- Professor and Janet W. Ketcham '53 Chair in Middle East Studies
Steven Heydemann
Smith College, Middle East Studies, Faculty Member
- The Brookings Institution, Middle East Policy, Department Memberadd
- Government, Comparative Politics, Development Studies, Conflict Resolution, Middle East Studies, Syria, and 27 moreAuthoritarianism, Globalization, Political Economy, International Relations, International Political Economy, Development Economics, Social Networks, Middle East Politics, Comparative Political Economy, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Social Sciences, Human Rights, Israel Studies, Israeli Politics, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Lebanon, Syrian Studies, Democratization, Sociology of islam, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), F. Gregory Gause III, Egypt, Democratic Transitions, Tunisia, and Federica Bicchiedit
The Syrian conflict presents as a case that has been well-studied in the power-sharing literature. It is typically coded as an ethno-sectarian civil war moving towards a decisive military victory by an authoritarian regime and thus... more
The Syrian conflict presents as a case that has been well-studied in the power-sharing literature. It is typically coded as an ethno-sectarian civil war moving towards a decisive military victory by an authoritarian regime and thus unlikely to end in a power-sharing agreement. Yet Syria's experience offers important insights into the effects of new conflict environments on prospects for power-sharing in 'hard' cases. Syria's conflict exhibits attributes and is unfolding in an environment that requires rethinking simplistic correlations between the military and political outcomes of civil wars. Moreover, the form of political settlement that emerges in Syria may also complicate assumptions about the ability of victors to shape the terms of postwar settlements unilaterally. Whether a power-sharing agreement is reached in Syria-however remote the prospects for that might be-will be determined by factors that underscore the impact changing conflict contexts can have on how civil wars end.
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This article examines post-2011 transformations of economic governance in the MENA region. It argues that Arab regimes have responded to the threats posed by the 2011 uprisings not by embracing appeals for inclusive social contracts, but... more
This article examines post-2011 transformations of economic governance in the MENA region. It argues that Arab regimes have responded to the threats posed by the 2011 uprisings not by embracing appeals for inclusive social contracts, but through the imposition of repressive-exclusionary social pacts in which previously universal economic and social rights of citizens are being redefined as selective benefits. These pacts are shown to represent a significant shift in economic governance and in state-society relations in the MENA region, evident in the growing institutionalization of “contingent citizenship” as a framework for the organization of state-society relations and the management of social policy. In stressing discontinuities in economic governance, this argument challenges claims that the reassertion of authoritarianism in Arab states after 2011 represents a “back-to-the-future” process exhibiting little change from the formally inclusive social pacts associated with pre-2011 models of authoritarian governance.
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Civil wars currently underway in Libya, Syria, and Yemen demonstrate that patterns of economic governance during violent conflict exhibit significant continuity with prewar practices, raising important questions along three lines. First,... more
Civil wars currently underway in Libya, Syria, and Yemen demonstrate that patterns of economic governance during violent conflict exhibit significant continuity with prewar practices, raising important questions along three lines. First, violent conflict may disrupt prewar practices less than is often assumed. Second, continuity in governance highlights the limits of state fragility frameworks for post-conflict reconstruction that view violent conflict as creating space for institutional reform. Third, continuity of prewar governance practices has important implications for the relationship between sovereignty , governance, and conflict resolution. Civil wars in the Middle East have not created conditions conducive to reconceptualizing sovereignty or decoupling sovereignty and governance. Rather, parties to conflict compete to capture and monopolize the benefits that flow from international recognition. Under these conditions , civil wars in the Middle East will not yield easily to negotiated solutions. Moreover, to the extent that wartime economic orders reflect deeply institutionalized norms and practices, postconflict conditions will limit possibilities for interventions defined in terms of overcoming state fragility.
Research Interests: Comparative Politics, Political Economy, Peace and Conflict Studies, Middle East Studies, War Studies, and 13 morePost-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Political Science, Comparative Political Economy, Conflict Resolution, Yemen, Syria, Middle East Politics, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Authoritarianism, Peacebuilding, Libya, Corruption, and Stabilization and Reconstruction
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Drawing on the research presented by contributors to a special issue of Mediterranean Politics, this article assesses the analytic opportunities that emerge when the Arab uprisings are conceptualized as moments of transformation rather... more
Drawing on the research presented by contributors to a special issue of Mediterranean Politics, this article assesses the analytic opportunities that emerge when the Arab uprisings are conceptualized as moments of transformation rather than as incipient, flawed or failed transitions to democracy. Highlighting critical issues that cut across and link the experiences of political relevant elites (PREs) and mobilized publics in the cases
of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen, it identifies three sets of issues that warrant further comparative research: the effects of stateness and patterns of state-society relations on the trajectory of Arab uprisings; the role of identity politics and nonstate
forms of solidarity as drivers of political mobilization and collective action, and the impact of these forms of collective action on possibilities for establishing stable, legitimate forms of governance; and the limits of civil societies and civic sectors in influencing transformational processes.
of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen, it identifies three sets of issues that warrant further comparative research: the effects of stateness and patterns of state-society relations on the trajectory of Arab uprisings; the role of identity politics and nonstate
forms of solidarity as drivers of political mobilization and collective action, and the impact of these forms of collective action on possibilities for establishing stable, legitimate forms of governance; and the limits of civil societies and civic sectors in influencing transformational processes.
