups…to blame for their faults. Oh we can't provide this. We have water shortage because of the Iraqis. This problem with the government is because of another group and they blame them for all their lack of state capacity. So here you have an overwhelming number of Syrians over a quarter of Lebanon's population and at least 10 percent of Jordan's, probably their first and second in the world for refugees per capita. And they're foreigners and a lot of them are poor and they came in in masses…So you have they have all the elements that you would expect states to be able to successfully deflect blame from themselves on to that minority or foreign group.”
She goes on to say, “They [the Syrians] were welcomed very well by the Lebanese and Jordanians in the beginning. Then the honeymoon period ran out and the numbers got very large. And the Jordanians and Lebanese universally started to blame things on the Syrians…They're using too much water etc. but they didn't do the second part of scapegoating. The second part of scapegoating is when you basically dissolve responsibility from the state or government for that problem. So you blame Syrians and you go back to your couch…Instead they blamed the government said you need to provide us housing, you need to provide us better schools, you need to provide us water, electricity, you need to fix the problem. The Syrians may have caused them but you need to fix them. And they mobilized. They began mobilizing against the government.”
She argues, “They [the Jordanians] needed housing…And they demanded from the government that it provide them housing. So here you have people who are clear that the fault is the Syrians…but the Syrians can't provide them housing. And later on the Syrians can't provide them water. They can't provide electricity…Because deflecting blame onto the Syrians away from the government—people can see right through that because they still need those goods to be provided. So they [the Jordanians] prioritize solutions over the psychological satisfaction of scapegoating and blaming somebody else for all your problems.”
Anne Marie Baylouny is associate professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, specializing in Middle East politics, grassroots organizing, and Islam. Baylouny received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her recent work includes publications on militia governments in the Lebanese civil war, Hezbollah’s media messages, and authority in ungoverned spaces. Baylouny has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards—Fulbright, the Social Science Research Council, and the Mellon Foundation, among others.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl talks about his latest book, Quagmire in Civil War, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. His book explains he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices and draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006.
Schulhofer-Wohl explains, “I was very interested in digging into an idea of how it was that the groups that are fighting in civil wars can become trapped in a war…There are some wars in which it looks like for whatever reason the armed groups that are fighting in them are unable to win the war. They're unable to negotiate to make a settlement and the war just drags on. But there's something about that that's different from just a war that lasts for a very long time.”
He goes on to say, “The book makes the point that we kind of have a default view of entrapment and civil war that it's based on underlying characteristics of a country or a war. So the Obama administration, for example, had a view that current conflicts in the Middle East are just incredibly complicated…And these are conflicts the United States shouldn't get involved in because they're going to be overly complicated and then they're going to be something that will entrap everyone. And by taking this strategic decision making perspective, the book actually outlines an argument that's the opposite of that, which is to say it's based on the choices that are being made by the foreign states, by the armed groups fighting the war. And it's these choices that lead to quagmire—not anything particular about the nature of the country or the kind of war that's being fought.”
“I'm also trying to outline an argument for quagmire that's different from what you might hear normally about foreign interference and civil wars, which is that a country is trapped in conflict because that's what the foreign backers want. You'll hear some people argue that what regional powers in the Middle East want is just to keep Libya in a permanent state of warfare or to keep Yemen in a permanent state of warfare to keep Syria like that…And what I'm saying is that that's one possibility…But I also want to understand, is it possible that through taking rational decisions based on their self-interests—that don't have to do with wanting to keep a country in a state of conflict—it might nevertheless end up that way,” said Schulhofer-Wohl .
Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. His research agenda, on the conduct of civil wars, includes an empirical focus on the Middle East, but addresses questions about civil wars as a general matter, and draws on comparisons across diverse countries. Before joining the faculty at Leiden, Schulhofer-Wohl taught at the University of Virginia and as a visiting assistant professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Hiba Bou Akar talks about her latest book, For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut's southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order.
Bou Akar explains, “So I start looking at the planning and how these residential complexes ended up mushrooming in an agricultural area but also next to inductees and eventually like a whole world starts opening to me about how… war displacement has shaped the housing market. There are political organizations that are fighting over territory after the war. And how planning is a tool in that conflict. It would sometimes be of negotiation and sometimes of contestation.”
She goes on to say, “So the [idea of], For The War Yet to Come ends up being like this expectation of war that is either going to be like an Arab-Israeli war…or sectarian war, a regional war or whatever; that ends up shaping how people make decisions about where they live. Religious political organizations end up using this idea to keep people in strongholds. They intervene in the housing market…access to, for example, airports or to the waterfront etc...As a person who grew up in the Civil War and was personally displaced six times, I think I was haunted by the idea: What does it mean to live in a place where we were always expecting something disastrous to happen in the future?”
“It was interesting to me because if you want to take a theoretical l lens I was like, people don't talk about when they think about land as Christian land you know like thinking about for example New York or other places in the world. And the fact that the land is talked about in…a religious terminology was interesting to me. And then when you map religion and sectarianism to land then anyone who is trying to just secure housing becomes like oh what is your religion, oh you're taking over , you’re Islamizing. And then you go from Islamizing for example the neighborhood to Islamizing the Middle East...It goes from one apartment or building blocks to becoming, on TV, Islamization of Lebanon…And so I got fascinated by the idea how people, without even blinking, assigned religion to land,” said Bou Akar.
Hiba Bou Akar is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning program at Columbia GSAPP. Her research focuses on planning in conflict and post-conflict cities, the question of urban security and violence, and the role of religious political organizations in the making of cities. Bou Akar’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Wenner- Gren Foundation, and the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS). Bou Akar received her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Master in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Aili Tripp talks about her latest book, Seeking Legitimacy: Why Arab Autocracies Adopt Women’s Rights, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria embraced more legal reforms of women’s rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts, and how women’s rights were used to advance the political goals of these authoritarian regimes.
Tripp explains, “I was interested in the fact that you have this growing divergence within the MENA region itself in terms of the adoption of women’s rights, yet people keep talking about the region as one monolith when it came to women’s rights.
“The fact that women’s rights are such a central theme in north African politics. I mean nothing happens without the issue of women’s rights coming to the floor somehow as we saw at the time of independence in Algeria, as we saw after the Arab Spring in Tunisia with the debates over the constitution in 2011,” notes Tripp.
Tripp says, “Why are autocrats adopting women’s rights legislation and making constitutional provisions and promoting women as leaders? In a nutshell, my argument has to do with some of the strategic interaction that goes on between the ruling parties, which in the case of Tunisia and Morocco for the time period I’m looking at are Islamist parties. Between the regime and these Islamist parties and the various Islamist movements in these countries and the interaction with women’s movements this interaction between these various actors has resulted in an unprecedented advancement in women’s rights.”
Aili Mari Tripp is Wangari Maathai Professor of Political Science and Gender & Women’s Studies and Chair of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Tripp’s research has focused on women and politics in Africa, women’s movements in Africa, women and peacebuilding, transnational feminism, African politics (with particular reference to Uganda and Tanzania), and on the informal economy in Africa. Her current research involves a comparative study of women and legal reform in North Africa.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Amr Adly talks about his latest book, Cleft Capitalism: The Social Origins of Failed Market Making in Egypt, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores why market-based economic development failed to meet expectations in Egypt.
“The main argument is that we have three business systems in Egypt in reference to rules formal as well as informal and mixes of the two, according to which different business establishments have been operating. And the crucial thing really is how their access to physical and financial capital has been regulated.”
“The main point here is that the vast majority of private establishments, the ones that are strictly owned by private individuals, have suffered from a chronic under structuring under capitalization when it comes to access to back credit given of course the structure of the financial system in Egypt, which is very much bank-based, as well as access to land.”
"One of the problems here is that you have a banking system in Egypt that is still very much controlled by the state. You have very large state-owned banks that still hold up something between one-third and forty percent of the total assets of the banking system. Despite rounds of privatization and liberalization and even without this crucial factor of the direct state ownership of the big banks, you have state regulation that is both formal as well as informal. All of these networks that have historically tied state-owned enterprises and then later on private businesses that are like crony businessmen that have been related to the successive ruling regimes in Egypt, all of these have created a regulatory environment that made it extremely hard for those who lack either initial capital or political and social capital.
Amr Adly is an assistant professor in the department of political science at The American University in Cairo. He worked as a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center. He has also worked as a project manager at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, where he was a postdoctoral fellow. Adly received his Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence. He is also the author of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt (Routledge, 2012).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Pascal Menoret talks about his latest book, Graveyard of Clerics: Everyday Activism in Saudi Arabia, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. In the book, he tells the stories of the people actively countering the Saudi state and highlights how people can organize and protest even amid increasingly intense police repression.
Menoret explains, “Basically what happens in the suburbs is that it's a fixed place where people could congregate and create mass movements by the presence or the co presence of their bodies. On the street what you have is moving entities-moving devices-moving tools, automobiles that can be used to reconstitute movements to protest sometimes and to create that effect of mass that might change the political dynamic in the country.”
“I was interested in looking at…what activists call Islamic action…in everyday spaces. And these big figures indeed become parts of much more grounded conversations about the meaning of, for instance, what it means to read books…what it means to read novels for young activists who gather in a high school and some of whom are interested in reading Harry Potter. That's a great challenge because they decide that you know first of all reading is a training and it's trains you to use the language to think, to speak, but it's also a way for you to get exposed to other ways to look at the world and therefore you can only make your own you know self-construction as a reader but also as an activist stronger; you become more articulate,” he explains.
Menoret goes on to say, “Muslim Brothers will tend to use many more spaces to organize and to create conversations and to create numbers and to create an atmosphere in which you can actually talk about social issues. You can talk about intellectual issues, you can talk about political issues, they will use sports to do that, they would use leisure spaces…they will use the suburbs actually. They will really have a whole thinking about what it means to be living in the suburbs and to organize in suburban environments whereas the Salafis…tend to be much closer to the religious sciences right into a space that is much more exclusive in many ways…”
Pascal Menoret is the Renee and Lester Crown Professor of Modern Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of The Saudi Enigma: A History (2005) and Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt (2014), Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt (Cambridge University Press 2014), Arabia, from the Incense Road to the Oil Era (Gallimard 2010, in French), and The Saudi Enigma: A History (Zed Books 2005). An ethnographer and historian, he conducted four years of fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and has also lived in France, Yemen, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Paris 1 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and Harvard University.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Nadav Shelef talks about his latest book, Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores the idea of homelands and nationalism and articulates an analogous theory for how and why the places that people think of as their homelands stop being part of their homeland around the world.
Shelef explains, “One of the things that I did was to look at how domestic media around the world talked about territory that they had lost. And when you do that, you can actually see territory drop from the discourse in particular cases. In Pakistan, they stopped talking about East Pakistan very, very quickly and they switched the terminology and started talking about Bangladesh in ways that are very difficult to imagine Palestinians stop talking about Jaffa.”
“For these changes to spread and become real they need to be reinforced politically. And what we see - in fact, what we see going on right now among Palestinians - is something of a withdrawal from the idea of but the acceptance of partition and the redefinition of the territory in which Palestinians can achieve their national aspirations because it’s not working. And so to the extent that ideas consistent with partition lose politically, we’re not going to see them spread and we’re going to see other kinds of solutions,” says Shelef.
Shelef says, “I think we have two main lessons. One is that homelands matter. That is simply claiming or talking about a piece of territory as part of the homeland greatly increases the likelihood of international conflict between neighbors that would share that territory… The second is that homelands can change. Even though they matter they are a variable and as a variable, they can vary over time. And that implies that the impact that they have or that their loss has on conflict could also vary. Once you no longer consider a territory part of the homeland, you should see a reduction in conflict over that territory.”
Nadav Shelef is the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Israel Studies and Professor of Political Science. Professor Shelef teaches and studies nationalism, religion and politics, Israeli politics and society, and middle east politics. His current projects focus on understanding how homelands change and the conditions under which religious parties moderate their positions.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Laleh Khalili talks about her latest book, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructures has meant for the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.
Khalili explains, “Whenever you look at the list of the Journal of Commerce’s top 10 container ports in the world, the only port that is not either in East Asia or Southeast Asia in that top 10 list is Dubai, Jebel Ali in Dubai. And to me, that was also really interesting. Why is it that Jebel Ali, which does not have a very large hinterland, which is a city-state, why would it end up being such a significant port for container transport?”
Khalili continues, “What is interesting is that there is very little actually about the role of trade and the transformation of the peninsula beyond the trade in oil once oil becomes the commodity that starts defining the political economy of these countries.”
“I wanted to zoom out to a more regional Indian ocean and global trade. But I also wanted to zoom in and focus on the kind of stories that emerge in the context of these forms of global trade and to locate Arabian Peninsula not as some sort of hermetically sealed exceptional kind of object of study but rather as one node in the large vast network of global trade and developing and transforming constantly as this kind of nodes,” says Khalili.
Laleh Khalili is a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge 2007) and Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford 2013).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Marc Lynch speaks with Marwa Shalaby of Rice University about the status of women in politics in the Middle East.
Catherine Herrold talks about her latest book, Delta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book uncovers the strategies that Egyptian NGOs have used to advance the aims of the country’s 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
“What the book argues is that, in fact, many development NGOs and local grant making foundations did promote democracy. But they did so in ways that went unrecognized by the Western democracy promotion establishment and, far more importantly, by successive ruling regimes in Egypt. And they did so, number one, by masking their democracy promotion work...And number two, instead of focusing on the procedural form of democracy, they sought to build substantive democracy through participation, free expression, and rights claiming at grassroots levels,” explains Herrold.
She goes on to say, “these development NGO and foundations really focused on the grassroots and they created spaces for collective action for discussion, for debate, for problem solving…They created spaces for free expression through arts and culture and other means in which citizens could come together and express their views for the future of Egypt. And they coached grassroots communities on their basic human rights as citizens and on claiming those rights from local government officials...”
