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The panel brings together scholars who have direct experience of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. They discussed the historical roots, recent developments and challenges that civil societies in these countries are currently facing. 

Chaired by Dr Lucia Sorbera, University of Sydney, speakers include: Larbi Sadiki, Assoc Professor of International Affairs at Qatar University; Walid El Khachab, Assoc Professor and Coordinator of Arabic Studies, York University; and Dr Ala'a Shehabi, co-founder of Bahrain Watch, an NGO working on transparency and accountability. 

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2015/civil_society_resilience_authoritarianism.shtml

Civil Society And Resilience against Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa

Speaker: Fadi Bardawil, University of North Carolina
Discussant: Fuad Musallam, LSE
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Drawing on the theorisation of the Marxist group Socialist Lebanon, Fadi Bardawil looks at how Lebanon's simultaneous economic integration into the Arab area through its services-based mode of production, and its isolation from Arab political causes, was affected by the advent of the Palestinian Resistance on the national political scene. Bardawil pays particular attention to how the Left theorised the Lebanese State, class-formation, as well as the role of Palestinian Resistance as an external force that would transform the rules of the Lebanese sectarian political game by rallying the masses around the national question. Recorded 21 January 2015.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Theorising Revolution, Anticipating Civil War: Class, State, and Political Practice in 1960s Lebanon

Speaker:  Frédéric Vairel, University of Ottawa
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Most of the existing literature on the 2011 MENA uprisings looks in isolation at either the contentious politics of popular mobilisation or regime responses to them. Frédéric Vairel proposes a move away from this approach in order to understand the Moroccan case, instead considering both sides together by looking at the 20th February Movement and the regime’s response to it. He argues that by resorting to a number of short and long term reforms; toleration, repression and containment of street mobilisation, the regime was able to avoid producing ‘martyrs’, thereby containing potential backlash of the kind experienced elsewhere in the region. Recorded on 19 May 2015.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Image credit: Thierry Ehrman, Flickr. King Mohammed VI of Morocco painted portrait.

Of Regime and Movements: Authoritarian Reform and the 2011 Popular Uprisings in Morocco

Speaker:  Frédéric Vairel, University of Ottawa
Discussant: Nawal Mustafa, LSE
Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE

Frédéric describes how self-limitation works in contemporary Moroccan mobilisation, with particular reference to the 20th February Movement. In 2011, contestation dynamics did not reach national amplitude despite being spread across various parts of the country. Frédéric looks at the institutionalisation of contentious space, shedding light on the relation between contentious space and institutional politics. He also addresses how different actors within contentious spaces calculate their actions and explains why self-limitation is not embedded in a moral economy in Morocco. Recorded on 20 May 2015.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Image Credit: Hasna Lahmini, Flickr. Protesters carry the Moroccan flag during the February 20 protest in Rabat.

How Self-Limiting Mobilisations Work: The Case of Morocco

Speaker: Professor Hugh Roberts, Tufts University
Discussant: Dr Aula Hariri, LSE Middle East Centre
Chair: Professor John Chalcraft, LSE

The Socialist Forces Front (FFS) is routinely referred to as Algeria’s oldest opposition party. Finally legalised in 1989, the FFS from its foundation in 1963 provided the main template of ‘opposition’ in Algeria, but its achievements have been meagre at best. Hugh Roberts examines the FFS’s origins in the rebellion of 1963-5, arguing that its achievements as an opposition movement have been limited because it has not been engaged in opposition properly so called, merely dissidence. Recorded on 30 May 2017.

This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

The Calculus of Dissidence: The FFS and the Failure of Opposition in Algeria

How has the idea of a social contract been interpreted in the MENA region? Did the uprisings in the Arab world in 2010-11 come as a surprise to economists? Listen to the latest episode of Pocket Economics with the EBRD’s Chief Economist Sergei Guriev and the World Bank’s Chief Economist Shanta Devarajan.

Pocket Economics: A new social contract for the Middle East and North Africa

Speakers: Youssef Cherif, Deputy Director of Columbia Global Centers, Tunis, member in Carnegie's Civic Research Network. 

