POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

Stephanie Dornschneider of University College Dublin talks about her latest book, Hot Contention, Cool Abstention: Positive Emotions and Protest Behavior During the Arab Spring, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast.  The book traces how decisions about participating in the Arab Spring were made, using psychology literature on reasoning and political science literature on protest. (Starts at 29:4...

Emy Matesan of Wesleyan University talks about her latest book, The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, she argues that Islamist groups alter their tactics in response to the perceived need for activism, shifts in the cost of violent versus nonviolent resistance, and internal or external pressures on the...

Somdeep Sen of Roskilde University talks about his latest book, Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book considers the case of the Palestinian struggle for liberation from its settler colonial condition as a complex psychological and empirical mix of the colonial and the postcolonial. (Starts at 27:13). Lisel Hint...

Justin Schon of the University of Virginia talks about his latest book, Surviving the War in Syria: Survival Strategies in a Time of Conflict, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, he emphasizes that civilian behavior in conflict zones includes repertoires of survival strategies, instead of migration alone; he utilizes a microanalysis of civilian self-protection strategies during ar...

Marc Owen Jones of Hamad bin Khalifa University talks about his latest book, Political Repression in Bahrain, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book explores Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, and spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. (Starts a...

Devorah Manekin of Hebrew University of Jerusalem talks about her latest book, Regular Soldiers, Irregular War: Violence and Restraint in the Second Intifada, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book presents a theoretical framework for understanding the various forms of behavior in which soldiers engage during counterinsurgency campaigns—compliance and shirking, abuse and restraint, as we...

Dara Conduit of Deakin University talks about her book, The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book explores the Muslim Brotherhood's history to understand why it failed to capitalize on its advantage as the most prominent opposition group in Syria as the conflict unfolded, addressing significant gaps in accounts of the group's past to assess whether its reput...

Robert Springborg of the Naval Postgraduate School talks about his latest book, Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, he discusses the economic future of the [MENA] region by examining the national and regional political causes of its contemporary underperformance.  (Starts at 37:19). May Darwich of the University of Birmingha...

Avital Livny of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne talks about her latest book, Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast.  The book shows that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity, and presents a new argument for conceptualiz...

Glenn Robinson of the Naval Postgraduate School talks about his latest book, Global Jihad: A Brief History, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: whether a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qa'ida's call to drive the United States out of the Muslim...

Ahmed Khanani of Earlham College talks about his latest book, All Politics are God’s Politics: Moroccan Islamism and the Sacralization of Democracy, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book enables readers to understand and appreciate the significance of dimuqrāṭiyya [democracy] as a concept alongside new prospects for Islam and democracy in the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) (St...

Aaron Rock-Singer of University of Wisconsin-Madison talks about his latest book, Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book shows how Islamic activists and institutions across the political spectrum reshaped daily practices [in Egypt] in an effort to persuade followers to adopt novel models of religiosity. (Starts at 27:42). Bassel...

Alex Thurston of the University of Cincinnati talks about his latest book, Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book studies cases of jihadist movements in North Africa and the Sahel, examining them from the inside, uncovering their activities and internal struggles over the past three decades. (Starts at 19:50). Micha...

Kelsey Norman of Rice University talks about her latest book, Reluctant Reception: Refugees, Migration and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. The book proposes the concept of 'strategic indifference', where states [such as Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey] proclaim to be indifferent toward migrants and refugees, thereby inviting international organizat...

Aaron Jakes talks about his latest book, Egypt’s Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles that raged over the occupation. Jakes explains, “In the broadest sense, the book, it is a...

Joas Wagemakers talks about his new book, The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores the Muslim Brotherhood’s long history and complex relationship with Jordan, its parliament and society. “In Jordan [the Muslim Brotherhood] basically had Royal support from the very start, and the reason for that was that the King did not really have a lot of author...

Sherine Hafez talks about her latest book, Women of the Midan: Untold Stories of Egypt’s Revolutionaries, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. In her book, she demonstrates how women were a central part of the revolutionary process of the Arab Spring; not only protesting in the streets of Cairo, but also demanding democracy, social justice, and renegotiation of a variety of sociocultural struct...

Elizabeth Nugent talks about her new book, After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores how polarization and repression led to different political outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt. Nugent explains, “When I started my fieldwork in Tunisia, it was clear to me again coming from Egypt with that kind of as my baseline how differ...

Anne Marie Baylouny talks about her latest book, When Blame Backfires: Syrian Refugees and Citizen Grievances in Jordan and Lebanon, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explains how the recent influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and Lebanon has stimulated domestic political action against these countries' governments. Baylouny explains, “So usually these governments use all kinds of...

Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl talks about his latest book, Quagmire in Civil War, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. His book explains he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices and draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civ...

Hiba Bou Akar talks about her latest book, For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut's southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Bou Akar explains, “So I start looking at the planning and how these reside...

Aili Tripp talks about her latest book, Seeking Legitimacy: Why Arab Autocracies Adopt Women’s Rights, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria embraced more legal reforms of women’s rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts, and how women’s rights were used to advance the political goals of these authoritarian regimes. T...

Amr Adly talks about his latest book, Cleft Capitalism: The Social Origins of Failed Market Making in Egypt, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores why market-based economic development failed to meet expectations in Egypt. “The main argument is that we have three business systems in Egypt in reference to rules formal as well as informal and mixes of the two, according to which...

Pascal Menoret talks about his latest book, Graveyard of Clerics: Everyday Activism in Saudi Arabia, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. In the book, he tells the stories of the people actively countering the Saudi state and highlights how people can organize and protest even amid increasingly intense police repression. Menoret explains, “Basically what happens in the suburbs is that it's a fi...

Nadav Shelef talks about his latest book, Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores the idea of homelands and nationalism and articulates an analogous theory for how and why the places that people think of as their homelands stop being part of their homeland around the world. Shelef explains, “One of the things that I did was to...