Herrold argues, “There are three to four primary weaknesses of U.S. democracy assistance. Number one, it focuses almost exclusively on a procedural form of democracy. It seeks to reform national political institutions often in the shape of U.S. democratic institutions which are not necessarily the types of institutions that…might be best in the target country. Number two, it is expressly political. So it's separate from aid for socioeconomic development or humanitarian assistance. [Number three], it's also highly technical. Democracy aid produces outputs such as reports trainings et cetera that often fail to result in the desired outcome of democracy…And finally it tends to be elite…It tends to circulate in a relatively elite militia of highly trained, highly educated professionals…”
Catherine Herrold is an Assistant Professor at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and a Faculty Affiliate of the Indiana University Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. She has also served as a Visiting Scholar at the American University in Cairo (Egypt) and Birzeit University (Palestine). She has conducted fieldwork in Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Qatar.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Fanar Haddad talks about his latest book, Understanding ‘Sectarianism’: Sunni-Shi’a Relations in the Modern Arab World, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores the sectarian identity not as a monochrome frame of identification, but as a multi-layered concept.
Haddad said, “One of the problems with how sectarianism, the phrase, is approached is that it’s almost always is presented as meaning just one thing thereby condensing what is inescapably a multifaceted subject into some mono-dimensional or mono-colored aspect. And so if we are going to take sectarian identity we need to avoid making the same mistake.”
“What I propose in the book is that sectarian identity operates on four dimensions simultaneously, on four interlinked dimensions. And these are the doctrinal dimension, the subnational, so that’s the dynamics within a single nation-state. Thirdly, at the level of the nation-state, so in terms of how sectarian identity interacts with nationalism and national identity, and finally on a transnational level, as well. And by dissecting it in that way, we can start better identifying what aspect of sectarian identity we’re actually concerned with or is actually relevant when people use that catchall phrase sectarianism,” Haddad said.
Haddad explains, “Blindness is not necessarily neutrality because unless you remedy the underlying structural imbalances, blindness becomes a way of perpetuating and enforcing these imbalances… Were one to raise the issue of structural sectarian discrimination, one will be accused of being sectarian or being guilty of sectarianism. So whether it’s in Bahrain or Syria or in Iraq today or previously before 2003, it’s almost criminalized to lobby or raise awareness of structural sectarian discrimination that disproportionally affects one sectarian identity. And the parallel I draw is, ‘Would we ever think of calling the NAACP a racist organization for lobbying for the rights of a minority?’”
Fanar Haddad is a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. He has lectured in modern Middle Eastern politics at the University of Exeter, at Queen Mary, University of London and at the National University of Singapore.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Samuel Helfont talks about his latest book, Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam, and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book investigates religion and politics in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as well as the roots of the religious insurgencies that erupted in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003.
Helfont said, “I found that there was proliferation of religious symbols and religious rhetoric in Iraq, especially in the 1990s, but when you sort of dug down you see that all of this was promoted and created by the regime. Not as a way to embrace Islamism but as a way to combat it.”
“The assumption on the US part was that the Iraqis really didn’t have control, which I find to be just a huge mistake on behalf of people planning the war in 2003. And they go in thinking that the regime, when it crumbles, isn’t going to have much effect on Iraqi society or the religious landscape to the sense that they thought about it because they didn’t think the regime really had control. What you find is that the regime had a very strict control," said Helfont.
Helfont explained, “[Saddam Hussein] thinks that religion could be an important instrument for him and his regime, but he has a problem which is that he doesn’t control the religious landscape. So you can’t get into the public and start saying to people ‘Hey be a good Muslim’… So you see Saddam and his regime, the Ba’thist regime, begin to try to shape the religious landscape, try to eliminate people they’d see as problematic, try to replace them with people that they think are more loyal to the regime or at least will follow the rules.”
Samuel Helfont is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and policy in the Naval War College program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is also an Affiliate Scholar in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. His research focuses on international history and politics in the Middle East, especially Iraq and the Iraq Wars.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Sara Pursley talks about her latest book, Familiar Futures: Time, Selfhood, and Sovereignty in Iraq, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book is about the role of gender and family reform projects in Iraq, two ideas of modernization and economic development, from the 1920s to the first Ba'ath coup in 1963.
Pursley said, “For the 1950s, the discourses were really different. They were really focused on economic development as the basis for full political and economic sovereignties. We get different terms, different concepts playing a more important role and also much more of an emphasis on poor families, peasant families, and urban working-class families and how those could be reformed to produce workers and sort of loyal subjects of the regime.”
She goes on to explain, “The equal inheritance clause was indeed very controversial and there’s a lot of things written about it in this period, but every other aspect of this law was not a consensus but there was widespread agreement on the rest of the law, especially among state authorities, feminists, communist, Ba'athists, Arab nationalists, Sunni religious authorities…. The exception was the Shia religious clerics who had a broader critique of the law.”
"The differences in the public discourse kind of get submerged into the social reform project which all of the parties, you know, the Ba’athist, the communists, the other Arab nationalist party which was the independence Party, the National Democratic Party, those were the four main political parties that were sort of supporting the coup in the begging. They all, in spite of all their differences, [had] really strong consensus about the need for social reform, the need to create a new kind of Iraqi who would be the agent of economic development. And so really what I want to get at here is that consensus is partly what enabled the depoliticization of the Iraqi public sphere that many historians, not just me, have seen as kind of laying the groundwork for the 1963 coup,” said Pursley.
Sara Pursley is an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Pursley works on the cultural, social, and intellectual history of the modern Arab Middle East, mainly Iraq. She has explored questions related to economic development and modernization theory, histories of psychology and pedagogy, gender and sexuality, childhood and youth, revolution and decolonization, Islamic and secular family law, land settlement projects, and the transition from British to American empire.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen talks about his latest book, Qatar and the Gulf Crisis: A Study of Resilience, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. In his book, Coates Ulrichsen offers an authoritative study on the Qatari leadership and population’s response to the 2017 economic blockade from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt.
Coates Ulrichsen said, “I wanted to look at how Qatar had responded [to the blockade] because the initial assumption, especially in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, was that Qatar would fold; they would get their way, there would be a power play. Even though it's never clear what exactly they wanted from it. But Qataris were able to respond very quickly and to rapidly reconfigure a lot of their economic and trading arrangements and also to defeat the crisis politically.”
He goes on to explain, “On the 6th of June, the day after the blockades began; President Trump tweeted in apparent support…So from an Emirati Saudi point of view, initially it seemed to be going to plan. What I think they miscalculated was the fact that the White House is not the US government and no one individual can shift an entire set of bureaucratic institutions and interests. And of course Qatar is home to the forward headquarters of Central Command, of CENTCOM, and has a very close and long U.S. economic and strategic relationship as well.”
“I think it was probably a hope from the blockading states in 2017 that the blockade would get international support and this was one of the manifestations of its failure that almost no international partners signed on to it. Several other regional states in the Middle East and parts of Africa initially downgraded ties with Qatar but most of them since have resumed. But from an international point of view, there was virtually no support for the blockade at all,” said Coates Ulrichsen.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Ph.D., is a Baker Institute fellow at Rice University for the Middle East. Previously, he worked as senior Gulf analyst at the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies between 2006 and 2008 and as co-director of the Kuwait Program on Development, Governance and Globalization in the Gulf States at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 2008 until 2013. Coates Ulrichsen’s articles have appeared in numerous academic journals, including Global Policy and the Journal of Arabian Studies. He also writes regularly for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Open Democracy, and Foreign Policy, and authors a monthly column for Gulf Business News and Analysis. Coates Ulrichsen holds a doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Noah Salomon talks about his latest book, For the Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst.
“So the book really set out to explain something that I felt hadn't been touched on in the literature on Islamic politics and that was to look at the Islamic State project from the question of its sustenance, how is it sustained particularly over a period of almost 30 years as it was in the Sudanese case. We've seen a lot of work on the sort of theoretical possibilities of the Islamic State or the impossibilities of the Islamic State but very little on how it becomes a subject of daily life…What I was puzzled by and curious by is how this political project, particularly if it was characterized as not just a failed state but a weak state, had persisted over this period for so long and despite its many failures,” said Salomon.
He explains, “When I began to look elsewhere for where this kind of Islamic State building was going on, I began to see the Islamic State as both more pervasive and more elusive than I had imagined when I went into the field…there were [Islamic State] projects taking place in the public sphere to instill a certain kind of popular affiliation with something called the Islamic State. That didn't always mean attachment to the regime—attachment to the Islamic State meant many things for many different people. And you know what we saw take place over the years is in fact many different attachments to an Islamic political language...”
He argues, "I think it would be a mistake for us to equate the revolution with opposition to Islam and politics writ large. Certainly the revolution was opposed to Omar al-Bashir, his regime, the political party that he represented, and their particular vision. But what I am trying to argue is that Islamic politics is much broader than that and became much broader than that.”
Noah Salomon is Associate Professor of Religion at Carleton College. A recent recipient of a Mellon New Directions Fellowship, he is currently based out of Beirut working on a transregional project on Islamic unity and its discontents in the context of popular revolution and in its aftermath. His books have won the 2017 Albert Hourani Prize from the Middle East Studies Association as well as the 2017 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in Analytical-Descriptive Studies from the American Academy of Religion.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Steven Brooke talks about his latest book, Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. Through an in-depth examination of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Brooke argues that authoritarians often seek to manage moments of economic crisis by offloading social welfare responsibilities to non-state providers.
“One of the kind of key things that we often hear about Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood is that one of the reasons why they're popular is that they provide all sorts of things like clinics and schools and things like that. And this kind of makes people support them in elections or mobilize for them or just think kind of positively about these organizations. And so one of the things I wanted to do with the book was basically empirical—I just wanted to kind of see if I could research these things that everyone talks about and everyone seems to think matter, “said Brooke.
He explains, “One of the things that really came out of the archival evidence was that the Brotherhood really focused all of their work on paying and middle class customers…When I started the field work for this [book], I thought I was going to find these facilities staffed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were devoting their time to working in these medical facilities and that they were doing it for free and that the people who were using them were going to be poor and destitute. And that wasn't the case at all…These are middle class enterprises.”
He goes on to say, “Initially I was expecting that that these [medical] facilities were going to be kind of underneath the radar of the state or they were going to be hidden away kind of fly by night enterprises. But really I kind of kept coming up against these points where it showed just how integrated these services were into the state. I mean they were providing dialysis services and being reimbursed by the Egyptian government for them.”
Steven Brooke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching focuses on comparative politics, religion and politics, and the politics of the Middle East. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and the British Journal of Middle East Studies. Brooke received his Ph.D. in Government in 2015 from The University of Texas at Austin.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Salwa Ismail talks about her latest book, The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book demonstrates how the political prison and the massacre, in particular, developed as apparatuses of government, shaping Syrians' political subjectivities and structuring their interactions with the regime and with one another.
“The main question [of the book] was really to understand the centrality of violence to the Assad regime and it was also to kind of expand our perspective on violence beyond seeing violence as purely repressive and thinking that it must be functioning; it must do something. I wanted to understand what it did to Syrian society and Syrians as political subject citizens and their understanding of themselves, each other, and the relation to the regime,” said Ismail.
When describing the political prison apparatus, she explains, “It was very common to make prisoners eat soiled food too. It was soiled with either urine or vermin or sewage water or even sometimes forcing them to drink soiled water and so on…So you think that this is cruel and irrational but you have to look at what it does to the political prisoner in terms of their own sense of self and their ability to kind of maintain a sense of their humanity and self-respect…The experiences and the feeling of not being able to stand up for yourself or for fellow political prisoners…that kind of gives us a sense that there is a political objective to this which is to undo the political subjectivity of these prisoners so they cannot really dissent.”
She goes on to say, “There was a kind of recurrence of these campaigns to make the political prisoners not only renounce their political commitments and allegiance to particular political parties but also to actually completely reverse themselves and pronounce their allegiance, for example, now to Bashar al-Assad; so it was a complete overturning of the subject.”
Salwa Ismail is a Professor of Politics, with a focus on the Middle East, at SOAS University of London. She is a member of the London Middle East Institute and the Center for Palestine Studies. She has authored multiple books, including Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (2006) and Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism (2003).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Ceren Lord talks about her latest book, Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book is about how Islamist mobilization in Turkey has been facilitated from within the state by institutions established during early nation-building.
“I believe my book offers a corrective to some of the established common wisdoms that look at Islam as politics or religious politics more broadly in terms of seeing it as a reaction to the crisis of a secular state or a grassroots mobilization against a secular state. Instead I focus on how religious politics should be situated as the outcome of a more dynamic struggle within the state itself,” explains Lord.
“I started working on the Diyanet back in the 2000s…Most of the literature saw this [the Diyanet] as an apparatus of the secular state and under the AKP the Diyanet came to be seen as the implementer of the AKP ideology. Whereas if you look at…the practices of what the Diyanet has been doing, actually it has great levels of agency and has been one of the key agents of Islamization in Turkey that's been completely missed in the literature because there is such a binary analytical framework in at the country,” Lord argues.
Lord goes on to say, “It's been a massive transformation of the state [since 2016]. It has been unprecedented really in Turkish history in terms of the amount of civil servants that they have removed from office. What's happened now is that they have been replaced by various other religious organizations…there has been an emptying out all of these institutions and filling them up with pro AKP and add on top people that are not necessarily qualified to do the job.”
Ceren Lord is currently British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, with Middle East Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), where she was previously a Sasakawa Peace Foundation Postdoctoral Research Officer. She completed her PhD in May 2015 at the London School of Economics, Government Department, focusing on the role of the state and the ulema (Diyanet) in the rise of political Islam in Turkey. She is a regular contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Associate Editor at the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and the lead editor for the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) Contemporary Turkey series published by I.B. Tauris.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Omar Dewachi talks about his latest book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book presents the history of healthcare in Iraq, the rise and fall of Iraqi medicine, and the role of healthcare in the making and unmaking of the infrastructure of the state.
Dewachi explains, “For four decades the state [of Iraq] invested in training doctors and building better health care institutions. Regardless of the ideology of the ruling parties…there was constant interest in developing the health care infrastructure.”
He expands, “The war platform was very important in the 1980s and actually both Iraq and Iran showed…a lot of investment and mobilization of the population to respond to the possible health fallout from the war. So in both countries actually you see cutting down of infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, and the mobilization of the population to actually do public health on a grassroots level.”
“What you get in the 1990s [is] a very disturbing war project where you destroy the infrastructure of the country and then you put an entire population under sanctions. And that experiment soon in a very quick way begins to undermine the functioning of a relatively powerful state infrastructure…Which basically also means a kind of a dismantlement of human infrastructure of expertise and knowledge and training networks. So all of this gets completely dismantled in relationship to the lack of available supplies and deterioration in hospital sanitation and increases in in poverty and inequality,” explains Dewachi.
