Pomeps Middle East Political Science Podcast

Stacey Philbrick Yadav of Hobart and William Smith Colleges joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War. The book shows how the transitional process was ultimately overtaken by war, and explains why features of the transitional framework nevertheless remain a central reference point for civ…

Dying Abroad and The Racial Muslim (S. 12, Ep. 27) by Marc LynchBởi Marc Lynch

In this week's episode, Marc Lynch speaks with Sebnem Gumuscu of Middlebury College about her book, Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia. The author draws upon extensive fieldwork in three countries to explain why some Islamist governments adhered to democratic principles and others took an authoritarian…

Samuel Helfont of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order. In the book, Helfont offers a new narrative of Iraqi foreign policy after the 1991 Gulf War to argue that Saddam Hussein executed a political warfare campaign that facilitated this disturban…

Rita Stephan of North Carolina State University and Maro Youssef of the University of Southern California join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, COVID and Gender in the Middle East. Stephen, editor of the book, gathers an impressive group of local scholars, activists, and policy experts, to provide empirical evidence of COVID’s gendered effects…

David Roberts of King’s College London joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies: Continuity and Change. Roberts offers a definitive guide to continuity and change in the Gulf region. He explores the forces challenging and bolstering the status quo across the political, social, economic, military, and enviro…

Sarah Bush of Yale University and Lauren Prather of the University of California, San Diego join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections. Bush and Prather explain how and why outside interventions influence local trust in elections, a critical factor f…

Dawn Murphy of the US National War College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her book, China's Rise in the Global South: The Middle East, Africa, and Beijing's Alternative World Order.The book examines China's behavior as a rising power in two key Global South regions, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Murphy compares and ana…

Davis Wight of the University of North Carolina joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his book, Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967-1988. The book is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East–US relations and the geopol…

Mohammad Ali Kadivar of Boston College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his book, Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy. The book challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustain…

Andrew Simon joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt. The book investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture a…

On this week's episode, Marc Lynch is joined by the editors and authors of the new book, The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution. The book includes include stories about specific events and struggles, views of the uprising from various regions of the country, and reflections on topics such as the labor struggle, disability, the stu…

David Siddhartha Patel of Brandeis University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Order out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq. Combining rational choice approaches, ethnographic understanding, and GIS analysis, this book reveals the interconnectedness of the enduring problem of…

The War in Court and the Egyptian Economy (S. 12, Ep. 14) by Marc LynchBởi Marc Lynch

Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Beyond the Lines: Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon. The book shows that most militants approach asymmetrical warfare as a series of challenges centered around information and logistics, characterized …

Ch12 Triumph over Adversity: Reflections on the Practice of Middle East Political Science by Marc LynchBởi Marc Lynch

Tobias Zumbragel of University of Hamburg joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Political Power and Environmental Sustainability in Gulf Monarchies. The book analyzes the political dynamics behind the sustainable transformation in the oil and gas-rich Gulf and explains the political factors behind the green transformation…

Munira Khayyat of The American University in Cairo joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon. The book analyzes life along the southern border of Lebanon, where resistant ecologies thrive amid a terrain of perennial war. (Starts at 1:45). Neil Ketchley …

Dalia Ghanem of the European Union Institute for Security Studies joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria. The book analyzes the secrets behind the Algerian regime’s survival and the pillars of its longevity. (Starts at 0:42). Sammy Zeyad Badran of The…

Aaron Rock-Singer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East. The book analyzes how Salafism is a creation of the twentieth century and how its signature practices emerged primarily out of Salafis’ competition wi…

Jessica Watkins of the London School of Economics joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Creating Consent in an Illiberal Order: Policing Disputes in Jordan. The book focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are…

Marc Owen Jones Hamad bin Khalifa University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media. The book analyzes how social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities in the Middle East. (Starts at 0:45). Andre Bank of the German…

Hesham Sallam of Stanford University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt. The book offers an account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of “more i…

Nazanin Shahrokni of the London School of Economics joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran. The book offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies and women’s rights in contemporary Iran. (Starts at 1:07). Tarek Masoud of Harvard University discusses h…

Michael Christopher Low of the University of Utah joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. The book analyzes the late Ottoman hajj and Hijaz region as transimperial spaces, reshaped by the competing forces of Istanbul’s project of frontier modernization and the extrat…

In this week's podcast, Marc Lynch begins the episode by announcing the winners of the American Political Science Association MENA Politics Section Awards. (Starts at 0:56) Maya Mikdashi of the Rutgers University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Sectarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon. The boo…

On the first episode of Season 12 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Jillian Schwedler of City University of New York, and Sean Yom of Temple University about their co-edited volume, The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings. The volume is a definitive overview of…