Youssef Cherif analyses how the Maghreb region is another theatre of the cold war raging between the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) members. By means of fake news, political pressures and transfer of weapons, the three leading protagonists of the GCC are influencing the political, security and economic situation in North Africa which in turn deepens their crises and risks destabilizing the region. Recorded on 10 October 2018.

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Youssef Cherif (@Faiyla) is a political analyst who specializes in North African affairs. He is Deputy Director of Columbia Global Centers, Tunis, member in Carnegie's Civic Research Network and is contributing to a number of think-tanks. 

Courtney Freer (@courtneyfreer) is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Arab Gulf states, with a particular focus on Islamism and tribalism.

Image: Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed speaks with King Mohammed VI at Sea Palace barza. Source: Rashed Al Mansoori / Crown Prince Court - Abu Dhabi

The Qatar Crisis in the Maghreb: fake news, political pressures and real weapons

With continuous protests ongoing across Lebanon for the last two weeks, this event will analyse this largest demonstration of public disobedience for the past decade. The situation will be contextualised against the backdrop of failing state services, a system that has gradually drifted apart from society, and also a society that has reached its consumerist limits.

This event is part of a series being organised by the LSE Institute for Global Affairs responding to the Lebanese protests. For further information, please contact Dr. Bilal Malaeb.

Jamil Mouawad is a lecturer in political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut. His research interests in state-society relations span the subfields of comparative politics and political economy. He specializes in the politics of the Middle East, with a focus on governance and limited statehood. He was a Max Weber Fellow at the European Univesrity Institute, finalizing his book based on his PhD thesis. The book presents a critique to the concept of ‘weak’ states. The central argument of his book is that ‘weakness’ does not capture the nature of the Lebanese state and that the patterns of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ are by no means incidental but central to the way politics works.

He was awarded a PhD in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in June 2015. Later, he joined the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) in Beirut, as a postdoctoral fellow, through a grant from the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS). He also acted as a researcher coordinator of the Critical Security Studies in the Arab world and the Ethics in Social sciences project, both on-going projects launched by ACSS.

Hicham Safieddine is Lecturer in the History of the Modern Middle East at King's College, London. He is author of Banking on the State: The financial Foundations of Lebanon (Stanford University Press). He holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Toronto, an MA in Political Science from York University, Canada, and an MA in Economics from The University of Rochester, New York.

Sophie Chamas is a senior teaching fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is finishing up her PhD in Modern Middle East Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was also an Ertegun Scholar. Her work focuses on the study of social movements, counter-culture, and political theory and discourse rooted in, focused on or related to the Middle East. Broadly speaking, she is interested in thinking through the life, death and afterlife of the radical political imaginary in the Middle East and beyond. Sophie is also an essayist and writer of creative non-fiction. Her writing has appeared in Kohl: a journal for body and gender research, The State, Raseef 22, Mashallah News, Jadaliyya and The Towner, amongst other publications.

Bilal Malaeb is a postdoctoral research officer at the Institute of Global Affairs (IGA) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He works primarily on the Responsible Deal project, an inter-regional collaboration of seven universities, coordinated by the LSE. His research focus is on the integration of Syrian refugees in frontier countries in the Middle East. Bilal’s expertise is in Microeconometrics and Development Economics, and his research interests are in migration, poverty, and labour market issues. Prior to joining the LSE, he worked as a research officer at the University of Oxford and a research fellow at the University of Southampton.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSELebanon

Lebanon's Protests: A Society Turning Against the System

This event is a book launch for Eric Rouleau's autobiographical work titled Truths and Lies in the Middle East: Memoirs of a Veteran Journalist, 1952-2012. Eric Rouleau was one of the most celebrated journalists of his generation, a status he owed to his extraordinary career, which began when Hubert Beuve-Méry, director of Le Monde, charged him with covering the Near and Middle East.

Alain Gresh, French journalist and former editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, who also wrote the foreword for this book will be speaking at this event about Rouleau's life and work. The event will be chaired by Jim Muir, Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and BBC Middle East Correspondent.