Dewachi is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Anthropology. Dewachi graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 2008. His research focuses on the biomedical, environmental, and social experiences of war injury, displacement, and the rise of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) across different conflict-settings and therapeutic geographies in the Middle East. His work has culminated in the inauguration of the Conflict Medicine Program at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Is American global hegemony already over? On this week’s podcast, Daniel Nexon talks about his latest book, co-authored with Alexander Cooley, Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order, with Marc Lynch. The book explores pathways in which hegemonic orders come apart—short of great power war—and the kinds of processes that are playing out in shaping global politics today.
“The big biggest change since the 1990s has been the development of the fact that many more powers not just China and Russia but also Saudi Arabia had the capacity to and have been engaged in efforts to ride some of the kinds of goods we associate with international order; with hedge funds, private and club goods development assistance, that sort of thing. And that these are increasingly in sort of conflict with one another; they're increasingly representing contestation over the shape of order rather than say collusion to maintain a similar kind of broad order, " Nexon argues.
He explains that the United States "had to engage in huge payouts and huge concessions to allies like Saudi Arabia to try to reassure them and those types of bargaining, those kinds of bargaining processes are actually fairly fundamental the way that that ordering works, that hegemony works."
"It's important when we talk about the sort of unraveling of the US's ability to engage in sort of unbridled hegemonic ordering that it's not just a story about the rise of a potential peer competitor in China or the activities of a traditional great power like Russia, it's also a story about the diffusion of power outward from states that are not global great powers but are also capable of playing this game," said Nexon.
Nexon is an Associate Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies and was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018. His book, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (2009), won the International Security Studies Section Best Book Award for 2010.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
How did the Persian Gulf states' energy use and policies change with the discovery of oil? That is what Jim Krane tackles in his latest book, Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf, which he discusses on this week's podcast with Marc Lynch.
Energy Kingdom traces the history of the Gulf states’ energy use and policies, looking in particular at how energy subsidies have distorted demand.
"Nobody ever lifted the hood on their own economies domestically in the Gulf— and looked at just how much energy they use domestically," said Krane. "Energy has been cheap in the Gulf since day one— I really kind of peg the the low prices back to the 1973 oil embargo... But the average household in the UAE used between four and five times as much electricity as a household in Arizona, where you also have a very hot climate and energy intensive lifestyles."
"It was amazing to me that even Arizona pales in comparison with energy demand and in a place like the UAE— and the UAE isn't even the highest. Kuwait is just off the charts for the amount of amount of energy that that's used." said Krane. "And one of the reasons for that is because it's just so incredibly cheap" due to government subsidies.
"Not only were rising energy demand a threat to the economy, but it's a threat to the ruling sheikhs that govern these these countries. And if they couldn't get it under control, at some point they're going to have change the way of the type of governance that they had in that region," said Krane.
Krane is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University and is the author of City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (2009). A former journalist, he was a correspondent for the Associated Press and has written for publications including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Thomas Hegghammer speaks about his new book, The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad, with Marc Lynch.
Hegghammer explains how prominent Palestinian cleric Abdallah Azzam—who led the mobilization of Arab fighters to Afghanistan in the 1980s— came to play such an influential role and why jihadism went global at this particular time.
"There were militant Islamist groups in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but they were almost all focused on domestic politics trying to topple their respective regimes. And then— kind of all of a sudden— they turn to the international stage. They start traveling around the world as foreign fighters," said Hegghammer.
"Azam is is crucial because he is the main entrepreneur behind the mobilization of the so-called Arab-Afghans in the 1980s. The Arab-Afghans were basically the foreign fighters in the War in Afghanistan in the 1980s— and Abdullah Azzam was the man who more or less brought them there."
"He set up an organization called the Services Bureau to streamline the recruitment and reception of foreign fighters. And he wrote several very influential books that motivated people to go. By the late 1980s, he was without a doubt the most famous jihadi in the world."
"He exercises influence today," said Hegghammer. "Even though he died in 1989, he is still widely read by jihadis today."
Hegghammer is a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week's podcast, Mark C. Thompson talks about his new book, Being Young, Male and Saudi: Identity and Politics in a Globalized Kingdom, with Marc Lynch.
"The main goal of this book was to give a voice to a very wide variety of young Saudi men across the Kingdom— about how they feel about living in today's contemporary Saudi Arabia, their aspirations and concerns," said Thompson.
"Outside of Saudi Arabia, people tend to look at these sort of socio-economic, socio-cultural transformations that are happening in the Kingdom— particularly in the West— through the prism of what's happening to Saudi women. And they get all the attention, whereas the young men sort of get disregarded, and yet their side of the story is as equally as important— and actually informs us about the current role of Saudi women."
Thompson is a Senior Associate Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. He is also an Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Wolfram Lacher talks about his new book, Libya's Fragmentation: Structure and Process in Violent Conflict, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast.
"The book really started with the observation that what has marked Libya's political and military landscape since 2011 is localism," said Lacher. "What I very quickly saw when I looked at this phenomenon of local forces was that we're not really talking about city states or tribes that are united in their political position. Actually, at the local level, we have competing political factions and competing military factions within these local constituencies. So you're really talking about an extremely fragmented political scene. And that has been the main obstacle to forming stable coalitions at the central government level— both after the fall of the regime in 2011, and after the second civil war in 2014-2015."
"The objective of the book really is to explain this extreme fragmentation and why nobody including Haftar has been able to overcome it...my answer in a nutshell is that it has a lot to do with the way the conflict dynamics with the way violence has transformed Libyan society," said Lacher.
Wolfram Lacher is Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). His research focuses on conflict dynamics in Libya and the Sahel region, and relies on frequent fieldwork.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Yael Zeira talks about her new book The Revolution Within State Institutions and Unarmed Resistance in Palestine with Marc Lynch. Her book examines who engages in resistance activities through an in-depth study of unarmed resistance against Israeli rule in the Palestinian Territories over more than a decade.
"The main question that inspired me to write this book is: 'Why do some people participate in risky anti regime resistance while other often pretty similar people abstain?' And this is both a classic question about collective action— and at the same time, a very human question about why ordinary people do extraordinary things."
Zeira is the Croft Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Mississippi. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Empirical Studies of Conflict Program and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week's podcast, Jonathan Fulton talks about his book China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies with Marc Lynch.
"It's interesting because a lot of the narrative about China-Gulf relations seemed to be stuck in this oil-for-trade narrative— that China is buying a lot of oil and selling a lot of stuff— and that's kind of the extent of the relationship. And from what I've seen here in Abu Dhabi, there's just so much more going on. And it really felt like like there had to be something that looked at it from an IR perspective and gave a fuller picture of the relationships," said Fulton.
Fulton explains what and how China's policy towards Gulf monarchies changed in regards to foreign and domestic policies, in the past and now.
Fulton is an assistant professor of political science in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he researches China – Middle East relations, Chinese foreign policy, the global strategic implications of the Belt and Road Initiative, and international relations of the Gulf region.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Simon Mabon speaks about his new book, Houses Built on Sand: Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast.
"I was trying to understand one way the Arab uprisings played out— in particular, the ways across the region," said Mabon. "What I've done instead is to look at how the relationship between 'rulers and ruled' has evolved across the region across the 20th and 21st centuries. And those particular relationships have created conditions that sometimes allowed for the possibility of dissent and political protest, while at other times prohibited it from taking place, as a consequence of the types of structures, forces and against coercive capacities of particular regimes— which meant that people can take to the streets or not."
Mabon is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Richardson Institute at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
This week's podcast is a conversation with Aaron Y. Zelin who discusses his new book, Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad.
In the book, Zelin explains how Tunisia became one of the largest sources of foreign fighters for the Islamic State— even though the country stands out as a democratic bright spot of the Arab uprisings and despite the fact that it had very little history of terrorist violence within its borders prior to 2011.
Zelin is the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a visiting research scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University. He is the founder of the website Jihadology.net, a primary source archive of global jihadi materials.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week's POMEPS podcast, May Darwich discusses her new book, Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region, with Marc Lynch.
"The book focuses on how threat perceptions for some states led to particular alliance decisions," said Darwich. "It looks at some historical cases ,but also some more recent cases."
"In particular, it's looking at how identity and power into plays in shaping threat perception."
"So over time the book also gives an idea of how these processes of identity change. They are very they are very slow in that change, but over time we could see that this interaction between material and identity— it's shaping both how the identity is developing over time, but also the alliance choices made based on threats to identity also shapes how actors evolve and how their roles evolve in the region."
Darwich is an assistant professor in International Relations of the Middle East in the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Launching our new season of the POMEPS Conversations podcast, Narges Bajoghli discusses her book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic. In this book, Bajoghli provides an inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic.
Dr. Narges Bajoghli is an award-winning anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer. Her work focuses on the intersections of power and media.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Shiraz Maher speaks with Marc Lynch about his new book, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. In the book, he explores the intellectual trajectory of Salafi-Jihadism from its origins in the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the jihadist insurgencies of the 1990s and the 9/11 wars.
“I wanted to chart the intellectual migration of this movement with reference to Islamic theology and to try to bring that into the Western discourse to show people here is ISIS or al-Qaeda and here is how they are rationalizing, justifying, or explaining what they're doing,” Maher explains. “I regard all these as being constructions of Islam. And that for me I think is an interesting part of the debate to look at how they're building these ideas and ideology.”
Dr. Shiraz Maher is Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and a member of the War Studies Department at King’s College London. Maher is a recognized expert on jihadist movements. The BBC has described him as “one of the world’s leading experts on radicalization,” and the Washington Post has called him “a respected specialist on Islamic State.” His book, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford University Press; and Hurst & Co.) has been widely acknowledged as a ground-breaking exploration of the political philosophy behind contemporary jihadist movements. Maher is also an adjunct lecturer at Johns Hopkins University (where he currently teaches separate courses on radicalization and political Islam), and was a visiting lecturer at Washington College during the Spring Semester of 2012 (where he taught Middle East politics).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Ariel I. Ahram speaks with Marc Lynch about his new book, Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Reshaping of the Middle East. In Break all the Borders, Ariel I. Ahram examines the separatist movements that aimed to remake the borders of the Arab world and create new independent states. With detailed studies of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the federalists in eastern Libya, the southern resistance in Yemen, and Kurdish nationalist parties, Ahram explains how separatists captured territory and handled the tasks of rebel governance, including managing oil exports, electricity grids, and irrigation networks."I think an assumption about the way the Middle East worked— especially after 2011— everyone talked about state failure, but no one had any idea what the real forces were that were emerging from state failure," says Ahram. "The presumption about the region was that if the states were broken, they would break into a million little pieces. In fact, I found that there were only certain actors and certain countries that were really pushing to redraw borders. Most of the political contestation in the region was focused on trying to take power in the center not to break away. What I wanted to do them with the book was to focus on the actors who were really pushing to address territorial issues within the state."Ahram is Associate Professor in the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs in Alexandria, Virginia, and non-resident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He earned a Ph.D. in government and M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis. He writes widely on security issues in the Middle East and North Africa. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. and has spoken and lectured at the World Bank, Marine Corps University, and the German Institute for Global Affairs. In 2015, he testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Islamic State’s abuses of women and children.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili talk about their new book, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors.
"The inspiration for the book goes back to the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon— or Israel and Hezbollah," said Peralman. "Boaz and I both had postdoc fellowships at Harvard and we met in the aftermath of that... We're both quite intrigued by one aspect of that war, which was Israel's targeting of Lebanon as a state. Why would Israel target a weak host state— and demand it to stop non-state actors?"
"We find is that in earlier years [of this policy], it's basically a trial and error kind of process. Israel has tried many different things— defensive measures, targeting civilians, etc.— and among them was what we call 'trial coercion.' So trying to target the forces of the state the military or police of the state and using that as a way to coerce the state to try to rein in the non-state actors. And when we get to the 1990s, that's where we see a shift where Israel basically adopt this policy more wholesale— and without considering whether it's working or not working," said Atzili.
"Our argument there is that attractive coercion can only succeed against a host state that is strong. The host state needs a minimum amount of political cohesion and institutional capacity to even meet the demands of the coercer. When this type of strategy is used against a weak host state— even if it is predisposed to be cooperative with Israel, even if it shares Israel's opposition to the non-state actor—it simply doesn't have the internal cohesion or institutional capacity to actually act against a non-state actor," said Pearlman.
Wendy Pearlman is an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Martin and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professorship and is a faculty fellow at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies. Boaz Atzili is an associate professor and the Director of Doctoral Studies at the School of International Service (SIS) in American University, Washington DC.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Ziya Meral speaks with Marc Lynch about his latest book, How Violence Shapes Religion: Belief and Conflict in the Middle East and Africa.
"I really wanted to demystify the conversation on religion and violence," said Meral. "I wanted to highlight another direction of this discussion— which is how violence leads to religion, how violence alters religions, and impacts them— and why is it that religions are so present in violent conflicts that they don't necessarily triggered themselves."
Meral is a British and Turkish researcher, and is a senior resident fellow at the UK Army's Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research based at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is also the Director of the Centre on Religion and Global Affairs, based in London and Beirut.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week's episode of the POMEPS Conversation Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on violent Islamism. Hegghammer talks about current status of the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as future of violent extremism.
"The way I see the the the Islamic State terrorism campaign in Europe in 2015, 2016, and 2017 happened because there was a new generation of leaders in place who hadn't quite realized or internalized the repercussions of [their] strategy," Hegghammer says. "But I think that now— even in the Islamic State family— there is a growing realization that if you want to stay alive, or if you want to keep some kind of operation locally, you want to be careful about what you what you do. So I suspect that at least the medium-term effect of this will be a certain type of some kind of taming of the Islamic State animal."
Hegghammer is currently a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Oslo. He is the author of numerous books, including Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists and The Meccan Rebellion: The Story of Juhayman al-'Utaybi Revisited.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week's podcast, Jessie Moritz discusses her research on the Rentier States. Moritz is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, Princeton University. She has conducted interviews with over 150 citizens of Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, including members of royal families, ministers, elected and appointed representatives, development experts, entrepreneurs, prominent leaders in civil society, and youth activists involved in protests since 2011. Her current research focuses on the political economy of oil in the Arabian Peninsula, with a particular focus on post-2014 economic reform programs and their impact on state-society relations.
