Abstract: This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from their governments. Drawing on original, nationally representative surveys in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, it explores popular preferences for the three possible government deliverables in social contracts: provision of social and economic services, protection from physical harm and political participation. Findings reveal that citizens expect governments to deliver all three ‘Ps’ (even if this costs a price), yet preferring provision over protection and participation if […]

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Abstract: The article draws on nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to unpack popular beliefs about who can best handle the social and economic consequences from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It therefore offers insights into state–society relations under stress and contributes to the debate on whether or not the state should play a key role in social protection. Findings reveal intriguing differences between countries, but also among social groups within societies. Communal identities and economic status do […]

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Abstract: Scholarly roundtable on Brent Steele’s monograph ‘Restrain in International Politics’ (Cambridge, 2020), introduced by myself; with contributions by Lina Benabdallah (Wake Forest), Benjamin H. Friedman, (Defense Priorities), Manali Kumar (Universitӓt St. Gallen) and Maria Mälksoo (University of Copenhagen), and a rebuttal by the author.  

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Abstract: Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the classroom into the Global/Post-Western debate by […]

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Abstract: What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad presents obstacles for the coordination of coup plots at home. Second, incumbents can allocate material resources to […]

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Abstract: This chapter argues that to think critically about the issue of security in the Middle East requires three main tasks. First, we need to question the dominant normative understandings of regional and global order that shape existing security studies scholarship about the Middle East. This structure of knowledge production is more appropriate for American policy analysis and formation, rather than academic scholarship, be it within the American academia or outside of it. Second, we need to recognize rival understandings […]

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  Abstract This paper reconsiders the proposition that remittances act as a political curse by reducing the poor’s demand for economic redistribution. With a newer democratization model focused on the demand for income protection from the rising groups in society, remittances may instead function as a political blessing. Since remittances increase income not only for the usually middle-class citizens that receive them, but also for the merchant and working classes per the multiplier effect, remittances should increase the demand for […]

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Daniel Levine (University of Alabama) and Alexander Barder (Florida International University) The Sage Handbook of the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of International Relations (Sage, 2018), pp. 296-310  

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Abstract Responding to renewed interest in political rhetoric among contemporary International Relations (IR)–realists, this article advances three main claims. First, it suggests that tragedy—the dominant aesthetic-narrative mode to which these realists have turned in their rhetorical considerations—is ill-suited to the contemporary political moment. In the context of a late-modern “nuclear condition,” the turn to classical tragedy seems set to reproduce the resentful, anti-realist hubris that its promulgators hope to dispel or disenchant. Second, it suggests that late modern politics is […]

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