Writing between Cairo and Jerusalem, Rouleau was a chief witness to the wars of 1967 and 1973, narrating their events from behind the scenes. He was to meet all the major players, including Nasser, Levi Ashkol, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, and Anwar Sadat, painting striking portraits of each. More than a memoir, his book presents a history, lived from the inside, of the Israel–Palestine conflict. In 1963, Rouleau was invited by Gamal Abd al-Nasser to interview him in Cairo, a move which was not lost on the young Rouleau—going through him, a young Egyptian Jew who had been exiled from Egypt in late 1951, shortly before the Free Officers coup, was a means to renew diplomatic ties with de Gaulle’s France. This exclusive interview, which immediately made headlines around the world, propelled Rouleau into the center of the region’s conflicts for two decades.

Alain Gresh is Publication Director of the online newspaper Orient XXI. He was previously Deputy Director of Le Monde Diplomatique from 2008-2013. A specialist on the Middle East, he is author of several books including PLO: The Struggle Within, de quoi la palestine est elle le nom? and  Un chant d’amour. Israël-Palestine, une histoire française. In 1983, Gresh completed a PhD on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

Jim Muir is a British journalist and BBC Middle East Correspondent. After taking a first in Arabic at Cambridge University in 1969, Jim worked in book publishing in London in the early 70s and moved to Beirut in January 1975. He covered all phases of the Lebanese Civil War 1975–1990 for the BBC and many other radio and print outlets. He then moved to Bosnia in the early 1990s before arriving in Cairo as BBC Middle East correspondent in 1995. Jim then reopened the BBC Tehran bureau and was correspondent there from 1999 to 2004. In 2005, he returned to Beirut and spent much time covering Iraq for the BBC, followed by the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt in 2011. Jim also provided a large proportion of the BBC's coverage of the Syrian uprising and civil war from the spring of 2011.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast

Truths And Lies In The Middle East: Memoirs of a Veteran Journalist, 1952-2012 (Book Launch)

In this episode of “Ventures,” Professor Fadi Bardawil of Duke University discusses his new book, Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation. Bardawil traces the rise and fall of the Lebanese New Left during the 1960s. He focuses mainly on the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon, a small group of militant intellectuals who mostly left political practice for the academy after the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. Interview by Professor Angie Heo, University of Chicago.

Revolution and Disenchantment with Fadi Bardawil

This event launches Crony Capitalism in the Middle East: Business and Politics, from Liberalization to the Arab Spring edited by Ishac Diwan, Adeel Malik, and Izak Atiyas.

The popular uprisings in 2011 that overthrew Arab dictators were also a rebuke to crony capitalism, diverted against both rulers and their allied businessmen who monopolize all economic opportunities. While the Middle East has witnessed a growing nexus between business and politics in the wake of liberalization, little is discussed about the nature of business cronies, the sectors in which they operate, the mechanisms used to favour them, and the possible impact of such crony relations on the region's development. Combining inputs from leading scholars in the field, Crony Capitalism in the Middle East presents a wealth of empirical evidence on the form and function of this aspect of the region.

Crony Capitalism in the Middle East is unique in both its empirical focus and comparative scale. Analysis in individual chapters is empirically grounded and based on fine-grained data on the business activities of politically connected actors furnishing, for the first time, information on the presence, numerical strength, and activities of politically connected entrepreneurs. It also substantially enhances our understanding of the mechanisms used to privilege connected businesses, and their possible impact on undermining the growth of firms in the region. 

Ishac Diwan is Professor of Economics at Paris Sciences et Lettres (a consortium of Parisian universities) where he holds the chair of the Economy of the Arab World. He has held recent teaching positions at Columbia University, School for International Public Affairs, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Political Economy program of the Economic Research Forum, where he runs two projects on the study of crony capitalism, and the analysis of opinion surveys. Diwan is a frequent consultant with governments and international organizations, working recently on policy issues in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Egypt. 

Adeel Malik is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and an Associate Professor at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Malik is an empirical economist with a strong multi-disciplinary orientation. He is trying to develop a broader research lens to study Middle Eastern political economy. Malik’s research on Middle Eastern political economy has featured in the CNN, Financial Times, the New York Times, Project Syndicate, and Foreign Affairs.

Courtney Freer is a Research Fellow at the Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. She previously worked at the Brookings Doha Center and the US–Saudi Arabian Business Council. 

Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast

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