We have to understand that before we get to oil and gas and democratization, we have to understand oil and gas and lack of mobilization- whether that's through the absence of taxation or whether that's through cooptation or the funding of a repressive apparatus. Whatever cause or mechanism we think is the most important, we have to understand the oil societal quiescence link first, and then we can move on to 'will it overthrow a authoritarian regime?'. And then 'will the outcome of that regime ever be democracy?'. There's so many steps in that process.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Jason Brownlee researches and teaches about authoritarianism and political emancipation. He is the author of Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization(Cambridge University Press, 2007), Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and (with Tarek Masoud and Andrew Reynolds) The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform(Oxford University Press, 2012), as well as articles in American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and other scholarly journals. Professor Brownlee is currently studying intersections of the U.S. political economy and Middle Eastern conflicts.
"While I think that domestic movements for promoting foreign policy change are essential and can be highly influential at particular points, for example eventually bringing the United States around to join the international consensus against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, I think for a long term behavioral change away from interventionism we would need something that is more global to provide security for the most powerful actors so that we have a time horizon in which people in which states and the people running them can see that intervention is no longer necessary."
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week's podcast, Janine Clark discusses her new book Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco: Strategies of Centralization and Decentralization (Columbia University Press, 2018). This book examines why Morocco decentralized while Jordan did not and evaluates the impact of their divergent paths, ultimately explaining how authoritarian regimes can use decentralization reforms to consolidate power.
Jordan needs a much stronger party system so not everything's reliant on tribal alliances that sort of transfer resources down. But with the system as it is, there's no way out of it. And many of [the Jordanian] mayors actually weren't getting any perks themselves but they were at the whim of other elites who use their connections in Amman to pressure mayors to do things.
Janine Clark is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Guelph. She is the author of Islam, Charity, and Activism: Middle-Class Networks and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen (2004) and coeditor of Economic Liberalization, Democratization, and Civil Society in the Developing World (2000).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Michael Herb discusses his book, The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE, on this week's POMEPS Conversations. In ths book, Herb provides a robust framework for thinking about the future of the Gulf monarchies. The Gulf has seen enormous changes in recent years, and more are to come. Herb explains the nature of the changes we are likely to see in the future.
"Oil matters. It isn't a question of whether or not there's an effective oil or not an effective oil. The question is what are the causal pathways through which oil affects politics and are those causal pathways similar across different countries. You still get some very different outcomes in terms of big questions like how powerful is the parliament and in what direction is the economy developing. And those are because oil, it has a profound effect. But it interacts with with variables that exist in the situation in those interactions produce results that are really quite different. "
Michael Herb is Chair and Professor of the Political Science department at Georgia State University. He is the author of All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Curtis Ryan discusses his new book, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics Beyond the State, on this week's POMEPS Conversations. This book explains how Jordan weathered the turmoil of the Arab Spring. Crossing divides between state and society, government and opposition, Dr. Ryan analyzes key features of Jordanian politics, including Islamist and leftist opposition parties, youth movements, and other forms of activism, as well as struggles over elections, reform, and identity.
Curtis Ryan is a professor of political science at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. He is the author of Jordan in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah (2002) and Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (2009).
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week’s POMEPS Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Lisel Hintz about her new book: Identity Politics Inside Out: National Identity Contestation and Foreign Policy in Turkey.
In this book, Hintz writes about the complex link between identity politics and foreign policy using an in-depth study of Turkey. Rather than treating national identity as cause or consequence of a state's foreign policy, she repositions foreign policy as an arena in which contestation among competing proposals for national identity takes place.
Hintz is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
Dr. Nermin Allam discusses her new book, Women and the Egyptian Revolution: Engagement and Activism During the 2011 Arab Uprisings, with Marc Lynch. Allam talks about how the she views the 2011 uprisings, and her book, which offers an oral history of women's engagement and historical contours of Egypt.
Nermin Allam is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Rutgers University-Newark. Allam holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in International Relations and Comparative Politics from the University of Alberta, Canada. Her areas of research interest include: Social movements; gender politics; Middle Eastern and North African studies; and political Islam.
Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.
On this week’s podcast, Ann Wainscott talks about her new book, Bureaucratizing Islam: Morocco and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2017) on how states in the Middle East and North Africa have responded to the War on Terror by investigating Morocco’s unique approach to counter-terrorism: the bureaucratization of religion.
"What's really interesting about the Moroccan case is that that it learns, and so you can see these real shifts in its policy," says Wainscott. "Original response to the Casablanca bombings of 2003, that's Morocco's first massive terrorist attack, was standard Middle Eastern authoritarian. But then within a year they have realized the need for a more sophisticated approach. So in 2004, the following year, they initiated what they called a reform to the religious field, haql dini."
Ann Wainscott is an assistant professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio where she teaches Middle East politics. She is currently on leave to serve as the American Academy of Religion senior fellow at the United States Institute Institute of Peace (USIP). Prior to teaching at Miami, she taught at Saint Louis University for four years. She has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, and Mali. She earned a PhD from the University of Florida in 2013.
"I see this movement away from a very rigid religious policy and towards an effort to absorb other ideologies that the Moroccan state sees as threatening and then to find a way to position the Moroccan monarchy as in some way superior."
On this week’s podcast, Frederic Wehrey talks about his new book, The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) on the aftermath of the 2011 revolution in Libya. Wehrey interviews the key actors in Libya and paints vivid portraits of lives upended by a country in turmoil: the once-hopeful activists murdered or exiled, revolutionaries transformed into militia bosses or jihadist recruits, an aging general who promises salvation from the chaos in exchange for a return to the old authoritarianism.
"Who owns the post conflict recovery? Because the mantra in U.S. was that Libyans are owning this. Well Libyans weren't equipped to own this because of Qaddafi's rule. Or perhaps less regional interference you know could have forestalled a collapse," says Wehrey. "But there again there's the question of U.S. power. How much authority do we have over these allies that are acting in contravention of our interests?"
Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He specializes in post-conflict transitions, armed groups, and identity politics, with a focus on Libya, North Africa, and the Gulf.
"The U.N. is wrestling with the question of how do you do the post conflict reconstruction when you don't have a stabilization force on the ground [in Libya]. That was a missing component that should have been part of the mix. So it's this question where you don't want a complete Iraq type scenario- where you have this occupation and militarization and heavy handed- but then the over-learning that lesson where you've got this complete vacuum is going too far in the other direction."
On this week's podcast, Julie Chernov Hwang talks about her new book, Why Terrorists Quit: The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists, (Cornell Press, 2018) on the factors that convince jihadists to move away from the extremist ideologies of groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Mujahidin KOMPAK. Over the course of six years Chernov Hwang conducted more than one hundred interviews with current and former leaders and followers of radical Islamist groups in Indonesia to write this book.
"The linchpin of successful disengagement, reintegration. is the establishment of an alternative social network of friends, mentors, and supportive family members. Then second and complementary to that are priority shifts that refocus the extremist away from movement- towards family, towards furthering one's education, towards finding gainful employment to sustain life," says Chernov Hwang. "And so these two factors taken together can help the extremists develop a post Jihad identity, possibly post group identity. And moreover they can function as a counterweight to the pull of the movement, the friends, and the incentives for reengagement too."
Julie Chernov Hwang is an associate professor of political science and international relations in the Center for People, Politics and Markets at Goucher College. She was a 2012 Luce South East Asia Fellow at the East West Center and currently serves as Managing Editor of Asian Security.
On this week's podcast, Calvert W. Jones discusses her new book, Bedouins into Bourgeois: Remaking Citizens for Globalization, (Cambridge University Press, 2017) on the state-led social engineering campaign in the United Arab Emirates.
"In the UAE, the leaders clearly don't want democratic citizens. And neither do leaders in Singapore, or leaders in China, or leaders in a lot of countries today," says Jones. "They don't want citizens making these democratic demands, but they do want citizens who are going to be contributing economically, and sometimes they want liberal citizens who are more open minded, more tolerant, more socially or have a higher civic consciousness. But they just don't want those kinds of political demands. And so that is a tricky, tricky challenge that they're dealing with in the UAE."
Calvert W. Jones is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of Government & Politics. Her current research examines new approaches to citizen-building in the Middle East, with an emphasis on goals, mechanisms, and outcomes in state-led social engineering efforts.
On this week's podcast, Asef Bayat talks about his new book, Revolution Without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring, (Stanford University Press, 2017) a comparative analysis on the 2011 revolutions and those of the 1970s.
"These [2011] revolutions happened at a time when the very idea of revolution, the very concept of revolution had dissipated," says Bayat. "The activists were not thinking in terms of revolution in the way that the activists in the 1970s or earlier during the Cold War had been thinking about revolution. They were reading about revolutions, about the experiences, having groups, and so forth."
Asef Bayat is the Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies and Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford, 2009, 2013) and Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, 2007).
"In the case of say Iran, women who have been forced to wear hijab- some do who voluntarily wear hijab, but many others do not want to wear hijab- pull back their hijabs back, and back, and back. And they do it not necessarily as a movement collectively but rather they do it in their everyday life, individually while they are on the street or on a bus. And then you do it. She's doing it, he's doing it, and many others are doing it. And you're also noticing each other doing it. There is what is called a passive network among these people. It is a collective action which is somewhat encroaching into the law of this state or norms. By doing so the hope is to create alternative norms in society."
On today's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Gershon Shafir about his latest book, A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict. Shafir is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego.
"In many ways, the occupation is all about is a military control that allows Israel to deploy various [methods] of control that no civilian government could could contemplate. This affects not only Palestinians who engage in hostile activities against Israel— or even suspect of engaging activities— but also their families, friends, and the rest of the Palestinian population."
"I would say that today Israel itself is being occupied by the occupation." Shafir says, "Not only the West Bank, but the Israeli mind is being colonized."
On this week's podcast, Joas Wagemakers talks about his new book, Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community, on the quietist ideology that characterizes many Salafi movements.
"Salafism is obviously in the news all the time. It's in the news in Western European countries, for example, as a threat usually as connected to terrorism, but it's also important because it has to do with the relation between religion and non-religious people: what role does religion play in society?" says Wagemakers. "For that reason the study of Salafism in general in important. With regard to the Middle East, we usually hear about Salafism in Egypt, sometimes in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, but not so much Jordan."
Joas Wagemakers is an Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Utrecht University. His research focuses on Salafism and Islamism. His publications include A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Salafism: Utopian Ideals in a Stubborn Reality (Parthenon, 2014 (in Dutch); with Martijn de Koning and Carmen Becker) and Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
"I remember interviewing people in 2013 who could sit in the same room, and one person said 'I support the Islamic State'. Another said 'I support Al Qaeda' and another saying 'I support all' and they could still be friends. But the polarization and the partisanship in this issue created a situation in which that sort of thing was no longer possible. The enmity between these different groups ensured that they grew apart. And you're either a supporter of the Islamic State or al Qaeda. Never the two shall meet."
On this week's podcast, Quinn Mecham talks about his new book, Institutional Origins of Islamist Political Mobilization, on the politicization of Islam.
"So often in the Arab world we think about jihadi networks; we think about sometimes Islamist movements particularly the Muslim Brotherhood that have a social component to them, but also are involved street protests in many places in the Islamic world," says Mecham. "While actually it's more common to see militias— for example, Taliban or al Shabaab in Somalia."
Quinn Mecham is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Coordinator for Middle East Studies at Brigham Young University. He was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, and was a Franklin Fellow in Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. His primary research focuses on Islamic movements and the strategies and behavior of Islamist political parties.
"As different Islamist movements observe Islamic moves in other countries, they are influenced by— and we do see clear trends over time that there is a spread across countries over time. One of the the broader trends in the book is that the big Islamist protest movements like the Iranian revolution and the post-election Algerian protests— and then sighting these kinds of things have diminished over time. Until we get to some of the core civil wars in the last few years. But the range of countries that are experiencing Islamists either voting or using violent through things has greatly expanded."
On this week's podcast, Fatima El-Issawi talks about her new book, Arab National Media and Political Change on the role of traditional media and journalists in the Arab spring.
"As an academic and former journalist, I was intrigued by the question of what would be the interplay between these movements and the traditional media, talking here about radio, TV, and print news online," says El-Issawi. "My major question was to try to dissect and to understand the interplay between this movement and traditional media, and how journalists could impact this process whether they would be encouraging change or encouraging and supporting the status quo."
El-Iwassi is a Senior Lecturer in the Journalism Department at the University of Essex. She has covered conflicts, wars, and crises in Lebanon, Post-Saddam Iraq, and Jordan, for recognized international media such as Agence France Presse (AFP) and the BBC World Service.
"Journalists in Egypt told me if you want today to do your job as journalists, you will be imprisoned because you cannot. You cannot report on the police.You cannot report on the security. You cannot report on topics that could be construed as anti-Islamic for example. So the level of restriction is very high, and most of the time, reforms were cosmetic because they were also negated by other sets of laws, but most importantly the new set of a anti-terror laws are again limiting the storytelling tools of the official narrative."
On this week's podcast, Elisabeth Kendall speaks about her research on poetry by militant jihadists, particularly in Yemen.
"There was so much poetry being produced by militant jihadist movements— and nobody was looking at it," says Kendall. "I found it initially online, but I didn't know that the online magazines as I found were also being passed around in hard copy on the ground. And I could tell that Yemen was a real hot spot for this, possibly because being the birth place essentially of Arabic poetry. It still was an oral culture, particularly in a desert environment. So I thought I'd go there and find out what was what was actually happening and how much still resonated on the ground."
Kendall is a senior research fellow in Arabic and Islamic studies at Pembroke College, Oxford University. She is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Peace and Security Initiative and the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.
"I sneaked in a little question about poetry into [a survey of eastern Yemen in 2012-2013] where I simply asked, 'How important is poetry in your daily life?' And over 2000 tribesmen and tribeswomen, 74 percent said either 'important' or 'very important,' on a scale you know six different possible answers. And that was their daily lives. So that was really fascinating because I did not ask specifically about jihadists, but what that said to me was this is no surprise therefore that militant jihadist groups are using poetry to propagate their message when it clearly still resonates so strongly on the ground."
On this week's podcast, Alexander Thurston speaks about Boko Haram and its origins and growth. Thurston is an Assistant Professor of Teaching for African Studies Program at Georgetown University and a Fellow at the Wilson Center. His new book is Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement.
"This is my attempt at a documentary history of Boko Haram. To try to draw on especially diverse written sources to reconstruct the trajectory of the movement from the time when the founders were growing up in Nigeria in the 1970s up to close to the present as it was possible to get," said Thurston.
