Pomeps Conversations

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 Libera

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 Prof

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 Religio

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

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

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

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, wo

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 Reali

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 ti

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 impris

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 i

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 Y

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

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 Cambr