Pomeps Conversations

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

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 Uni

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

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 certa

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

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

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.

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 w

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