"These groups are just very hard to completely eradicate. A proto-state that they carve out can be destroyed. It may take several years, as in the case of ISIS or it may take a very short time, as in the case of Boko Haram. But then after that, you get this long term spate of terrorist attacks. And that's a lot harder to stamp out."
On this week's podcast, Laurence Louër speaks with Marc Lynch Shia Islamic movements in the Middle East. She speaks about Bahrain's situation. "It is really a case of what I call the domestication of Shia politics because Al-Wefaq was born in 2001 as a project to unify all the different strands of Shia political Islam in Bahrain. Ali Salman, who was the head of that, wanted to reconcile the Shirazi activists and the pro-Iranian activists because the two were really rivals."
Louër is a research fellow at SciencePo and author of Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf.
Marc Lynch speaks with Susanne Dahlgren about Yemen. Dahlgren is the author of Contesting Realities: The Public Sphere and Morality in Southern Yemen, and is a Visiting Research Associate Professor at National University of Singapore as well as a Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki.
Dahlgren speaks about the history of southern Yemen and its union to become present-day Yemen in 1990. "In the beginning it was a happy union, but very soon it turned out to be very ugly politics from the perspective of the Southerners. Things went really bad in 1993– or the three years after the unity— and that led to the first inter-Yemeni war. The current war, which started in 2015 is considered by southern Yemenis as the inter-Yemeni war."
"They think that the the Houthi's movement—together with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh— want to conquer South Yemen militarily. They have taken up arms in order to resist and they are working in cooperation with with the Saudi war coalition" said Dahlgren. "In Yemen, you have two very contradictory ideas about the Saudi involvement in this war. In the south, they consider that the Saudis are they allies. While in the North, it's considered an aggression."
This week's podcast explores Palestinian refugees today, with guest Nadya S. Hajj, author of Protection Amid Chaos: The Creation of Property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps.
"I started visiting [Palestinian refugee] camps in 2004. The camps looked really different than these impermanent types of places— and people were doing much more than surviving. They were actually thriving. Physically you could see this: over time, their homes had become more permanent structures. There were businesses. There were paved roads. There was a real estate market. There was a lot of entrepreneurship going on. And institutional literature and economics literature didn't really explain why would people do that if they knew they were in a refugee camp. Why would someone invest in the world around them?" said Hajj, assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College.
"I started to think that property rights were one key tool for creating order. They served more than just an economic purpose," said Hajj. "It wasn't just about protecting assets, but the way in which Palestinians constructed property rights that became a way of enshrining their communal identity. So it served more than just protecting an economic asset. It was also about protecting the communal identity in a place that was under a lot of threat by a much more powerful host states and nationalist parties that would float through."
"Camps are not just randomly strewn about individuals living in this place. Most camps replicate pre-1948 villages, so people that were neighbors prior to 1948— their families continue to remain neighbors in those neighboring villages from that same region are replicated in the camps," said Hajj. "This has good things and bad things to it. On the one hand, it's a really positive thing because you have usually shared ideas of what's appropriate behavior— and you have a shared understanding of how we've done this in the past. But there's also the flip side of that that old feuds and disputes continue to persist till this day in the camps."
On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Toby Matthiesen about sectarianism in the Gulf, particularly looking at Saudi Arabia and Iran.
"What I'm going to try to do in my new project is to look at the impact of the Iranian revolution on Shia movements— and on the regional more broadly— but also the reaction towards Iran," said Matthiesen. "I think we are living in a new era. More spaces have opened up for confrontations, and there's a stronger I 'internationalization' of particular, local conflicts— and a connection to each other, and a correction of that to the broader kind of Saudi-Iranian or Iranian-versus-a-lot-of-others rivalry, which was there to a certain extent before, but the Syrian war has just opened up."
Matthiesen is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Relations of the Middle East at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of several recent books including The Other Saudis: Shi’ism, Dissent and Sectarianism recently published by Cambridge University Press and Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't.
"In the context of the Arab uprisings, and the crackdown on Shia protest movements, you have almost the whole clerical leadership of the Shia community in Saudi Arabia now backing the state line. Telling people not to protest, not to make any trouble, just stay quiet and basically work together with the ruling family. One of the only people who didn't do that was Nimr al-Nimr and he's been executed. But people from all the different movements— whether they're pro Iranian or anti-Iranian or old clerical families— more or less agree on the politics of no confrontation with the Saudi state."
"What I'm trying to do is combine a kind of broad IR, and international history perspective that looks at archives around the world with interviews, and sources from the region, memoirs and publications." said Matthiesen. "History is always written from where we are right now— that's why we write history. So we can't get around that fact. But we obviously shouldn't impose narratives on the past just because we think they are relevant today."
Kevan Harris speaks about his new book, A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran. Harris is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"In the book, I lay out the main social welfare organizations— both that preceded the 1979 revolution and the ones that germinated afterwards. And then I asked the question, 'How can we explain the expansion of both social policy organizations and access to these organizations by the majority of the population because expansion of social policy and access to social welfare has grown since 1979," said Harris. "Very few scholars have looked at the institutions themselves, and historically trace the development of them. So I ask why, and how, did a particular social welfare organizations in Iran grow— and continue to be created?"
"Iran is not Lebanon. Iran has a population of 80 million. You can't explain mass politics in Iran through single anecdotal stories of clientelism. We get surprises on a regular basis in Iranian politics," said Harris. "I think we need to look at the middle institutions, a mezzo level understanding of Iran and many other organizations."If we historize and look at the ways that they were created, I think we'll come up with a wider set of conceptual tools to understand why the Middle East is the way it is today."
"There are market forces that explain why jihadists succeed in civil wars— when so many other types of groups look like they should have traction on the ground— don't," says Aisha Ahmad. "In order for your movement to succeed, and you have enough money to buy the bullets and feed your foot soldiers. And so there is a logic that's taking place behind the scenes that explains why these seemingly illogical movements rise to power."
"Where jihadists do well is in a vacuum in the political chaos of a failed state," says Ahmad.
Ahamd is the author of Jihad & Co.: Black Markets and Islamist Power, which looks at financing through two sets of case studies: the Afghanistan/Pakistan cluster and Somalia.
"When we look at these sorts of war economies, we need to have a holistic understanding of the kind of businesses that take place— which span both licit and illicit activities," says Ahmad.
Ahmad is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, a senior fellow at Massey College, and the co-director of the Islam and Global Affairs Initiative and a senior researcher of the Global Justice Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs.
Wendy Pearlman speaks on our podcast this week about her new book, We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria.
"Ultimately, I was asking people, 'Tell me about your story.'" said Pearlman. "And the people I interviewed told me anything they wanted to tell me."
"The book has a trajectory and has an arc. It begins with a sense of fear, intimidation, and silence— a sense of futility under authoritarianism. Then it moves through the euphoria of people participating in protest. Then it becomes increasingly dark, increasingly fragmented— and by the end there are stories of despair."
Pearlman's book is structured in different sections outlining Syrians' experiences through its modern history (you can watch Pearlman's book talk at GW here).
"I thought, 'What what does a reader need to know to understand Syria? What are the kinds of questions that occur to most readers about what does this regime all about?'" Pearlman said. "All the kinds of things that I thought readers might want to know— and the kinds of things from our shared political science background we know— were important parts of the story... I also found that the testimonies that could say them on their own. I just had to put it in a place that could walk the readers through the story."
Pearlman is an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Martin and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professorship and is a faculty fellow at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies.
"So arranging the sequence was about thinking how each excerpt could connect to what went before it and also bridge to what came after. In a way that the reader would get lost, and would leave feeling like they understood Syria better— but all of it through Syrians' words, and all of it intensely profoundly human not theoretical abstractions. By individuals saying how all of this mattered for their lives, as real people."
This week's guest is Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, who is the author of a new book, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons. Braut-Hegghammer is an associate professor of political science at the University of Oslo.
"The main ambition [of my book] is really to tell a history of these nuclear weapons programs and set them in the context of these regimes. One of my frustrations has been that many have discounted and suggested that the program wasn't successful— and that more broadly that authoritarian leaders will inevitably fail in their efforts to pursue nuclear weapons. Now, with North Korea, we can we can see that that doesn't seem right."
"The Iraqi program was actually on the threshold of success in 1991, when the Gulf War interrupted the program. Whereas the Libyan program dwindled down until 2003, without ever coming close to any kind of success and breakthrough," Braut-Hegghammer says. "These are very different outcomes even though neither country ended up with nuclear weapons. Iraq easily could have— if Saddam had not invaded Kuwait in 1990."
The Iraqi nuclear program "was managed in a very different way than I had expected. That's one of the important findings of my research is that there was much more delegation and, frankly, chaos than I had expected."
"One of the fascinating discoveries was just the ways in which scientists, engineers, and officials designed Iraq's program to be difficult to oversee. They would report on it selectively, in terms of what they were achieving and not achieving, but that they would report in a way that was very technical— difficult for anyone who wasn't a scientist to decipher."
The Liyan nuclear program differed from the Iraqi program. "it's a fascinating story and I suspect that the Libyan case is a unique one," says Braut-Hegghammer. "Consistently throughout this program— which started in 1970 and ended in 2003— you see that there were there was a small number of Libyan scientists who made very sound decisions, laid out plans that made sense. But any time these scientists tried to implement something, it all fell apart. It's a long history of initiatives that disintegrated as soon as someone had to try and organize something."
"The main reason is that Gadhafi's project was to dismantle the state. He wanted what he called a 'stateless state.' Now, if you want a successful nuclear weapons program, you have to have functioning state institutions that can plan and launch and implement and review a program that is very complex with many different components that have to work together."
"The main lesson is we can't just assume that personalist leaders will fail in these programs," says Braut-Hegghammer. "We see that the Iraqi program came close to success. When you look at North Korea today, you see a very sophisticated program."
Carter Malkasian speaks about the recent history of conflict in Iraq and how it it laid the foundation for the Islamic State to flourish. His new book is Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State.
"The question confronting every tribal leader in Anbar was: 'How do I stand up against the Islamic state if that means siding with the government— and siding against Islam?'"
Malkasian also speaks about the way the military action has changed— and what lessons we should take from Iraq. "I think if you talk to generals in the military today, you would get a much greater degree of skepticism about what one can attain. There is more worry about, 'If we're doing here is going to last? Can there be success?' I think you have much more skepticism of, 'You can have complete victory.'"
"I think this should give us pause for thinking about future interventions. So we're going into an intervention. We should be thinking, 'Well, if we're going to be putting troops there, we're going to have something there for a long time.' That means the cost— even if it's small— every year, over time we're really talking about a decade or more here that cost is going to go up. And when you see that that should make us question if we should do it in the first place that should make us question if whatever is at stake in this conflict whatever attack we think is going to occur and the United States that we should make a careful judgment is is it really that bad to warrant this kind of commitment or a very long commitment. Can't we manage this? Can't we be resilient?"
"We should not assume we will achieve victory in those cases, where we think the threat is big enough we need to do something about it. We should be looking to strategies that are thrifty that can be employed over a long time— versus something that's been fairly expensive."
"The fact that Qatar is, after all, a tiny state— but clearly with a lot of leverage that can amplify their message."
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen speaks about the crisis within the GCC with Marc Lynch in our first POMEPS podcast in the launch of our fall season. Ulrichsen is a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. His latest book is The United Arab Emirates: Power, Politics and Policy-Making.
Ulrichsen explains this summer's diplomatic showdown in historical context. "We've been here before. Like many other people, I was taken quite by surprise when this whole crisis erupted again. I had thought that the Qatari decision in September 2015 to send a thousand troops to Yemen signified the return of Qatar to the GCC fold."
Caitlin Talmadge talks about her her book 'The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes.' Her book works to explain why authoritarian militaries sometimes fight very well―and the opposite. Talmadge is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
"In my book, I present a different argument noting that we really have to look— not only at regimes military capabilities an external threats that it faces— but we have to look at the internal threats that may be facing a particular regime. In particular, in situations where authoritarian regimes consider their own military perhaps to be a liability because the military actually has the ability to overthrow the regime in a coup."
In the podcast, Talmadge goes into detail on the dynamics of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and what it says about each country's governments.
Neil Ketchley speaks about his new book Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring. Ketchley is a Lecturer in Middle East Politics, King's College London.
"The book really tries to make a contribution by drawing on a range of new and unique data sources and methods— from analyzing video footage of crowd dynamics at Tahrir, police radio transcripts from the formative early days of the mobilization, to event data from Arabic-language newspapers. In terms of the kind of a conceptual contribution, the argument is really geared around an assumption and belief: that the dynamics of street level mobilization— and contentious politics more generally— are really formative in their own right. The book argues that the ways in which Egyptians banded together and ousted Mubarak were not some kind of manifestations of cheering grievances, but also powerfully constituted the postman-Mubarak process."
"And if you want to understand the kind of key questions and episodes, you really have to take street politics very seriously."
How did the idea of a unified global Muslim community come about? That's the question Cemil Aydin and Marc Lynch tackle in this week's podcast. Aydin's new book explores the how the world's 1.5 billion Muslims have become seen as a single religious/political bloc.
"In many ways, I wanted to engage with the contemporary discussions of Muslim unity, Muslim solidarity or Muslim exceptionalism by going back to the last 200 years to try to understand the genealogy and the roots of the idea of Muslims constituting a global community and a shared political project," says Aydin, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In his book, Aydin makes the argument that up until the 19th century, there really was no Muslim world. "That doesn't mean there were many different Muslims in different parts of the world. They have always had different global or regional imaginations— but it doesn't match with our current conceptions of a Muslim world extending from Senegal or Morocco to Indonesia. Different Muslim legal scholars may have categorizations about the 'land of Islam' versus the 'land of the land of non-Muslims,'" says Aydin. "But these are legal classifications. We need to ask, 'Who made them?' or 'Who read them and how they applied them.'The fact that there were such legal categories doesn't mean that these categories are almost like a party program or a doctrine that every Muslim child had to read.... and memorize it and imagine the world accordingly."
"We have to account for the fact that Muslims lived in empires— and different empires and different empires of the world to work with. There were so many different Caliphates."
