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1. The War on Gaza and Middle East Political Science

Author:
Marc Lynch, Ibrahim S. I. Rabaia, Fiona B. Adamson, and Alexei Abrams
Publication Date:
04-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
This special issue of POMEPS Studies offers a platform for scholars to think through what feels like a moment of rupture for the Middle East, for Middle East Studies, and for long-standing assumptions about the region’s politics. This POMEPS collection originated as an open call for papers for scholars affected by or invested in these urgent issues, in an initial effort to give a platform and a voice to those in our network who have grappled with these trends. We kept the call intentionally broad, asking potential authors to reflect on the effects of October 7 and the Gaza War on politics or scholarship. As it turned out, most of the contributors wanted to talk about academic freedoms and the conditions of public discourse in their countries – perhaps because of how profoundly they felt this crisis, perhaps because of the availability of other platforms to discuss the war itself. The issues confronting our field have never been more urgent and the need for academic networks and institutions to rise up to defend it has never been greater.
Topic:
Civil Society, Diplomacy, Education, Genocide, Political Science, Institutions, Academia, Houthis, Forced Migration, Activism, October 7, 2023 Gaza War, and Frantz Fanon
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, Iran, Middle East, Israel, Yemen, Palestine, Gaza, Germany, Jordan, Czech Republic, and Gulf Nations

2. Politics of Sports in the Middle East

Author:
Marc Lynch, Curtis R. Ryan, Marc Owen Jones, Ehsan Kashfi, and Majd Abuamer
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Following the 2022 World Cup, POMEPS partnered with Georgetown University-Qatar’s Center for International and Regional Studies—which has had a long-standing interest in studying sports and politics in the MENA region, and most recently completed a multiyear project on the World Cup—to bring together a group of scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to explore the deep interconnections between football and politics in the Middle East. We invited scholars from a wide range of perspectives, making sure to include contributions focused not only on the Arab world but also on Iran and Turkey. The essays in this collection offer a rich and varied window into these multidimensional politics, from the local to the global and from the historical to the contemporary. They offer a tantalizing glimpse into the possibilities for future research.
Topic:
Politics, Sports, Political Science, and Soccer
Political Geography:
Iran, Turkey, Middle East, and Arab Countries

3. Environmental Politics in the Middle East and North Africa

Author:
Jeannie Sowers, Marc Lynch, Taraf Abu Hamdan, Ekin Kurtiç, and Kali Rubaii
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
In February 2022, POMEPS convened a virtual workshop bringing together interdisciplinary contributions from anthropology, public health, political science, history, and human geography. Their geographic scope includes Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, and other Gulf countries. The papers grapple with the complexity and diversity of environmental politics and issues across the Middle East. In doing so, they contribute to important trends that have emerged in international and comparative environmental politics more broadly. Many of the papers highlight the importance of field-based research in producing insightful analyses, and all raise important and innovative questions that should inform future research in this area.
Topic:
Environment, Politics, History, Political Science, Anthropology, Public Health, and Human Geography
Political Geography:
Iraq, Turkey, Middle East, Kuwait, North Africa, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, and Gulf Nations

4. Africa and the Middle East: Beyond the Divides

Author:
Hisham Aïdi, Marc Lynch, Zachariah Mampilly, Nisrin El-Amin, Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, Noah Salomon, Samar Al-Bulushi, Wolfram Lacher, Federico Donelli, Lina Benabdallah, Ezgi Guner, Afifa Ltifi, Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, Alex Thurston, and Alex de Waal
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
The papers, published in this collection, ranged widely over issues connecting West Africa, the Horn, the Sahel and North Africa thematically, politically, militarily and culturally. The goal of this volume is to get American political science to break down the barriers between academic subfields defined by regions and open the fields to new questions raised by scholars from and across Africa and the Middle East.
Topic:
Islam, War, Regime Change, Media, Conflict, Political Science, Revolution, and Capital
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Sudan, Turkey, Middle East, Libya, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, West Africa, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, East Africa, Sahel, and Horn of Africa

