Coup-proofing and coups in the Arab uprisings

Plus, a campus climate survey invitation, a trailblazing writing group, and great new research in MENA Academy Weekly Roundup #20.

Welcome to the 20th edition (I think?) of the MENA Academy Weekly Roundup. Before we get to the book and new articles, an invitation. As someone who runs an academic network designed to support MENA academics, I have been extremely concerned about the repression and harrassment which many Middle East experts have faced on campus since October 7, in the context of intense polarization, external advocacy campaigns, and a broader assault on higher education. The survey which I ran with Shibley Telhami a few months ago found massive levels of self-censorship and an atmosphere of fear among scholars.

To this point, however, we largely only have anecdotal evidence — a very large amount of it, but still mostly stories privately shared and incidents whispered about among friends. To begin to remedy this, I recently accepted Asli Bali’s invitation to serve as chair of the Middle East Studies Association’s Task Force on Civil and Human Rights. Our first order of business is to try and collect as much information as possible about what has been happening on campuses — whether it involves student activism, external advocacy, pressure from university or college administrators, media campaigns, personal harrassment, or other forms. I would like to invite you — indeed, to urge you — to fill out this reporting form, in as much detail as you can and with whatever level of anonymity you need, to help us collect this vital information and formulate an effective response. And please feel free to contact me or other task force members directly if that’s a better way to communicate.

Documenting Shifts in Campus Climate: Record Responses Here

And now, on with the Weekly Roundup. First, our book of the week:

Sharan Grewal, Soldiers of Democracy: Military Legacies and the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2023).

The behavior of militaries during the Arab uprisings of 2011 and during the turbulent transitions which followed has been a major focus of research and scholarship for the last decade. Sharan Grewal’s Soldiers of Democracy adds an important new contribution to that emergent body of literature by exploring how the legacies of coup-proofing help to explain the key decisions of the militaries in Egypt and Tunisia. Through a wide range of interviews and other new data sources, Grewal attempts to correct the historical record on key events ranging from whether the Tunisian military actually abandoned President Ben Ali to how the Egyptian military really saw the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2011-13 transition. He also offers an explanation for why the Egyptian military carried out the 2013 coup but Tunisia’s military refrained, but then later supported Kais Saied’s 2019 autogolpe.

Historical legacies of coup-proofing are key to Grewal’s argument. Through a global cross-national comparison, he develops a theoretical framework by which different coup-proofing strategies produce long terms structural effects on the type of militaries which evolve. In some cases, like Egypt, the threat of military coup is confronted through co-optation, such that well-funded and politically incorporated officers might have the capacity for a coup but no reason to carrye one out. In others, like Tunisia, leaders protect their regimes by creating multiple counterbalancing security institutions, keeping militaries weak and unable to carry out coups even if they have the desire. Grewal traces those legacies through the decade after 2011, shedding new light on the decisionmaking of those critical security forces. (For more on the Egyptian case, see my review of Maged Mandour’s Egypt Under El-Sisi last week).

I spoke with Grewal about Soldiers of Democracy on the Middle East Political Science Podcast last week: if you missed it, listen here!

Next up, I want to highlight Lisel Hintz’s short article describing her incredible work establishing and running an online writing group for Syrian and Turkish scholars impacted by last year’s horrific earthquakes — a remarkable adaptation to the online environment and a productive form of engagement and solidarity. Mershon postdoc Sefa Secin and two co-authors contribute an interesting article on Turkish electoral approaches to Syrian refugees. Thomas Juneau lays out a realist explanation for the disastrous Saudi war in Yemen. And, just outside the Middle East but very much in my transregional lens, Biruk Terrefe and Harry Verhoeven have a simply fascinating exploration of the historical legacies of infrastructure and state formation in the Horn of Africa. Enjoy!