Aydin sees the history he just wrote about reflected in current events. "Publishing this book after Donald Trump is also very ironic in the sense that Trump's Muslim ban— or a kind of 'new' Islamophobia, which actually originates from the 1980s onward, after Salman Rushdie appears— again created the kind of outer boundaries of the Muslim world. The new racism against Muslims actually creates a context for Muslims to defend themselves. So I have one message for Muslims: ask for your rights, whether in America or Europe or other places, without being trapped by poisonous, bad narratives. Sometimes they think that the old narrative of Muslim solidarity to preserve themselves, or to negotiate with the colonial powers, might actually not serve their interests, but further try to 'racialize' them."
"There was an assumption that only Muslim solidarity could help Muslims, which created the counter-narrative that Muslims are almost isolated from the rest of humanity. So I try to think about these symbiotic relationship between racism against Muslims in the West and the Muslims or Muslim's own pan-Islamic thinking that their solidarity is needed to empower them." By showing how deconstruction this is, "We can think differently. We can imagine a different future. That doesn't mean that Muslims don't have a right to imagine a politics based on their religious values. As a Muslim, I also do that— some of my values come from the example of Prophet Mohammad and others. But that shouldn't be a trap. Some of my values also come from the examples of Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. So why am I only thinking that they will only come from a specified, narrow notion of religion?"
Protest, Democracy, & Violence in the New Middle East: Conversation with Steven Cook (S. 5, Ep. 37) by Marc Lynch
Iran holds presidential elections later this week, and Marc Lynch talks with M. Ali Kadivar about what to expect. Kadivar is a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute.
"Ahmadinejad's era was significant for several reasons, but one reason was that the process started to replace the old guard of the Islamic Republic with a new set of elites," said Kadivar. "I think Rouhani represents the different strands: one is the old guard again, being back and exerting control. The other is the social support that Rouhani has. A lot of the reformist people who ruled for democratic change now see Rouhani as the most viable candidate that can push forward their agenda."
"An interesting thing about the conservative candidates is that you see the conservative discourse is very weak in their electoral platforms. They don't talk about Islamic values or the Western invasion the culture of Iran. Most of what they're talking is the economic promises," said Kadivar. "In a way, I can see this election as kind of a defeat for conservative discourse. I think they have realized that to win a presidential election they cannot talk about those things."
The conservative candidates will "criticize Rouhani for not being able to translate the nuclear agreement to economic gains for peace," said Kadivar. "So they say, 'We gave up on our rights. But people are not seeing that in their daily life. They don't have jobs."
"On the other hand, Rouhani is saying, 'I'm the person who has delivered on promises. I promised to do this. I delivered this. We have been able to sell our oil, a barrier for banking has been removed,' and then he's promising to deliver more."
"Many people believe that this presidential election is not just about presidents. So Iran's supreme leader is elderly and, I think, he wants to publicly recognize that he may not live longer so people are thinking and talking about his next successor. Ebrahim Raisi is being talked about as the hardliners' candidate for Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini... many people believe that he ran for president to set the stage for being Iran's next supreme leader."
On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch talks with Peter Krause, an assistant professor at Boston College. Krause's new book, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win, focuses on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it.
"The book itself answers several questions to people who study national movements, nationalism, or political violence. The first question is why some nations get states and others don't," said Krause.
"These groups simultaneously have, what I call, organizational goals— which is, they want to have power. They want to have power and notoriety. They want to survive. They want to increase their membership. At the same time they have these strategic goals of statehood or independence. From the work I've done, it's clear to me that groups and individuals in them care about both of these objectives," said Krause. "My argument is simply that: most of the time you never go broke betting on the fact that groups care more about their organizational goals. They always want to make sure that they're maximizing their power. The argument is simply: when maximizing their power means that they should pursue and achieve strategic goals, that's when it happens. That's the idea that if you're the hegemon, the best way to become stronger is actually to win to achieve victory to achieve a new state. Because now you get the office, the wealth, and the status that comes along with it. However, if you are a weaker organization and you're not in line to inherit the throne, then you actually have an incentive to 'spoil a deal.' Not necessarily trying to prevent independence forever, but hold it off for now."
"If you look at studies of national movements and insurgencies, it's pretty close to consensus that foreign support matters," said Krause. "What I argue, however, is what nature of that support takes and how effective it is depends a great deal on the internal balance of power inside the movement."
Nadia Marzouki explores how the topic of Islam has become so contentious in America.
Marzouki says her research showed her that controversies around Muslims living in America don't just express Islamophobia. "They betray and express a deeper discomfort and unease with an understanding of law, an understanding of rights, and an understanding of equal democracy. This is really what's at stake in the conversations among the disputes around mosques, Sharia law, and also— in a more minor way— the headscarf... or various forms of religious rituals related to the Islamic communities."
As an observer from Europe, Marzouki says, "It was really surprising to see how similar all the rhetorical tropes animating anti-Muslim movements were similar in Europe and the United States. This was all the more surprising because all the sociologies of Islam in Europe and United States. You don't have the same Muslim communities. They don't come from the same ethnic backgrounds. They don't have the same socio-economic level. They don't have the same level of education. In general, they're much more educated and have a better social economic level in the U.S. Before 2001, and even more so before 2008, Islam was never such a big problem in domestic politics in the United States."
"What's really completely absurd and problematic in the current situation both in Europe and in the U.S. is that we are deciding policies based on stereotypical discourse— and without any account for the empirics and the lived realities of Muslim communities."
Marzouki is an Andrew Carnegie Centennial Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and a research fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative.
Lisel Hintz speaks about what lead to and the significance of this weekend's constitutional referendum in Turkey.
"The question: is how long will [Erdogan] stay in power? Right now, this could leave him in power up until 2029— possibly even longer, depending on some certain circumstances. We suspect that he's probably grooming you know his son-in-law, who's currently a minister, to to take his place. Will he be willing to give up those reins? We've seen successive purges of his own party from those who don't agree with him. It is important to go back and understand the AKP's trajectory, which was that not everyone agreed with Erdogan," said Hintz. "It's going to be fascinating to see— both from institutional and from a personal perspective— how Erdogan plans to continue this, particularly given that Turkey— from an economic standpoint— is in a very fragile state."
"From an identity politics perspective— and also just sort of an institutional party politics perspective as well— not a whole lot has changed." said Hintz. "I'm not really optimistic about a really strongly united opposition that can come forward and challenge the AKP."
"[Erdogan] doesn't have the coalition that he would like to enact some of the reforms he would like in the future. He has been courting the Nationalist Action Party, but only some of them supported the referendum. There was actually quite a big split."
"What we know is that the AKP is probably going to do is push for the death penalty to be reinstated because that's something that polls at about 65-70 percent across Turkey— and would really be able to rally up a lot of support for him. So I think he has channels to further consolidate the regime."
Hintz is a visiting assistant professor in the Political Science Department at Barnard College, Columbia University. Next fall, she will be an
"One of the most interesting puzzles to emerge out of contentious Islamist movements is the fact that these movements are not united," says Mohammed M. Hafez on this week's POMEPS Conversations podcast. "The common finding today is that— in civil wars, insurgencies, and civil conflicts in general— these movements are fragmented, they're competitive, and sometimes they're fratricidal.
Hafez talks about these fratricidal movements globally and throughout the Middle East region.
Hafez is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Hafez focuses on Islamic fundamentalism, radicalization and counter-radicalization.
On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Ora Szekely, an assistant professor of political science at Clark University. Szekely's recent book, The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East, compares the performances of four key non-state actors in the Arab-Israeli conflict ecosystem: the PLO, Hamas, Hizbullah, and Amal.
"Why is it that you can have two militant groups— fighting against the same adversaries, same territory— and yet you get these really different outcomes?" said Szekely. "The answer to that—or at least the answer we see embedded in a lot of reporting on the Middle East or on non-state actors in general is...this sort of implicit assumption that how well these guys do is basically a function of how much material resources they have. But when you look a little bit more closely, it turns out that even groups that have pretty similar amounts of equipment can have really different outcomes. What I found is that it's not so much the stuff— it's how you got it in the first place that really matters in shaping how you're going to do in the long run."
Lihi Ben Shitrit speaks about her new book, Righteous Transgressions: Women's Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right. Shitrit is an assistant professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens.
"The book is a comparative study of women's activism in the Israeli and Palestinian right, but specifically four groups: the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, the Islamist movement in Israel, and the Palestinian Hamas," said Shitrit. "What motivated me to do this was the fact that you can still pick up a book on any of these movements and not find any women mentioned— not by name, not even by subject, not even the category of women. As if women are not important to the politics of these movements. And for me that was a glaring gap because we know women support these movements."
"One thing that I found was that women in these movements think that they're not recognized enough in terms of the general public— the media and academia don't cover them and don't recognize their contributions. Their own movements recognize their contributions, but the wider public doesn't," said Shitrit. "So they wanted also to convey their message. And at the end of the process, I had so much access and great support by women who really supported what I was doing."
"The question that I'm asking is how do women in very conservative religious movements— with very clear ideas about women and men's different public and private roles— how are they able to participate in forms of activism that seems to seem to transgress or go beyond what the movement say that they should do?" Shitrit said. "And why do we see variation? Why do we see that in some movements, women's activism really adhere to the very conservative ideology of their movement— and in other movements women totally transgress and participate in much more expansive forms of activism."
"I'm hoping what would come out from the book would be that the people I worked with actually read the book— and maybe find that they have so much in common with women in these movements. Maybe this could be a kind of fresh step towards seeing the others as someone who has something in common with you."
"The IRGC's powers are often exaggerated.... but on the flipside of that, I think it's also often dismissed— where particularly from the U.S. perspective, they see the IRGC as a convenient foil. How do we how do we make the case against Iran? We use the IRGC and all of its nefarious activities as an excuse," Afshon Ostovar said. "You see this in Yemen in particular, where there's countless articles that come out that say the IRGC is not important in Yemen... This sort of thing I think is also missing the point"
"It's hard to get them right, but it's easier to sort of exaggerate or minimize their influence."
Ostovar is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His recent book, Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards examines the rise of Iran’s most powerful armed force—the IRGC—and its role in power politics, regional conflicts, and political violence.
"I see the IRGC as being much not just devoted to [Ali] Khamenei, but being devoted to the office of the supreme leader. The supreme leader itself is the centerpoint of the Islamic system of Iran...And I think that the symbolic importance of the supreme leader is something that that the IRGC doesn't want to doesn't want to do without," said Ostovar "A few years ago, particularly after 2009 when the IRGC was involved in the crackdown, and you had a lot of talk about their rise in power at that time. One of the discussions was, 'Well is is Iraq moving towards a dictatorship or are they just going to squeeze out the supreme leader?'"
"One of the arguments that I make in my book is I don't think that they'll do that because I think I think the supreme leader is very much not just important to them symbolically, but he is tied into their identity. They are the servants of the supreme leader. They are literally the guardians of that Islamic system. They don't want to be the leaders of it. That doesn't mean that they don't want to have their way— they get their way more often than not— but they they survive when they don't get their way."
"I think the most important change [in Syria] was a stepping back by the United States," said Phillips. "You get a desire by all passing opportunities being seen by other emerging regional powers: notably, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in opposition to the rise of Iran. They all want to take advantage, or to push their own agendas more. as the U.S. seems to step back. Because they have a particular interest in Syria, Syria ends up pretty early on a battle ground for these regional rivalries. One thing that really struck me doing this research was going right back to the summer of 2011, after the Arab Spring begins to settle down a little bit— and Syria continues to escalate into conflict. Most of these regional actors are looking at Syria, not with Islam, but as an opportunity. And I would argue that they are on their own way pouring fuel onto the fire of the conflict, rather than to sort of try to deescalate. I think that's a major reason why you see a rush to arms answer."
On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Chris Phillips about international politics in Syria. Phillips is a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London He is also an associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. His most recent book is The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East.
"I don't think you'll see much change from the Saudis, rather than just trying to back the non-jihadist groups in a non-Muslim Brotherhood groups," said Phillips. "Turkey, on the other hand, you do see a full 180— and it's been quite recent. It's almost too late and sort of getting a little bit negligent on the threat posed by jihadists, even after ISIS capture Mosul. Turkey is very reluctant to join the United States coalition against ISIS— and only after it starts getting targeted at home by ISIS attacks does it begin to switch and turn on ISIS."
"Now, most recently in 2016, it actually recognized that the threat coming from Syria— both jihadism and forms of Kurdish nationalism— as great and the threat to assets are only recently we've seen Turkey actively drop the policy of going after Assad. But that took five years, and arguably it was quite clear that this current policy wasn't working for about 2013 really."
"The purely theoretical approach doesn't explain that you do need to look at those internal factors. I wouldn't sort of put my thoughts on looking at the system side of things," said Phillips. "I wouldn't lump myself so clearly in a sort of a 'hard systemic realist camp' because I think that actually the internal dynamics interact with those systems of system level."
Colin Kahl speaks with Marc Lynch about U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration. Kahl is an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President.
On Iran, Kahl spoke about the strategy behind the JCPOA. "I can't think of an actual bonafide Iran expert on on planet Earth that believed that you were going to resolve this problem without giving the regime some face-saving way out on enrichment. And that was, I think, an inflection point in the decision of the Obama administration, which was ultimately not to drive the program to zero— not because we wouldn't prefer a world in which every nut and bolt of Natanz and Fordow enrichment facility was dismantled— but because that's a perfect world that perfect scenario was impossible to achieve. No matter how much pressure you were going to you were going to put on the regime."
"We found that in the case of countries— like Israel, Saudi Arabia or others— they want us to do two things, ultimately that the president was unwilling to do because of his overall theory of the role of military force in the region. One was they very much wanted us to engage in regime change— especially as it related to Iran. At the end of the day, the Israelis and the Saudis will never will never tolerate an Iran that's a strong actor in the region as long as this regime is in power. At the end of the day, they were more concerned about the regime and its had hegemonic ambitions than its nuclear program— even though the Israelis continually dialed up the existential language on the nuclear program. They did not believe that the threat from Iran— whether its nuclear or anything else— could be settled with anything short of regime change. And so, that was their preference: to basically leave the sanctions in place until the regime in Tehran went out of existence. And if they crossed some mythical red line, smash them like we smashed Saddam. The president wasn't going to go in for that."
