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1. Lebanese Women and the Politics of Representation

Author:
Carmen Geha
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Lebanese women have been leaders in the revolution that has shaken Lebanon since October 2019. This paper argues that the next stage will be critical if women want to transform their involvement into equal rights. For them to do so, they need to move beyond informal revolutionary politics to formal electoral and party politics with meaningful and substantive representation.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Human Rights, United Nations, Social Movement, Feminism, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Middle East, Lebanon, and Beirut

2. The Syrian Participation in Lebanon’s Revolution

Author:
Irene Tuzi
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Abstract:
Since October 17, 2019, unprecedented popular protests have erupted in Lebanon motivated by demands for socio-economic rights and the reform of a highly corrupted and sectarian political system. The deterioration of economic and social conditions in Lebanon has also affected the 1.5 million Syrian refugees as well as the Palestinians and other communities of displaced people living in the country. Syrians, in particular, expressed an exceptional empathy with the Lebanese revolution and although with a diversity of responses, many have taken part in the uprising.
Topic:
Syrian War, Hezbollah, Revolution, and Political Movements
Political Geography:
Middle East, Lebanon, and Syria

3. Iran’s Revolutionary Influence in South Asia

Author:
Husain Haqqani
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Soon after Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that Iran would challenge “the world’s arrogant powers” across the globe. 1 “We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” he announced, adding that “Until the cry ‘There is no God but God’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.’” 2 The idea of exporting Iran’s ideology was also incorporated in the Islamic Republic’s constitution. Article 154 of the current Iranian constitution affirms that Iran “supports the just struggles of the mustad’afun [oppressed] against the mustakbirun [tyrants] in every corner of the globe.” As is often the case with revolutionary regimes, the early fervor of the Iranian revolution seems to have subsided and the broader goal of replicating the Islamic revolution has been modified to expanding Tehran’s influence and ensuring external support for the survival of its clerical regime. But Iran still pursues a robust policy of cultivating and deploying proxies in other, mainly Muslim countries. The role of Iran’s proxies and allies in the Middle East is well known, partly because it is more overt. Hezbollah’s targeting of Israel and its efforts to dominate Lebanon, Iran’s role in propping up the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, or its political and militant meddling in Iraq and Yemen often make headlines. But the Ayatollahs have also expanded their influence across South, Central, and East Asia without attracting the same level of attention as their activities in the Middle East.
Topic:
History, Ideology, Islamism, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Iran, South Asia, Indonesia, and Middle East

4. State and Social Movements in Iran: Phases of Contentious Activism

Author:
Sadia Rafique and Khalid Manzoor Butt
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Political Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
Social movements are considered by sociologists as agents of social change. They are not isolated entities but an outcome of prevailing circumstances and at, the same time, result from continuity with the historical roots. Moreover, the mobility of contemporary movements can only be shown in comparison with previous kind of collective actions. Two revolutionary movements within one century (Constitutional Revolution 1905-06 and Islamic Revolution1979), and eight years’ IranIraq war (1981-89) and globalization have significantly contributed to the evolution of distinctive nature of contemporary Iranian society. This makes it an interesting subject for research in general, and particularly the case of social movements and their transformation. The paper aims to give an overview of Iranian social movements from the constitutional movement to the recent Green movement of 2009. The intention is to find out, first, whether there was any continuity in social movements during this period; secondly, to investigate the differences of the recent Green movement from the previous social movements of modern-day Iran. An overview of social structure, the state-society relationship, causes of mobilization and the outcomes of each movement will be studied. Moreover, the complex relation between state and social movements that emerged overall will also be examined. The Touraine/Melucci model has been applied in Iranian milieu
Topic:
Islam, Religion, Social Movement, State, Revolution, Society, and Mobilization
Political Geography:
Iran and Middle East

5. Making Sure the Lebanese Revolution Does Not Devour Its Own Children

Author:
Christophe Abi Nassif
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Harvard Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
When protests broke out across Lebanon on 17 October 2019, very few people anticipated the political, economic, and financial consequences that the country finds itself facing today. In an unprecedented buildup of events, a government resigned, a monetary crisis sharply accelerated, and uncertainty about the future of a nation spiked. And while the first few weeks have been particularly raging, a relative status quo between protesters and the government seems to have prevailed. This article makes the case for four essential changes that the Lebanese revolution may want to consider to avoid stagnation and potential decay and ultimately achieve results and a significant breakthrough in political representation.
Topic:
Government, Social Movement, Crisis Management, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

6. The Eye of the Storm

Author:
George G. Namur
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Harvard Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Lebanon is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis in its modern history. Starting 17 October 2019, the people of Lebanon have been protesting in the streets in a broad-based uprising. This paper highlights key post–civil war realities and practices that led to the country teetering and proposes a solution package to what ails the country and threatens its future.
Topic:
Corruption, Financial Crisis, Governance, Social Movement, Revolution, and Political Crisis
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