5. Evolving Methodologies in the Study of Islamism

Author:
Marc Lynch, Nathan J. Brown, Ahmed Khanani, Jillian Schwedler, and Stacey Philbrick Yadav
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
n recent years there have been dramatic changes in the Islamist landscape as Islamist political parties have drastically transformed, violent new groups have burst on the scene, and the proliferation of new media has changed access to information. But have political scientists and other scholars taken the time to step back and examine how these seismic shifts have affected our research methods, priorities, and arguments? On January 29, 2016, scholars gathered for the Project on Middle East Political Science’s 3rd Annual workshop on Islamist politics as part of our Islam in a Changing Middle East initiative. This year’s workshop focused on the methodological and conceptual issues in the study of Islamism. What assumptions underlying our research need to be problematized? How should we deal with the vast outpouring of information and evidence about these movements now available on social media? What do we mean by the term “Islamist?” Offering an incredibly rich set of reflections, the papers in this series challenge the utility of core concepts such as “moderation” and “radical Islam.” They investigate the operation of specific causal mechanisms such as repression, identity, and organizational structure. They consider how newly available sources of survey and social media data can change our research approaches and remind us of all we have learned. The excellent essays in POMEPS Studies 17 Evolving Methodologies in the Study of Islamism take up these questions. While no one claims to have come up with a single answer, this collection is an important first step in grappling with the complex puzzle of “Islamism” today. This critical and reflective scholarship will be useful for the novice student and experienced analyst alike.
Topic:
Politics, Arab Spring, Political Science, and Islamism
Political Geography:
Middle East

6. Islam and International Order

Author:
Marc Lynch, Barak Mendelsohn, Reyko Huang, Lawrence Rubin, and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Islam has rarely been far from the center of the world’s political and security agenda in the decade and a half since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack against the United States. The range of issues to which Islam has been deemed central is staggering, from transnational terrorism and counterinsurgency in Iraq to the possibility of democracy in the Middle East. These long-running debates have been galvanized over the last few years by the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, shocking acts of terrorism from Paris to Tunisia, and the failure of the democratic experiment with Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt. In April 2015 the Project on Middle East Political Science and the Transatlantic Academy hosted a workshop for a sustained discussion of emerging questions on Islam and international order. The two-day workshop brought together a broad, interdisciplinary group of scholars, including area specialists and generalists, from the fields of political science, religious studies and history. The workshop, part of the POMEPS Islam in a Changing Middle East initiative, built on the Transatlantic Academy’s 2015 theme of religion and foreign policy. Peter Katzenstein of Cornell University, in his keynote address, put the question of Islam squarely within the racial and civilizational politics of a declining American imperium. This historical and global perspective provoked a wide-ranging discussion. Islam has played many roles in many different regional and global political orders, as Cemil Aydin, Bruce Lawrence and Jonathan Brown evocatively explained. And, as Amitav Acharya forcefully argued, Islam has routinely frustrated the expectations of popular grand theories of world order. The workshop ranged widely over the question of how to think about Islam within global, regional and domestic political arenas, from a diverse range of empirical cases and theoretical literatures. Can Islam really be understood as an actor, with interests and a coherent identity? Is there something unique about Islam that prevents it from being treated theoretically like other cultural traditions such as nationalism, ethnicity or ideology? Should Islam be seen as a causal variable or as a context through which actors pursue their interests and fight their political battles? What are we doing, conceptually and politically, when we describe political thought as “Islamic political thought,” movements as “Islamic movements,” or democracy as “Islamic democracy”? The essays prepared for this workshop are available here as POMEPS Studies 15. Several key themes ran through the discussions. First, several of the memos specifically focus on the emergence of the Islamic State. Marc Lynch surveys the central analytical arguments that have been deployed to explain the Islamic State Caliphate’s development, noting the very different policy responses each might elicit. Barak Mendelsohn and Reyko Huang evaluate the Islamic State in the history of jihadist groups and insurgencies, and Lawrence Rubin argues that ideational balancing will prevent the Islamic State from becoming a normal state.
Topic:
Islam, Religion, Islamic State, Political Science, and International Order
Political Geography:
Middle East