"The second issue is the president was extraordinarily clear about: defending our allies from external aggression. Which is why we did so much to bolster their own capabilities— unprecedented amounts of military assistance to Israel, unprecedented steps to maintain their qualitative military edge— even as we were providing unprecedented degrees of security assistance to our partners in the Gulf, to Jordan, and otherwise. But what we weren't going to do is give them a blank check to drag us into conflicts that we believed didn't serve their interests. And certainly didn't serve our interests," Kahl said. " I think it all goes back to Obama's fundamental humility about what military forces can and can't accomplish."
Kahl also addressed criticism of foreign policy during the Obama administration. "Probably no area of the Obama administration's foreign policies came under more criticism than the approach to Syria. And yet every proposal— whether it was arming the opposition, putting in place a no fly zone or safe zones, or standoff strikes, or even you name it— whatever big idea was was out there in think tank land or in the academic world. They were deliberated over and over and over again. And so it doesn't mean that policy makers always make the right decision. They're human beings. They have incomplete information. They make wrong decisions all the time. But they're a lot smarter than you think."
"The last point I will make just briefly is that I also think academics probably don't appreciate the degree to which things that seem relatively banal— like process, budgets and whether human beings are getting enough sleep— actually affect the outcome of certain things. And those are just constraints— bureaucratic and human."
On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Michael Farquhar about the history of the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, where more than 11,000 young men have studied religion in Saudi Arabia.
"There were obviously suggestions and not always ill-founded suggestions that this had fed into the rise of a very morally conservative Salafi understanding of Islam in lots of context around the world, and that that in turn kind of fed into dynamics of sectarianism and intolerance and communal conflict, and perhaps even violence in some contexts," said Farquhar.
"My feeling was that there was room for a lot more attention to some more theoretical questions. So, questions about what it really means in practice to kind of export a particular cultural framework like Wahhabism. To kind of pick it up and move it to another location, and what that really looks like in practice. And questions about how ideas -- religious ideas -- can perhaps transform as they cross borders, and can perhaps be put to new uses and new contexts."
Michael Farquhar is a lecturer in Middle East politics at King's College London. His new book is from Stanford University Press and called Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education and the Wahhabi Mission.
“As it approaches year 40, the Islamic Republic of Iran is suffering from a deep crisis of legitimacy,” Nader Hashemi says on this week’s POMEPS Conversation podcast.
“The biggest threat that I think the regime faces— from its own statements and policies— is really the threat that it fears, like other authoritarian regimes, from its own population and groups that want political change.”
Hashemi is an associate professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.
This semester, POMEPS hosted Merouan Mekouar to speak about his latest book, Protest and Mass Mobilization: Authoritarian Collapse and Political Change in North Africa. Mekouar is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada.
"Without respected actors willing to use their prestige to raise the attention of the rest of the population, their institutional networks to help spread social mobilization, and their international contacts to call the attention of foreign media, cases of isolated protests remain largely confined to where they were born," said Mekouar.
This week's podcast is an edited version of Mekouar's talk at George Washington University.
"I felt paralyzed when the Arab uprising started unfolding. I saw the focus back then on on social media to be missing something and I did not know quite what I felt it was missing," said Marwan M. Kraidy.
On this week's Middle East politics podcast, Marc Lynch has a conversation on creativity and the Arab Uprisings with Kraidy, the Anthony Shadid Chair at the University of Pennsylvania, .
"So I did not write anything. I started thinking about it." Kraidy spent a year in Beirut, traveling the region and collecting items that showed people creatively expressing dissent, like leaflets, media, and taking photos of graffiti.
From that research, he wrote his latest book, The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World, which looks at radical and gradual activism in the modern Middle East. "The main argument that I make in the book is that this kind of political creativity is nearly always collective," said Kraidy.
With the tense situation in many Middle Eastern countries, Kraidy acknowledges that creative insurgency often goes dormant for periods of time. "There is such a thing as war fatigue, so the thing with this kind of creative energy is that it goes underground. But it's always there and it waits for activists. It waits for auspicious opportunities to emerge," said Kraidy.
"They can also be overground, but typically not in the Middle East. If you go to Berlin, Amsterdam, or New York, you have so many of these graffiti artists you know they may be doing designs for Louis Vuitton, or they may be having a residential fellowship at MOMA, but they're still practicing their skills. They're becoming more well-known. They're writing comic books about the revolution. I don't think these energies are lost. They've been redirected."
Kraidy says that these creative dissidents' locations away from the region matters, "But not not as much as would would have mattered in revolutions past, where if you're not there you're just not there. I think people are waiting for the right opportunity."
"I was in Egypt during the revolution," Armbrust said, "As probably everybody knows the first 18 days of the revolution when the Mubarak regime was overthrown was a period of great euphoria...this is this is exactly what you should expect but ritual is a name that we give for dealing with social transitions that we know will happen."
This week, Marc Lynch talks with Walter Armbrust to talk about Egypt and the 2011 uprisings, and how his latest research project as he was living in Egypt in 2011, researching another project.
"The initial period of euphoria then transforms into a state of everybody choosing sides and reckoning power, which is what happened in the revolution. And actually it explains many revolutions. Revolutions often end up with unintended consequences. That was certainly the case in the Egyptian revolution, but it's actually very common in revolutions," Armbrust said.
Armbrust also spoke about his research into how Islamists are portrayed in Egyptian cinema and in Egyptian television dramas.
"Prior to the revolution, there was no such thing as Islamist TV production. Islamists had many other channels into media. They flourished in an environment of decentralized media," Armbrust said.
Ambrust is the Hourani Fellow and a University Lecturer in modern Middle Eastern studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford.
Yesterday, POMEPS held a dynamic conversation with Nathan Brown about his latest book— out this week— Arguing Islam after the Revival of Arab Politics. Brown was joined by Jocelyne Cesari, a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and associate professor of the practice of religion, peace, and conflict resolution in Georgetown’s Department of Government, and Peter Mandaville, a senior advisor to the special representative for religion and global affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Brown spoke about the current state of Arab politics: "The polarization that has set in is partially a result of [mobilizing your followers]. There are few points at which, the vital public argumentation actually changes from abstract argumentation about what should be done to concrete political processes that produce political outcomes. And so people remain very strongly in their own camps. The polarization we see so deeply entrenched in the Arab world from that way is therefore may not be so much the disease as the symptom. That is to say, not so much the cause but is as an effect very much of political systems that have opened themselves up to political debate, but not given very healthy ways in which to translate political debate into political outcomes."
This week, Marc Lynch speaks A. Kadir Yildirim about his new book, "Muslim Democratic Parties in the Middle East: Economy and Politics of Islamist Moderation," which analyzes Islamist parties' moderation trajectories and the impact of economic liberalization processes on moderation in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey. Yildirim is a research scholar at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
"Typically when we see studies on Islamist parties, we see a focus on the parties themselves. But at distance, we see their links to the constituency and support base. These are political parties, so we need to look at the relationship between the two," says Yildirim. "I look at how changes in the constituencies of these parties actually pushes the parties into changing their positions."
"In which ways can we try to entice Islamist parties to change themselves? One takeaway point is that this is a very long process. We have to recognize these are political parties, and they speak to certain constituencies. Unless we take those into account, it's really difficult," says Yildirim.
"In my book, I look at Turkey, Morocco and Egypt. I chose these countries because they allow us to look into the operation of economic liberalization to different degrees."
Adria Lawrence speaks about about the recent elections in Morocco on this week's POMEPS podcast with Marc Lynch, "The outcome isn't really surprising, though very few people expected a big surprise. The PJD [Party of Justice and Development, a moderate Islamist-oriented party] took more seats than its rival."
Adria Lawrence is Associate Professor of Political Science and a research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Her research reflects her expertise in the politics of the Middle East and North Africa.
"It was probably quite expected for the PJD to continue its prior mandate for the last five years with a majority of seats in the parliament," Lawrence says.
"Secularists were worried about what an Islamist party would do, but the PJD hasn't pushed for that much of an Islamist agenda." In fact, Lawrence says, the PJD has not accomplished a lot in the last five years. They "haven't managed to make major steps forward on their major platforms, like corruption. They've had some pretty serious problems to face: there's been a drought in Morocco, there's an unemployment crisis. They've had a lot of obstacles, and I think they've done what they could in the parliament."
Still, voter turnout was low. "It would appear that turnout was worse in this election than in 2011— still less than half of eligible voters."
In this week's POMEPS conversation, Marc Lynch speaks with David Patel about the borders of the Middle East and the legacy of Sykes–Picot. "When Westerners talk about reimagining the borders of the Middle East, what they're thinking of is smaller states." But, says Patel, "we should be careful when we talk about 'reimagining the borders.'" Patel is a lecturer in the department of politics and senior research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.
Looking at the rhetoric of Sykes-Picot. "ISIS isn't a secessionist movement. It's not trying to break away from Iraq or Syria. ISIS talks about Sykes–Picot and the conspiracy of it."
"People don't know what to call ISIS now. Calling it a 'state,' even if it dies and becomes a 'failed state,' is a political statement. But it's been there for three years, governing lives... you can travel from one end of the Islamic State to the other with a piece of paper that says, 'This person is allowed to transport agricultural goods. Those are state-like features, and it's survived for quite a long time."
The 1970s was a pivotal time for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. In this week's POMEPS Conversations podcast, Salim Yaqub talks about how that decade was the most influential time for the emergence of the Arab world as a major player in international politics — a topic he explores in depth in his new book, Imperfect Strangers: Americans and Arabs in the 1970s.
"As a historian, I'm often reluctant to opine too directly on what's going on today," Yaqub says. "If you want to understand the course that U.S.-Arab relations have taken— that curious state of affairs — you have to take a look at what happened in the 1970s. "
"Geopolitical developments that generate ill will between the two societies [in the 1970s], also at the same time create possibilities for better relations and for more favorable perspectives. It plays itself out in the petrodollars story, but also in Arab-Israeli diplomacy," Yaqub says.
Yaqub is a professor at UC Santa Barbara, and directs UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History.
Local Palestinian elections across the West Bank and Gaza were scheduled to take place next month, but they have been suspended. On this week's POMEPS podcast, scholar Diana Greenwald explains that, while elections are frequently canceled or postponed in the Palestinian territories, "This was set to be a significant one because both Fatah and Hamas were set to compete against each other for the first time since 2006."
"It's largely being seen by observers as a means by Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank, to postpone— or even cancel— this vote to avoid an embarrassing loss at the polls."
Greenwald is a doctoral student in comparative politics at the University of Michigan where she focuses on the politics of revenue mobilization in transitional settings, including new states, aspiring states, and conflict/post-conflict states. Greenwald was a 2012 recipient of our POMEPS Travel-Research-Engagement grant.
"We can't look to local elections as a driver of change at a larger level in the conditions of the conflict. I think anyone who is framing these as a 'release value' for the Palestinian public to blow off steam and forget about the larger issues surrounding them is probably mistaken."
Next week, Jordan is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections. Coming in the midst of intense economic challenges and security fears, the vote will be the first held under a new electoral law, and the first contested by multiple Islamist movements. On POMEPS Conversation #82, Marc Lynch speaks with Curtis Ryan, author of Jordan in Transition: From Hussein To Abdullah, to preview those elections and their potential significance.
"Sectarianism tends to internally fracture societies. It's extremely dangerous," says Raymond Hinnebusch. "Compare that to the way pan-Arabism was used to integrate the various Arabic speaking minorities who previously felt excluded, but if Arab identity was the common identity, it didn't matter if you were a Sunni or Shia, an Alawite or Druze, you were included in the community."
Marc Lynch speaks with Hinnebusch about international relations in the Middle East and emerging sectarianism in the region. Hinnebusch is a professor of international relations at the University of St. Andrews.
"People have many identities and sect may only be one of them. For quite a long time, people embraced Arab nationalism as an inclusive identity," says Ray Hinnebusch.
But what went wrong in the Middle East to see the rise of sectarianism we see today?
"If you got a similar situation to what we had in Iraq— namely, people in a failed state where people can't depend on the state for security so they fall back on their sectarian group, armed if possible. If you had a situation like that, then you would get the replication of the Iraqi disaster. And we have seen that— particularly in Syria and one could say in Yemen."
"You have Al Qaeda and the Islamic State taking advantage of this," Hinnebusch says, "The invasion of Iraq created this environment where Al Qaeda could regain its stature and its never looked back since then."
Looking to the future, Hinnebusch says: "I think people still have many identities, and the sectarian one is perhaps the most salient one at present. There is the risk a new generation will be brought up with only that one, but clearly there are other potential identities: Syrian, Arab, Sufi...there are many that are in competition and they could come back in a period of reconstruction and peace. That's what I hope."
"If you compare the Egyptian military and the Tunisian military, obviously these are two very different institutions from and organizational perspective, but also their understanding of their political role." Kevin Koehler says. "The Egyptian military sees itself as a political institution and has a history of this in their country, which is not true in the same extent for the Tunisian military."
On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Kevin Koehler about the role of militaries in Middle East governments and how political scientists study Arab military. Koehler is an assistant professor at the department of political science at the American University in Cairo.
Koehler also speaks about his research interviewing the Syrian army deserters. "One of the main conclusions which came out of this is that the level of control and supervision— even in the context of the ongoing civil war— is extraordinary, relative to other militaries and what common sense explanations would suggest about what drives desertion and loyalty in the Syrian military." Koehler says. "It's much less about identity factors or sectarian factors and it's much more about the lack of trust."
Critical analysis of Tunisia and the Ennahdha party by Monica Marks. Marks is an Oxford PhD candidate, Rhodes Scholar and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Despite the shift Ennahdha has made from Islamism. Marks argues it is a formalization of already-held beliefs. "Ennahdha has a higher objectives- based view of how religion should inform politics. The idea is that the principles can give shape and purpose to policies but that shari'a and Islam do not offer a policy handbook. This is not a new development for Ennahdha.
"We should questions terms like 'secularism,' 'post-Islamism,' and 'Islamism' itself— and to what extent they really even apply to the actors we look at. Because Ennahdha is inhabiting a politics place where separating religion and politics is not truly possible in the way Western liberals might conceive it."
Marks says that regional context is important to understanding Ennahdha. "The Egypt coup exacerbated re-exsisting patterns of compromise inside Ennahdha. That's not to say the coup didn't have an effect— or wasn't important— it was. But it didn't fundamentally change the direction. It just made a lot of people in Ennahdha say, 'The stakes are even higher. We need to do this.'"
