POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

Ziya Meral speaks with Marc Lynch about his latest book, How Violence Shapes Religion: Belief and Conflict in the Middle East and Africa. "I really wanted to demystify the conversation on religion and violence," said Meral. "I wanted to highlight another direction of this discussion— which is how violence leads to religion, how violence alters religions, and impacts them— and why is it that religions are so present in violent conflicts that they don't necessarily triggered themselves." Meral is a British and Turkish researcher, and is a senior resident fellow at the UK Army's Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research based at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is also the Director of the Centre on Religion and Global Affairs, based in London and Beirut. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week's episode of the POMEPS Conversation Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on violent Islamism. Hegghammer talks about current status of the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as future of violent extremism. "The way I see the the the Islamic State terrorism campaign in Europe in 2015, 2016, and 2017 happened because there was a new generation of leaders in place who hadn't quite realized or internalized the repercussions of [their] strategy," Hegghammer says. "But I think that now— even in the Islamic State family— there is a growing realization that if you want to stay alive, or if you want to keep some kind of operation locally, you want to be careful about what you what you do. So I suspect that at least the medium-term effect of this will be a certain type of some kind of taming of the Islamic State animal." Hegghammer is currently a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Oslo. He is the author of numerous books, including Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists and The Meccan Rebellion: The Story of Juhayman al-'Utaybi Revisited. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week's podcast, Jessie Moritz discusses her research on the Rentier States. Moritz is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, Princeton University. She has conducted interviews with over 150 citizens of Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, including members of royal families, ministers, elected and appointed representatives, development experts, entrepreneurs, prominent leaders in civil society, and youth activists involved in protests since 2011. Her current research focuses on the political economy of oil in the Arabian Peninsula, with a particular focus on post-2014 economic reform programs and their impact on state-society relations. We have to understand that before we get to oil and gas and democratization, we have to understand oil and gas and lack of mobilization- whether that's through the absence of taxation or whether that's through cooptation or the funding of a repressive apparatus. Whatever cause or mechanism we think is the most important, we have to understand the oil societal quiescence link first, and then we can move on to 'will it overthrow a authoritarian regime?'. And then 'will the outcome of that regime ever be democracy?'. There's so many steps in that process. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Jason Brownlee researches and teaches about authoritarianism and political emancipation. He is the author of Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization(Cambridge University Press, 2007), Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and (with Tarek Masoud and Andrew Reynolds) The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform(Oxford University Press, 2012), as well as articles in American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and other scholarly journals. Professor Brownlee is currently studying intersections of the U.S. political economy and Middle Eastern conflicts. "While I think that domestic movements for promoting foreign policy change are essential and can be highly influential at particular points, for example eventually bringing the United States around to join the international consensus against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, I think for a long term behavioral change away from interventionism we would need something that is more global to provide security for the most powerful actors so that we have a time horizon in which people in which states and the people running them can see that intervention is no longer necessary." Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week's podcast, Janine Clark discusses her new book Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco: Strategies of Centralization and Decentralization (Columbia University Press, 2018). This book examines why Morocco decentralized while Jordan did not and evaluates the impact of their divergent paths, ultimately explaining how authoritarian regimes can use decentralization reforms to consolidate power. Jordan needs a much stronger party system so not everything's reliant on tribal alliances that sort of transfer resources down. But with the system as it is, there's no way out of it. And many of [the Jordanian] mayors actually weren't getting any perks themselves but they were at the whim of other elites who use their connections in Amman to pressure mayors to do things. Janine Clark is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Guelph. She is the author of Islam, Charity, and Activism: Middle-Class Networks and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen (2004) and coeditor of Economic Liberalization, Democratization, and Civil Society in the Developing World (2000). Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Michael Herb discusses his book, The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE, on this week's POMEPS Conversations.  In ths book, Herb provides a robust framework for thinking about the future of the Gulf monarchies. The Gulf has seen enormous changes in recent years, and more are to come. Herb explains the nature of the changes we are likely to see in the future. "Oil matters. It isn't a question of whether or not there's an effective oil or not an effective oil. The question is what are the causal pathways through which oil affects politics and are those causal pathways similar across different countries. You still get some very different outcomes in terms of big questions like how powerful is the parliament and in what direction is the economy developing. And those are because oil, it has a profound effect. But it interacts with with variables that exist in the situation in those interactions produce results that are really quite different. " Michael Herb is Chair and Professor of the Political Science department at Georgia State University. He is the author of All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Curtis Ryan discusses his new book, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics Beyond the State, on this week's POMEPS Conversations. This book explains how Jordan weathered the turmoil of the Arab Spring. Crossing divides between state and society, government and opposition, Dr. Ryan analyzes key features of Jordanian politics, including Islamist and leftist opposition parties, youth movements, and other forms of activism, as well as struggles over elections, reform, and identity. Curtis Ryan is a professor of political science at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. He is the author of Jordan in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah (2002) and Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (2009). Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week’s POMEPS Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Lisel Hintz about her new book: Identity Politics Inside Out: National Identity Contestation and Foreign Policy in Turkey. In this book, Hintz writes about the complex link between identity politics and foreign policy using an in-depth study of Turkey. Rather than treating national identity as cause or consequence of a state's foreign policy, she repositions foreign policy as an arena in which contestation among competing proposals for national identity takes place. Hintz is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Dr. Nermin Allam discusses her new book, Women and the Egyptian Revolution: Engagement and Activism During the 2011 Arab Uprisings, with Marc Lynch. Allam talks about how the she views the 2011 uprisings, and her book, which offers an oral history of women's engagement and historical contours of Egypt. Nermin Allam is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Rutgers University-Newark. Allam holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in International Relations and Comparative Politics from the University of Alberta, Canada. Her areas of research interest include: Social movements; gender politics; Middle Eastern and North African studies; and political Islam. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week’s podcast, Ann Wainscott talks about her new book, Bureaucratizing Islam: Morocco and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2017) on how states in the Middle East and North Africa have responded to the War on Terror by investigating Morocco’s unique approach to counter-terrorism: the bureaucratization of religion. "What's really interesting about the Moroccan case is that that it learns, and so you can see these real shifts in its policy," says Wainscott. "Original response to the Casablanca bombings of 2003, that's Morocco's first massive terrorist attack, was standard Middle Eastern authoritarian. But then within a year they have realized the need for a more sophisticated approach. So in 2004, the following year, they initiated what they called a reform to the religious field, haql dini." Ann Wainscott is an assistant professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio where she teaches Middle East politics. She is currently on leave to serve as the American Academy of Religion senior fellow at the United States Institute Institute of Peace (USIP). Prior to teaching at Miami, she taught at Saint Louis University for four years. She has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, and Mali. She earned a PhD from the University of Florida in 2013. "I see this movement away from a very rigid religious policy and towards an effort to absorb other ideologies that the Moroccan state sees as threatening and then to find a way to position the Moroccan monarchy as in some way superior."