Pomeps Conversations

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 of life Godly. Yasmin Moll shows how Islamic media and the social life of theology mattered to contestations over the shape of a New Egypt. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.   POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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 season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.   POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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 individual-level factors (e.g. gender, education) and local context (e.g. development levels, electoral institutions) on governance processes and outcomes.  Mentioned in the podcast: Carnegie-funded Report on Decentralisation  Decentralization in the MENA: Representation, Gender, and Civic Engagement Decentralization and Recentralization: Governance Dynamics in the MENA Region Everyday Choices framework Supplemental Materials   Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

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 vulnerable to the public's grievances when they delegate decision-making powers to other political elites.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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 withdrawal of US troops in 2011.   Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

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 increasing personalization of power. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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 concepts of power and authority, the different forms they take, the ways they are projected, and the practical constraints on their exercise. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

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 repertoires—a variety of social practices, tools, organized routines, symbols, and rhetorical strategies—to navigate wartime violence and detect threats. He traces how repertoires varied among different communities over the course of the conflict.

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 women in rentier political economy and highlights their roles as participants and agents within regional templates for economic development. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

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 book demonstrates that both the indirect rule system itself—as embodied in local policing arrangements—and the political affiliation of Palestinian mayors shape how politicians will govern. This variation, Greenwald argues, depends in part on whether local Palestinian governments are perceived as intermediaries within or opponents of the regime. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Afshon Ostovar of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East. This book offers a sweeping, comprehensive history of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East and the politics that fueled them. Ostovar discusses both the decline of American influence in the Middle East post-9/11 and the rise of Iran, while deftly integrating the United States, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Russia, and Saudi Arabia into the narrative.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Elham Fakhro of the Harvard Kennedy School joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization. In this book, Elham Fakhro demonstrates how shared security concerns, economic interests, and regional political shockwaves led to a surprising strategic convergence between the Gulf states and Israel, setting the stage for covert relations to come out into the open. She examines the role of the Trump administration in negotiating the agreements and shows how the UAE and Bahrain have instrumentalized the accords to burnish their reputations in Western capitals.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

Welcome to Season 14 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast! On this week's episode of the podcast, Jerome Drevon of International Crisis Group joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics. In the book, Drevon offers an examination of the Syrian armed opposition, tracing the emergence of Jihadi groups in the conflict, their dominance, and their political transformation. Drawing upon field research and interviews with Syrian insurgents in northwestern Syria and Turkey, Drevon demonstrates how the context of a local conflict can shape armed groups' behavior in unexpected ways.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Nathaniel Mathews of Binghamton University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Zanzibar Was a Country: Exile and Citizenship between East Africa and the Gulf. This book traces the history of a Swahili-speaking Arab diaspora from East Africa to Oman. The stories of postrevolution exiles and emigrés from Zanzibar provide a framework for the broader transregional entanglements of decolonization in Africa and the Arabian Gulf. Using both vernacular historiography and life histories of men and women from the community, Nathaniel Mathews argues that the traumatic memories of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 are important to nation-building on both sides of the Indian Ocean. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Zachary Lockman of New York University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States. This book reconstructs the origins and trajectory of area studies in the United States, focusing on Middle East studies from the 1920s to the 1980s. Lockman shows how the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations played key roles in conceiving, funding, and launching postwar area studies, expecting them to yield a new kind of interdisciplinary knowledge that would advance the social sciences while benefiting government agencies and the American people.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Courtney Freer of Emory University joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Resilience of Parliamentary Politics in Kuwait: Parliament, Rentierism, and Society. This book provides an unprecedented holistic treatment of grassroots contemporary Kuwaiti politics in English in over two decades, incorporating the country's political dynamics into broader debates about the limits of authoritarianism and the practice of democracy in the Arab world, particularly in oil-wealthy states. Freer includes extensive fieldwork and the use of Arabic and English primary sources to assess and examine the institutional setting that Kuwait presents and traces the dominant ideological strands in the country, considering the comparative mobilizational potential of ascriptive identities like tribe and sect.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sami Hermez of Northwestern University and Sireen Sawalha join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine. This is the story of Palestinian resistance that follows Sireen's family after walking back to Palestine against the traffic of exile.  Through the lives of the Sawalha family, and the story of Iyad's involvement with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hermez confronts readers with the politics and complexities of armed resistance and the ethical tensions and contradictions that arise, as well as with the dispossession and suffocation of people living under occupation and their ordinary lives in such times.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Alexander Cooley of Barnard College joins Marc Lynch to discuss Cooley's review essay, The Uprisings of Gaza: How Geopolitical Crises Have Reshaped Academic Communities from Tahrir to Kyiv. This essay reflects upon the contributions of Marc Lynch's edited volume (The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings) to address three occurring central issues at the intersection of regional studies and political science that are affected by geopolitical shocks: how shocks highlight previously neglected topics and actors; how they subsequently discredit and privilege certain disciplines and methods; and how they recast the role of academic research within global communities of knowledge and policy-making. Together, Cooley and Lynch explore the comparisons between political sciences in the Middle East and political science in Eurasia. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and

On this week's episode of the podcast, Marika Sosnowski of the University of Melbourne Law School joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria. This book explores how ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and state-building. While ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements since 2012, Sosnowski demonstrates the diverse consequences of ceasefires and provides a fuller, more nuanced portrait of their role in conflict resolution. (Starts at 0:10). Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Max Gallien of Institute of Development Studies joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at Its Margins. This book examines the rules and agreements that govern smuggling in North Africa, tracing the involvement of states in these practices and their consequences for borderland communities. Gallien demonstrates that, contrary to common assumptions about the effects of informal economies, smuggling can promote both state and social stability.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.