"The real turning point moment in Tunisia that forced the hard-line thinkers in Ennahdha to ride the minimalist train was the twin assassinations of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi. They sparked off the Bardo crisis of summer 2013 and it really created a huge political crisis, where you had a lot of actors calling for the anti-democratic ouster of Ennahdha."
"You could argue that the post-Islamist turn happened in the 1980s with Ennahdha. This movement was repeatedly in conversation with opposition movements....it's important to have a broader contextual view."
André Bank, a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), talks about how Jordan is dealing with the influx of Syrian refugees by looking at how Jordanians perceive the Syrian crisis and how it shapes their political economies.
"Jordan is doing a relatively good job with the Syrian refugees when compared to Lebanon or northern Iraq." However, Banks says, "The Jordanian state still upholds the image that the Syrians ultimately will return....though it seems as though the Syrians will be there for the longterm, so solutions will need to be found."
"We've visited schools and seen some resentment from Jordanians— the school teachers now have to teach double shifts— it's usually the case that Jordanian kids go in the morning and Syrian kids go in the afternoon for three hours — if the go at all. Roughly half of Syrian kids go to Jordanian schools."
This resentment has bonded Jordanians of different heritage. "When you look at this historically, in the mid-2000s, with an influx of Iraqis you had similar tendencies [to today, with Syrian refugees]. Palestinian-Jordanians and Jordanian-Jordanians bonded against the Iraqis. It seems whenever a new group of refugees comes to a place like Jordan, you have some of these discourses against them. But, in a country like Jordan, these exclusionary discourses remain verbal and almost never leave to direct violent action."
We hear from Wendy Pearlman, an associate professor in the department of political science at Northwestern University.
Pearlman has carried out open-ended interviews with displaced Syrians since 2012. "Like many people watching the Syrian uprising from afar, I was fascinated of the individual-level experience of what this must have been like for Syrians who went out into the streets, what drove them to do so, what drove them to stay. How people were experiencing protest, how people were experiencing violence. How people ultimately fled the country as refugees. I decided there was no better way to understand that lived experience— the personal experience of dramatic political phases— than to get to individuals themselves and ask them to tell me their stories."
"For the most part, it's not that the people are telling the same anecdote. They're telling very different anecdotes of their own personal experiences. They'll tell personal stories of their childhood under Assad's Syria, and when they went to their first demonstration and what it was like. They'll tell different stories how it felt to live under shelling. But I see very similar themes coming out of those anecdotes that connect them all."
Pearlman and Lynch also discuss the ethics of conducting fieldwork with people in vulnerable situations. You have to get concent, but there's an added level, too. There have been times when people have agreed to speak with me, but I could tell they really didn't want to....it's wise at that point as an interviewer to pull back. Technically, that person has consented to an interview du jour; de facto, that person is being put in an uncomfortable position and doesn't really want to talk? At that point, I think you say, 'Thank you very much,' and get out— to not cause that person harm."
On this week's POMEPS Conversation podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Bassel Salloukh, an associate professor of political science at the Social Sciences Department at Lebanese American University.
"Many countries are becoming like Lebanon where people start thinking of sectarian/tribal/ethnic divisions and identities as primordial. And then the only way to get out of the conflict is through the institutionalization of these identities into a new, power-sharing pact. But what that does is to freeze these identities and make it very difficult to move away from."
"At the end of the day, the major problem is that people start looking at these identities as primordial. And they start behaving as if these identities have always been with us as part of these ancient hatreds. It becomes very difficult to come up with a counter-narrative."
On this week's POMEPS Conversation podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Daniel Corstange, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Corstange talks about his current research, which focuses on gathering data from Syrian refugees. "You can think of a lot of different stories we tell ourselves about why there's a war going on. And it doesn't seem to be the case that any of them are the true story."
"So we're trying to understand why people think this is happening. There are actually very interesting patterns about why people think one thing versus another thing."
"This is an existential crisis for a lot of people. It's completely destroyed their lives at home. They are picking up the pieces elsewhere — sometimes they haven't even been able to pick up the pieces. But it's not the case that they've managed to get across the border and they can shut off what's happening in the civil war."
On this week's POMEPS Conversation podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Pete Moore about the political economy and refugees in Jordan. Moore is an associate professor of political science and director of graduate studies in the Department of Political Science at Case Western University.
Looking at how past events influence current relationships, Moore says, "What we see today in terms of the U.S. role in Jordan was incubated in the early 80s vis-à-vis the Iran-Iraq war."
By the 1990s, "Jordan was caught between the demands of the U.S. regarding sanctions, but is stuck with of a transport sector and industrial sector that was wedded to Iraq and does not want to see that relationship weaken." Moore says, "The regime wanted to hold on to those linkages...after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, those relationships will be looked at less in an economic realm and more in the security realm."
"It takes the monarchy a long time, but essentially they vote to let die that industry and transport sector. And that's one of the reasons for Jordan's highest unemployment rate in the region."
On this week's POMEPS Conversation Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Sune Haugbølle. Haugbølle is an associate professor at Roskilde University, and much of his research focuses on Leftist movements in the Middle East.
"Before the Arab uprisings, I had a sense for a long time that there's a real gap in the historiography of the modern Middle East. Leftists groups,"Haugbølle says, "Have really been understudied. There's a lot we don't know about them— and I think that lack of knowledge came from the notion that somehow the left had ceased to be important."
"I'm trying to see what the historical memory of failures and trasitions of the Left in the last couple of decades means today for the Leftist activitists, militants, intellectuals today," says Haugbølle. "The history of the Arab Left is global."
In today's world, Haugbølle argues, "The new Left is a fragmented field of smaller movements. It's by definition a vast array of influences."
"Obviously the Middle East is not in the throes of the American homogeneity that it used to be years ago. And they're trying to find their feet in that." The Left must question of imperialism, especially with the conflict in Syria, says Haugbølle.
"We re-conceptualize the struggle in this confused, post-revolutionary period that we're in. That comes for the fore in the question of: Syria. Do you see the Russian intervention as a sort of protection of a popular regime with legitimacy, a people's army that needs to be protected from America's attempt to smash it? Or do you see that equally as imperialism? Most of the international socialists have taken the line that the Russian intervention is also a form of imperialism. You get splits over that."
"There's an intellectual history and a political history. There's so much we don't know. There's so many achieves people haven't looked at. Journals people haven't read yet," says Haugbølle.
On this week's POMEPS Conversation podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Vickie Langohr about public sexual harassment faced by women in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. Langohr is an associate professor at the College of the Holy Cross, focusing on Middle East politics, nationalism and democratization.
"Egyptians will often tell you that several decades ago, [sexual harrasment] was not something that was happening a lot. But we have data from 2008 — before the revolution — that shows pretty close to the same number of women polled saying they experienced harassment even on a daily basis."
"Public sexual harassment has become an issue of 20 or 30-somethings is because they're in public more, particularly in protests. I do think there is a generational angle to it." Langohr said a lot of sexual harassment happens on crowded subways. "Any time there's mass crowding on public transit, sexual harassment increases."
Langohr spoke with young Egyptians about their political involvement. "In the interviews I've done with many members of these groups...many would say 'I never even dreamed anybody but Mubarak could be in power.' Not because they liked him, but because the political horizon of the imaginary was not there."
While Egypt has tightened its laws on protesting in public, Langohr says that activism is still happening. "Even though activists can't work in the streets anymore, there has been a spread into the institutions, like Cairo University."
Still, even after a 2014 amendment that increased penalties and made it slightly easier to prosecute, "Many women don't want to bring charges because, unfortunately, people in their family believe that if they've been harassed, they must have brought it on themselves in some way."
"So there's a lot that remains to be done."
On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Reinoud Leenders about the origins of the Syrian conflict. Leenders is a reader in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.
"In the beginning, it was a question of who would move first, and where." Leenders says. "Why it happened in certain places and not others, it is because of local characteristics." Aleppo, Leenders says, held back. "It was a very conservative, middle class [place] that felt it was too much to get involved and put a stop on mobilization initially."
"In hindsight, lots of people have said it was a mistake of the [Syrian] regime to have applied such vast levels of repression," Leenders said. "But I think that, beyond moral considerations, I don't think the repression as such was a mistake...The brutality of the regime touched on some really sensitive registers, include dignity and honor of women."
Even as Leenders's research focuses on the parsing out the conflict through the lens of two narratives, "We are five years down the road, and every day the conflict goes on, I get more questions than answers."
Charles Kurzman speaks with Marc Lynch about how past failed mobilizations can explain the challenges facing the Middle East after the 2011 uprisings. Kurzman is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations.
"There's the sense of disillusionment when things don't turn out well. The hopes and dreams that come crumbling down when the new institutions turn out not what you thought they ought to be. We saw this in Iran, when a huge portion of the population that was so active in bringing down the shah, then feels that their revolution was hijacked. This new Islamic Republic doesn't represent what they meant at all. We see it again after the uprisings of the Arab Spring; huge portions of the populations saying, 'No, no. This isn't what we wanted.'"
Saudi Arabia is facing challenges: the global oil slump, the future of the GCC's collective stability and its intervention in Yemen.
"Yemen was the place they decided to strike back," Greg Gause tells Marc Lynch in this latest POMEPS podcast. "I think both because they've always seen it as their backyard — part of their special preserve — where they were least likely to directly confront the Iranians. You do something like they're doing in Syria, and you're fighting the Iranians directly."
There are signs, Gause says, that an end may be in sight. "The fact there was a Houthi delegation in Riyadh in April show that those in charge are looking for an exit ramp."
Saudi Arabia's economic challenges lie beyond low oil prices. "The Saudi private sector has been a job creating machine in the last decade. It's just that almost all of those jobs have gone to foreigners...the real core of this how do you make it so Saudi private sector hire more Saudis without destroying the business model they've created. I don't see that in vision 2030."
Gause says he believes the stability of Saudi regime is sound. "Fiscal crisis can create regime crisis." But Gause notes, "I don't see the kinds of fissues in the ruling family that could lead to serious problems in Saudi Arabia."
Back in the 1980s and 90s, Saudi Arabia "ran their debt up to a 100% of GDP. There's no indication the Saudis won't be able to sell their government bonds. I think they actually have plenty of room to put off fiscal crisis."
Looking beyond Saudi to its neighbors, "when things are really serious, the GCC comes together." But, Gause warns, "It would be a mistake for us to overestimate the policy coherence of the GCC, even now."
F. Gregory Gause, III is the John H. Lindsey ’44 Chair, Professor of International Affairs and Head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.
"The crisis in Turkey has been a long time coming," Kristin Fabbe says about the current political situation in Turkey.
Fabbe, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, speaks with Marc Lynch on this week's POMEPS podcast about the "very scary" climate in Turkey.
"There was this key moment between the first election in 2015 and the second, and what happened in between those two elections was very scary for Turkish politics. You see this bombings in Ankara and then members of the AKP get up and say, 'This happened because there was no government. This did not happen on our watch.' They use the fact they lost control of the parliament... to basically say, 'You're better off under our thumb.'"
Their conversation looks at how President Erdogan is leading his party in the midst of terrorism and the refugee crisis, their economic situation, and Turkey's relationship with the European Union.
"Turkish democracy does better when Turkey is engaged with Europe. When Turkey is disengaged, Turkish democracy does worse. I think there's really something to that argument," Fabbe said. "The question is... is this the kind of engagement you want Turkey to have with Europe over the refugee and migration issue?"
Marc Lynch speaks with Rory McCarthy about Tunisia's Ennahda party, and its transition through the uprisings to present day.
Marc Lynch speaks with Steffen Hertog about the current economic situation and challenges faced in the GCC, specifically Saudi Arabia's recent reforms in subsidies for citizens and public sector employment.
Marc Lynch speaks with Bessma Momani to discuss her book, "Arab Dawn: Arab Youth and the Demographic Dividend They Will Bring."
Momani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Canada.
This week Marc Lynch speaks with Zaid al Ali of Princeton University about the constitutional drafting process in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Uprisings.
Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl speaks with Marc Lynch about his continued research on the war in Syria.
On this week's POMEPS Conversation, Erin Snider from Texas A&M speaks with Marc Lynch about the political economy of foreign aid in the Middle East.
On this week’s POMEPS Conversation, Hind Ahmed Zaki speaks with Marc Lynch about feminism and women's rights movements in the wake of the Arab Spring.
This week’s conversation is with Amaney Jamal. She speaks with Marc Lynch about the After the Uprisings conference co-hosted by Princeton University and POMEPS, and the future of political science in the Middle East.
On this week's POMEPS Conversation, Merouan Mekouar speaks with Marc Lynch about the challenges facing Morocco now.
Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. Mekouar's research focuses on authoritarian resilience, revolutions, and behavior in the MENA region.
Justin Gengler is a senior researcher at the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) of Qatar University. He is the author of the book Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf: Rethinking the Rentier State (Indiana University Press, May 2015).
Steven Brooke speaks with Marc Lynch about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt over the past five years and prospects for future study of the group. Brooke is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative at Harvard University and will be an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Louisville beginning in the fall of 2016.
Sean Yom speaks with Marc Lynch about his new book, "From Resilience to Revolution," and the role of foreign and domestic actors in Middle East politics.
Michaelle Browers speaks with Marc Lynch about intellectuals in the Middle East, and the growth of a new generation of scholars and political theorists.
Marc Lynch sat down with Jillian Schwedler to discuss economic development and the effects of the Arab Spring in Jordan. Schwedler, a professor of political science at Hunter College, is the author of "Policing and Prisons in the Middle East: Formations and Coercion" and "Faith in Moderation: Islamist parties in Jordan and Yemen."
This conversation is with Hesham Sallam of Stanford University. He speaks with Marc Lynch about competing narratives of the Egyptian revolution.
Stacey Philbrick Yadav speaks with Marc Lynch about the ongoing civil war in Yemen and the difficulty of an enduring resolution. Yadav is associate professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York.
A conversation with Lindsay J. Benstead about who votes for women, and why, in the Middle East. Benstead is noted for her work in survey methodology and public opinion in the Middle East. Benstead is an assistant professor of political science in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University, where she teaches courses on Middle East and North African politics and research methods.
The George Washington University's Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, with Michael Wahid Hanna & Thanassis Cambanis of The Century Foundation. They talk about the upcoming fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution on January 25, and the challenges facing Egypt today.
A conversation about the current challenges and opportunities facing Egypt between Nathan Brown and Marc Lynch.