7. The Politics of Sectarianism

Author:
Toby Mathiesen, Marc Lynch, Fanar Haddad, Christian Caryl, and Geneive Abdo
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
A group of Syrian-Americans arrived at an academic conference at Lehigh University last week in Bashar al-Assad t-shirts and draped in Syrian flags adorned with Assad’s face. They repeatedly heckled and interrupted speakers, and one told an opposition figure that he deserved a bullet in the head. When a speaker showed a slide picturing dead Syrian children, they burst into loud applause. When another speaker cynically predicted that Bashar would win a 2014 presidential vote, they cheered. In the final session, they aggressively interrupted and denounced a Lebanese journalist, with one ultimately throwing his shoe at the stage. The panel degenerated into a screaming match, until police arrived to clear the room. This spectacle might seem notable in that it unfolded at a U.S. university, but otherwise it would pass for an alarmingly normal day at the office in today’s toxically polarized Middle East. Such intense mutual hostility, irreconcilable narratives, and public denunciations are typical of any number of highly polarized political arenas across the region. A similar scene between supporters and opponents of Egypt’s military coup is all too easily imagined — just add bullets. That’s why the disproportionate focus on sectarian conflict as the defining feature of the emerging Middle East seems dangerously misplaced. Sunni-Shiite tensions are only one manifestation of how a number of deeper trends have come together in recent years to give frightening new power to identity politics writ large. The explosion of Sunni-Shiite conflict in recent years has very little do to with intrinsic religious differences or with 1,400 years of Islamic history. It should instead be understood as an entirely typical example of identity politics, one in which sectarian differences happen to be the most easily available to politicians hoping to exploit them for cynical purposes. It looks much the same as the ethnic and religious polarization that ripped apart the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The sectarian polarization in Bahrain or Syria has followed very similar patterns to the Islamist-secularist polarization in Egypt and Tunisia. Responding to these sectarian tensions by embracing authoritarian states, focusing on religious authorities or exegesis, or promoting cross-sectarian reconciliation will miss the point. Today’s sectarianism is political to the core — even if it increasingly seems at risk of racing beyond the control of its cynical enablers. Interpreting Sunni-Shiite conflict as just another manifestation of a millennia-old conflict repeats a broadly essentialist position which tends to be the first resort every time ethnic or sectarian violence breaks out. Such approaches tend to focus on intrinsic, deeply rooted, and irreconcilable cultural differences between groups which can always pose a risk of escalation to violence (think Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts, which supposedly convinced Bill Clinton of the inevitability of Yugoslav ethnic slaughters). Evidence of decades of coexistence or intermarriage rarely impresses proponents of an essentialist approach. These differences might be latent for long periods of time, but given the opportunity — electoral mobilization, state failure, sudden explosions of local violence — people will tend to fall back on these deep identities. Such arguments tend to lead toward solutions involving the heavy hand of authoritarian states to suppress these supposedly inevitable violent tendencies, or toward partition into ethnic enclaves if state collapse has gone too far.
Topic:
Sectarianism, Political Science, Sunni, and Shia
Political Geography:
Middle East

8. The Political Science of Syria’s War

Author:
Marc Lynch, Fotini Christia, Laia Balcells, James Fearon, and Roger Petersen
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Arab Uprisings, Civil War, Spotlight, Syria POMEPS Studies 5: The Political Science of Syria’s War POMEPS Studies 5The Political Science of Syria’s War POMEPS Studies 5 – December 18, 2013 * For more references on Syria and civil wars click here. Syria is about to enter its third year of a brutal conflict which has killed more than 100,000 people and driven millions from their homes. What began as a peaceful civil uprising inspired by the successful Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings has long since devolved into a complex, protracted civil war fueled by an array of external interventions on all sides. It’s hardly the first complex civil war to scar the modern world, though. Indeed, the study of civil wars is arguably among the richest current research programs in all of political science. So what does the political science literature on civil wars and insurgencies have to say about Syria’s evolving war and how it might be ended? To find out, last month I convened a workshop through the Project on Middle East Political Science (which also sponsors the Middle East Channel). I invited more than a dozen of the leading scholars of civil wars to write memos applying their research to the Syrian case. These scholars were joined by a number of Syria specialists, and a range of current and former U.S. government officials with responsibility for Syria. This special POMEPS Brief collects the memos prepared for that conference, along with several articles previously published on the Middle East Channel. The overall conclusion of most of the contributors will come as no surprise: The prospects for either a military or a negotiated resolution of Syria’s war are exceedingly grim. But that’s only part of the story. More interesting, perhaps, are the reasons that Syria seems so resistant to resolution — and how international policies have contributed to the problem.
Topic:
Conflict, Syrian War, and Political Science
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

9. The Arab Monarchy Debate

Author:
Marc Lynch, Daniel Brumberg, Michael Herb, F. Gregory Gause III, and Sean Yom
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
It has been widely noted that monarchies have done better at surviving the Arab uprisings that began two years ago. Three Presidents (Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Saleh) have fallen, along with Muammar al-Qaddafi’s unique Jamahiriaya, while Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist presidential regime faces a mortal threat. For some analysts and academics, this pattern suggests a fairly obvious “monarchical exception” which demands explanation. In August, I launched a debate on Foreign Policy about whether and how monarchy matters in explaining the resilience of Arab regimes. I was not impressed. Against arguments that monarchies face some kind of unique legitimacy commanding the loyalty of their people, I noted that Arab monarchies have in fact faced significant popular mobilization over the last two years: Bahrain has had one of the most intense and protracted uprisings anywhere; Kuwait is facing the deepest political crisis in its post-occupation history; Jordan experienced unprecedented protests; Saudi Arabia has had a protracted challenge in its Eastern Province; Oman experienced unusual levels of protest; Morocco’s protest movement drove the king to adopt a significant (if underwhelming) constitutional initiative. I concluded, “the monarchies look like fairly typical Arab authoritarian regimes, surviving because they enjoy greater financial resources, less demanding international allies, and powerful media assets to perpetuate their legitimation myths.”
Topic:
Arab Spring, Political Science, Monarchy, and Gulf Cooperation Council
Political Geography:
Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Gulf Nations, and UAE