POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

On this week's episode of the podcast, Samer Abboud of Villanova University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his book, Betrayal of the Homeland: Disloyal Subjects in Wartime Syria. In the book, Abboud argues that the Syrian regime sought to entrench its rule during wartime through bifurcating society into “loyal” and “disloyal” subjects—and punishing those it deemed treacherous. The regime framed the c...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sina Azodi of the George Washington University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his book, Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question. The book shows that because the strategic logic of the nuclear program transcends the regimes type, dismantling the Iranian nuclear program is not viable policy option for the United States. Instead, the US...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Samuel Helfont of the Naval War College at the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new edited volume, Ba‘thist Iraq through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities (co-edited with Lisa Blaydes). This volume brings together leading scholars to take stock of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba'th...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Kali Rubaii of Purdue University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Resurgency: Outlasting the War on Terror in Iraq. The book expands the temporal and descriptive categories of what war is—and what resistance looks like. By asking what actions and dispositions make sense when conditions of survival are diminished, and when today may be better than tom...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Jason Brownlee of University of Austin-Texas joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Force Without Authority: America's Wars in the Middle East and South Asia. The book explores why the United States' costliest military operations since Vietnam came up short and pushed Republican and Democratic leaders toward withdrawal and retrenchment. The book delivers a...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Hossam el-Hamalawy joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic. The book is a rare and comprehensive examination of the structures, hierarchies, and methods of the military, police, and intelligence agencies. Drawing on meticulous research, it reveals the strategies deployed to suppress the revolutionary wave, fro...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Fırat Bozçalı of University of Toronto joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands. Taking readers from border villages, mountain passes, and road checkpoints to courtrooms, law offices, and forensic laboratories, Fırat Bozçalı examines how Kurdish smugglers, with the help of their lawyers,...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Daniel Neep of the Arab Center Washington DC joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Syria: A Modern History. Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. In the book, Neep offers a gripping narrative of how Syrians have navigated these events. Never losing sight of the fates of or...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Mohammed Soliman of the Middle East Institute joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East. In the book, Soliman argues that it is time for the United States to move decisively away from nation-building and get back to the business of order-building. To do so will require zooming out, in both geographic...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Mohammed M. Hafez of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new article, “A Waning Crescent: Why The Era of Islamism is Coming to an End.”  In the episode, Hafez argues that "Islamism, in all its forms, has failed in achieving the major goal: which is empowering Muslims through Islamic renewal, and providing good governance and military...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Stéphane Lacroix of Sciences Po joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Twilight of the Saints: The History and Politics of Salafism in Contemporary Egypt.  The book examines the history of Salafism in Egypt from its 1920s emergence in Cairo’s scholarly circles through the present day, shedding new light on the movement’s shifting relationship to politics....

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sean Yom of Temple University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible. In the book, Yom provides a concise yet authoritative synthesis of the Hashemite Kingdom's development from its founding over a century ago to the present. He explores Jordan's government, society, economy, and foreign policy in a systematic man...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Killian Clarke of Georgetown University  joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed. Clarke explains both why counterrevolutions emerge and when they are likely to succeed. He forwards a movement-centric argument that emphasizes the strategies revolutionary leaders embrace both during their oppositio...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Steven Monroe of the National University of Singapore joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World.  Monroe uses the case of Jordan to discuss the broader failures of economic reform across the Middle East. He develops a theoretical framework focused on the ability of connected elites to sh...

Welcome to Season 15 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast! On this week's episode of the podcast, Rana Khoury of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria's War. Khoury asserts that to understand civilian and refugee activism in war, we must regard the international actors and organizati...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Yasmin Moll of the University of Michigan joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt. This book challenges conventional accounts of the 2011 revolution and its aftermath as a struggle between secular and religious forces, reconsidering what makes a practice virtuous, a public Islamic, a way...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Erik Skare of the University of Oslo joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Road to October 7: A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism. In this book, Erik Skare argues that Palestinian Islamism is far more complex and dynamic than generally assumed. The phenomenon has continuously developed through disputes between moderates and hardliners. Music for this...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Kristen Kao and Ellen Lust of the University of Gothenburg join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa. This book directs our attention toward the ways in which decentralization is “lived locally” by citizens of the MENA region, underscoring the simultaneous influences of in...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Scott Williamson of the University of Oxford joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, The King Can Do No Wrong: Blame Games and Power Sharing in Authoritarian Regimes. This book stresses the importance of understanding autocratic blame games. Scott Williamson argues that how autocrats share power affects their ability to shift blame, so that they are less vu...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Alissa Walter of Seattle Pacific University joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad. . The book offers a history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war, from the oil boom of the 1950s through the withdra...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Steven Heydemann of Smith College joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Making Sense of the Arab State. This book grapples with enduring questions such as the uneven development of state capacity, the failures of developmentalism and governance, the centrality of regime security and survival concerns, the excesses of surveillance and control, and the incr...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of Rice University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Centers of Power in the Arab Gulf States. This book offers a comparative analysis of military, political, economic and religious power in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as of the power of narrative. Ulrichsen sheds light on the varying conce...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Austin J. Knuppe of Utah State University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Surviving the Islamic State:Contention, Cooperation, and Neutrality in Wartime Iraq. This book offers an insightful account of how Iraqis in different areas of the country responded to the rise and fall of the Islamic State. Austin J. Knuppe argues that people adopt survival r...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Diana Greenwald of  the City College of New York joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Mayors in the Middle: Indirect Rule and Local Government in Occupied Palestine. Diana B. Greenwald offers a new theory of local government under indirect rule through a historically informed, empirically nuanced analysis of towns and cities across the West Bank. The boo...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Bozena Welborne of Smith College joins Marc Lynch to discuss her book, Women, Money, and Political Participation in the Middle East. This book examines women, money, and political participation in the Middle East and North Africa focusing on women’s capacity to engage local political systems. The research that Welborne presents here expands the discussion of...