7. From “Overthrowing the Regime” to “All Means All”: An Analysis of the Lebanonisation of Arab Spring Rhetoric

Author:
Fares Halabi
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Only a few hours after the start of 17 October 2019 demonstrations in Lebanon, protesters started to demand the overthrow of the regime under the slogan “all [of them] means all [of them]”. What does this slogan mean in Lebanon today, eight years after it was first launched? And how has the discourse of overthrowing the regime developed since 2011? When I was a university student in 2011, I took part in several demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the regime. However, it quickly dawned on me that the immediate conditions for such a demand were not then available, making the slogan, without it being adapted to the Lebanese context, inappropriate relative to other countries. In this paper, I aim to revisit the 2011 campaign to critique it and highlight the reasons behind its failure. This is pertinent given its close affiliation with what have been observed in Lebanon since 17 October. In the last few weeks, I have had conversations with six people1 who were active in the 2011 campaign and are involved in the current revolution. We discussed their understanding of the developments in the Lebanese political landscape since 2011, the accumulated experiences that have pushed the Lebanese public to revolt against the regime in a broad mobilisation that has been ongoing for more than two months. We discussed how the slogan “overthrowing the regime” has developed into its current formulation of “all means all” which is met with broad public resonance.
Topic:
Social Movement, Arab Spring, Protests, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Middle East, Lebanon, and Beirut

8. Climate Change and the Syrian Conflict?

Author:
Marwa Daoudy
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Abstract:
Over the past few decades, a new narrative has emerged that seeks to link climate change with political and social unrest. This idea of a climate-conflict nexus is similar to the “water wars” scenario of the 1990s, in which the media and some scholars predicted that water scarcity would be the major driver of inter-state conflict in the twenty-first century. More recently, this climateconflict narrative has been applied to the Syrian case. According to this logic, climate change caused the 2006-2010 drought in Syria, the drought caused agricultural failure, agricultural failure caused poverty, and the resulting displacement and discontent culminated with the 2011 uprising. My forthcoming book, The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security (Cambridge University Press, spring 2020) questions this line of reasoning, arguing that government policies were at the heart of Syria’s vulnerabilities in the buildup to the uprising. Although global warming is real and international action is urgently needed, climate change was not what was at the forefront of the minds of Syrians in 2011. Instead, most people were focused on a moral ideal: the end of repression and injustice.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, Water, Food Security, Inequality, Syrian War, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

9. Defying the System: The Origins of Anti-Westernism in the Non-Western World and the Case of Iran

Author:
Oguzhan Goksel
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Abstract:
Anti-Western sentiment is a common feature of politics in many non-Western societies such as China, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey, Iran and various Arab countries. Challenging the scholarly literature that depicts anti-Westernism as an “irrational, extremist and fundamentalist reaction to the cultural hegemony of the West,” this article conceptualizes anti-Westernism as a rational reaction to –and an unsurprising consequence of– the problematic political/economic interactions between non- Western societies (e.g. Iran) and Western powers (e.g. Britain, France and the US). Iran is a particularly noteworthy case because anti-Westernism played a key role in the formation of the modern state in the country. The foreign policy behavior of Iran in our time and the historical trajectory that produced the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution cannot be understood without acknowledging anti-Westernism. The origins of anti-Westernism in Iran are explored in this article through interpreting the path dependent historical experience of the country, with a particular emphasis on the relations between Iran and Western countries. In contrast to works that attribute Iran’s anti-Western foreign policy to the Islamist ideology of the post-1979 era, it will be argued that hostility to the Western-dominated international political system should actually be traced to the transformation in which the Iranian national identity evolved in the early 20th century.
Topic:
Imperialism, Islamism, Revolution, and Anti-Westernism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Iran, Middle East, and North America

10. Local Actors in the Syrian Coastal Area: Characteristics and Prospects

Author:
Alimar Lazkani
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
By monopolizing political, economic and social life in Syria, the Assad regime has barred the emergence and growth of independent, popular or influential local leaders and equated voicing reservations or being neutral towards its policies to opposition. With the outbreak of the revolution, the rules of loyalty to the regime have not changed for fear of reprisal or loss of opportunity. The opening of the market to large businesses have fed the ambitions of small entrepreneurs, making them more loyal. Neutrality and reservations have come from opponents who are waiting for the opportunity to organize, and from some cultural and artistic actors. This paper draws a rich map of the political, economic, cultural and religious elites of the Syrian coastal area and the extent to which they can become an actor able to build a national inclusive project for post-war Syria.
Topic:
Civil War, Social Movement, Revolution, and Dictatorship
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, and Damascus