José Ciro Martínez of the University of Cambridge joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan. The book argues that the state is best understood as the product of routine practices and actions, through which it becomes a stable truth in the lives of citizens. (…

Megan Brown of Swarthmore College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. The book combats understandings of Europe’s “natural” borders by emphasizing the extracontinental contours of the early union. The unification vision was never spatially limited, s…

On this week's episode of the podcast, Jeannie Sowers of University of New Hampshire joins Marc Lynch to discuss POMEPS's newest publication, POMEPS Studies 46:Environmental Politics in the Middle East and North Africa. (Starts at 0:36). Mariam Salehi of Freie University Berlin discusses her new book, Transitional justice in process: Plans and poli…

Jannis Julien Grimm of the Freie University of Berlin joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Contested Legitimacies: Repression and Revolt in Post-Revolutionary Egypt. The book explores this resilience of contentious politics through a multimethod approach that is attuned to the physical and discursive interactions among k…

Jillian Schwedler of Hunter College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent. In the book, Schwedler examines protests as they are situated in the built environment, bringing together considerations of networks, spatial imaginaries, space and place-making, and political geo…

Michael Provence of University of California San Diego joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East. In the book, Provence examines the collapse of the Ottoman empire through popular political movements and the experience of colonial rule. (Starts at 0:39). Gam…

Erin Snider of Texas A&M University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid In the Middle East. In the book, Snider examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco and the limited impact of international aid. (Start…

Ora Szekely of Clark University and Peter Krause of Boston College join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science. In the book, political scientists from a diverse range of biographical and academic backgrounds describe research in North and South Americ…

Andrea Wright of the college of William and Mary joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil. In the book, Wright analyzes how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colon…

Hatim El-Hibri of George Mason University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure. In the book, El-Hibri analyzes how the creation and circulation of images have shaped the urban spaces and cultural imaginaries of Beirut. (Starts at 0:44). Kevin Koehler of Leiden Uni…

Pouya Alimagham of Massachusetts Institute of Technology joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprising. In the book, Alimagham analyzes the history of Iran and the Middle East to highlight how activists contested the Islamic Republic's legitimacy. (Starts at 0:35). Valeria Res…

James Shires of Leiden University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. In the book, Shires analyzes how the label of cybersecurity is repurposed by states, companies and other organizations to encompass a variety of concepts. Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Forei…

Jill Jarvis of Yale University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and Politics of Testimony. In the book, Jarvis analyzes the magnitude of the legal violence exercised by the French to colonize and occupy Algeria. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl of Leiden University and Kevin Koehler of Leiden Univer…

Michael Hoffman of the University of Notre Dame joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Faith in Numbers: Religion, Sectarianism, and Democracy. In the book, Hoffman discusses how religious identities and sectarian interests play a major part in determining regime preferences. (Starts at 0:44). Devorah Manekin of Hebrew Uni…

Jeff Colgan of Brown University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order. In the book, Colgan offers lessons for leaders and analysts seeking to design new international governing arrangements to manage an array of pressing concerns. (Starts at 0:38). Safa Al-Saeedi of N…

John Nagle of Queens University Belfast and Tamirace Fakhoury of Aalborg University join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, "Resisting Sectarianism: Queer Activism in Postwar Lebanon." In the book, Nagle and Fakhoury examine feminist and LGBTQ social movements in the context of Lebanon's postwar sectarian system. Reva Dhin…

Eskandar Sadeghi of the University of London joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, "Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran." In the book, Sadeghi examines the rise and evolution of reformist political thought in Iran and analyses the complex network of publications in the 1990s. (Starts at 0:…

Asef Bayat of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring. In the book, Bayat seamlessly blends field research, on-the-ground interviews, and social theory to show how the practice of everyday life in Egypt and Tunisia was fundame…

Nadya Hajj from Wellesley College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age. In the book, Hajj finds that Palestinian refugees utilize Information Communication Technology platforms to motivate reciprocity—a cooperative action marked by the mutual …

Abdelmajid Hannoum of the University of Kansas discusses his latest book, The Invention of the Maghreb, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines how colonialism made extensive use of translations of Greek, Roman, and Arabic texts and harnessed high technologies of power to invent the region. (Starts at 0:41). Hannes Baumann of the …

Khalid Medani of McGill University discusses his latest book, Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines the political and socio-economic factors which give rise to youth recruitment into militant organizations. (Starts at 0:56). Kristen Kao of the Universi…

Shamiran Mako of Boston University and Valentine Moghadam of Northeastern University discuss their latest book, After the Arab Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines the key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings. (Starts a…

Nils Hagerdal of Tufts University discusses his latest book, Friend or Foe: Militia Intelligence and Ethnic Violence in the Lebanese Civil War, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book examines the Lebanese civil war to offer a new theory that highlights the interplay of ethnicity and intelligence gathering. (Starts at 0:42). Emily Scott of…