Lisel Hintz, “Academic Solidarity in the Wake of Disaster: Blueprint for an Online Writing Support Group,” PS: Political Science and Politics (February 2024). ABSTRACT: This article develops a blueprint for creating online writing groups (OWGs) to support scholars who are directly and indirectly affected by disaster. Those who are living in regions affected by natural disasters face a severe psychological toll along with physical and logistical challenges. Furthermore, scholars in the diaspora who are watching their colleagues go about daily life while they struggle to meet writing deadlines can also experience detrimental psychological effects, including isolation anxiety. Findings from disaster studies research suggest that communal coping strategies can mitigate the short- and long-term challenges to mental health, including spiraling concerns about productivity that, in turn, inhibit productivity. My research builds on these studies, as well as analyses of virtual platforms used during the COVID-19 pandemic, to identify specific aspects of OWGs that can provide community and structure for scholars in the wake of natural disasters. I draw from my experience of creating and hosting a Zoom writing group for scholars from Turkey and Syria in the aftermath of the February 2023 earthquakes. In addition to participant observation of more than 240 two-hour sessions held over 42 weeks between March and December 2023, I draw from a survey-based assessment and email correspondence with participants to develop a best-practices model that I hope other scholars will replicate.

Sefa Secin, Serhun Al and Bekir Arslan, “Electoral dynamics, new nationalisms, and party positions on Syrian refugees in Turkey,” Turkish Studies (February 2024). ABSTRACT: When and under what conditions do ideologically similar nationalist parties adopt different positions and discourses about refugees and immigrants? We address this question by examining nationalist parties’ approaches toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. Documenting these differences based on an original Twitter dataset and party manifestos, we argue that electoral dynamics under the new presidential system have shaped nationalist parties’ discourses about refugees in the country. In particular, we explore how pre-electoral alliances and a strategic opening in the political space have motivated nationalist parties to amplify, ambiguate, or silence their otherwise conservative and nativist refugee discourses. Additionally, we maintain that urbanization has influenced the discursive strategies of nationalist party elites toward immigrants and refugees, giving rise to contradictory forms of nationalism in urban areas, including both far-right and liberal nationalisms. Overall, this study offers valuable insights into the complex interactions between refugee politics, electoral dynamics, nationalism, and urbanization in Turkey.

Thomas Juneau, “Saudi Arabia’s costly war in Yemen: a neoclassical realist theory of overbalancing,” International Relations (February 2024). ABSTRACT: Saudi Arabia faced multiple threats from Yemen in 2015: its southern neighbor had collapsed; a hostile sub-state actor, the Houthis, was entrenching itself along the border; and the presence of its rival Iran was growing. Responding was rational; it would have been sub-optimal for Riyadh to underbalance by doing little to counter the threat. Instead, however, Saudi Arabia overbalanced by launching a major air campaign and imposing a maritime and air blockade; as a result, it became bogged down in a costly war it cannot win. Why was this the case, and with what consequences? To answer this question, this article develops and applies a neoclassical realist theory of overbalancing. The first objective is nomothetic: to develop a theory of overbalancing, an important phenomenon neglected by the balancing literature. The second is empirical: to shed light on the Saudi decision to launch the war in Yemen.

Biruk Terrefe and Harry Verhoeven, “The road (not) taken: The contingencies of infrastructure and sovereignty in the Horn of Africa,” Political Geography (February 2024). ABSTRACT: This article offers a longitudinal study of the complex entanglements between infrastructure and sovereignty in the Horn of Africa. By analysing Ethiopia's imperial transport corridors, the political economy of Djibouti's Red Sea ports, and the Greater Nile Oil Pipeline between South Sudan, Khartoum, and global markets, we underline the co-production of infrastructure and sovereignty as a defining feature of regional politics in the last 150 years. In a region notorious for the redrawing of borders, continuous violent conflict, and contested sovereignties, we emphasize the contingency of this relationship by making two central arguments. First, infrastructures have been central to the exercise of sovereignty and the consolidation of political orders in the region; dams, pipelines and ports have spearheaded efforts to hardwire centralizing political institutions, extractive commercial relations, and centripetal sentiments of belonging. Second, in doing so these infrastructures have sought to disable infrastructural alternatives because rival infrastructural visions embody competing claims of sovereignty. However, as state-building projects and the infrastructures they prioritize have often failed to successfully neutralise opposing articulations of political authority and belonging, we argue that the vulnerability of existing infrastructures contributes to the vulnerability of political order in the Horn. This article draws attention to the roads not taken and how those could have changed -and might still reconfigure-the politics of the region.