POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

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."