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The Middle East is experiencing an extended period of turmoil and violent conflict. Two main explanations exist to account for heightened levels of conflict and competition. The first attributes current conditions to the intensification... more
The Middle East is experiencing an extended period of turmoil and violent conflict. Two main explanations exist to account for heightened levels of conflict and competition. The first attributes current conditions to the intensification of sectarian polarization in the Arab east; regional dynamics are best explained by identity politics, which serve as instruments of sectarian regimes. The second attributes current conditions to state weakness; states in the Arab east are fragile, lacking effective institutions and suffering from a deficit of legitimacy, allowing state elites to govern in ways that exacerbate social cleavages. We view both these arguments as insufficient to explain patterns and trends in regional conflict across the greater Levant and the Arab east. Instead, we argue that current regional dynamics are best explained in terms of competition to determine whether a regional security order will be governed by the norm of sovereignty or the norm of sectarianism. This struggle plays out in an environment of normative fragmentation, where neither norm is hegemonic. It is unfolding most directly through violent confrontations within states that contain multi-confessional societies and exhibit high levels of cross-border intervention.
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This article traces the impact of the Arab uprisings on US foreign assistance to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the period since 2011. Despite the Obama administration’s rhetoric in support of Arab protesters and their demands... more
This article traces the impact of the Arab uprisings on US foreign assistance to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the period since 2011. Despite the Obama administration’s rhetoric in support of Arab protesters and their demands for political and economic change, and despite the US President’s commitment to place the full weight of the US foreign policy system behind political openings created by mass protests, US foreign assistance programs to the MENA region were largely unaffected by the dramatic political changes of 2011 and beyond. The article explains continuity in US foreign assistance as the result of several factors. These include the administrations ambivalence about the political
forces unleashed by the uprisings; domestic economic and political obstacles to increases in foreign assistance; institutional and bureaucratic inertia within the agencies responsible for managing foreign assistance programming, and institutional capture of the foreign assistance bureaucracy by implementing organizations with a vested interest in sustaining ongoing activities rather than adapting programs in light of the new challenges caused by the Arab uprisings.
forces unleashed by the uprisings; domestic economic and political obstacles to increases in foreign assistance; institutional and bureaucratic inertia within the agencies responsible for managing foreign assistance programming, and institutional capture of the foreign assistance bureaucracy by implementing organizations with a vested interest in sustaining ongoing activities rather than adapting programs in light of the new challenges caused by the Arab uprisings.
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Assessing foreign assistance to Arab states sheds important light on how Wester and regional donors have responded to the dramatic changes set in motion by the wave of mass protests that swept across the Middle East in 2011 and beyond.... more
Assessing foreign assistance to Arab states sheds important light on how Wester
and regional donors have responded to the dramatic changes set in motion by the wave of
mass protests that swept across the Middle East in 2011 and beyond. The papers presented in
this special issue highlight two essential fingings. First, Western patterns of foreign assistance
exhibit remarkable continuity, despite the scale of the uprisings and their effects, and despite
the commitment of Western governments to expand assistance in support for the aspirations of
Arab protestors. Second, patterns of foreign assistance from the Arab Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) countries reflect teh deepening politicization of Arab foreign assistance, the
ongoing shift in regional influence from the Arab East to the Gulf, and the extent to which
foreign assistance has become Instrumentalized in regional balance of power politics.
and regional donors have responded to the dramatic changes set in motion by the wave of
mass protests that swept across the Middle East in 2011 and beyond. The papers presented in
this special issue highlight two essential fingings. First, Western patterns of foreign assistance
exhibit remarkable continuity, despite the scale of the uprisings and their effects, and despite
the commitment of Western governments to expand assistance in support for the aspirations of
Arab protestors. Second, patterns of foreign assistance from the Arab Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) countries reflect teh deepening politicization of Arab foreign assistance, the
ongoing shift in regional influence from the Arab East to the Gulf, and the extent to which
foreign assistance has become Instrumentalized in regional balance of power politics.
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English translation of "Après le séisme. Gouvernement économique et politique de masse dans le monde arabe"
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Introduction from Heydemann and Leenders, eds., Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran (Stanford University Press, 2013).
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Important research programs within New Institutional Economics advance culturalist arguments to explain failures of economic development. Focusing on the work of Douglass C. North and Avner Greif, this article argues that such arguments... more
Important research programs within New Institutional Economics advance culturalist arguments to explain failures of economic development. Focusing on the work of Douglass C. North and Avner Greif, this article argues that such arguments rely on an essentialist conception of culture that is both historically inaccurate and analytically misleading. Greif’s work in particular rests on a selective use of empirical data that ultimately distorts the deductive models that are at the core of his work. As a result, both scholars use culture to account for outcomes that are more adequately explained as the product of social conflict and political struggles—struggles in which culture plays a far more contingent and destabilizing role than the one they attribute to it. What is needed, I argue, is to link arguments about the persistence of inefficient institutions with a sociologically informed conception of culture as an ensemble of resources that enhance rather than constrain the scope of individual agency. To come to terms with the effects of culture on institutional formation and change it is necessary to replace the essentialism articulated by North and Greif with a strategic-instrumentalist view in which culture is compatible with a wide spectrum of economic behaviors, individual actions, and thus institutional trajectories.
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Review of Dipali Mukhopadhyay and Kimberly Howe. Good Rebel Governance: Revolutionary Politics and Western Intervention in Syria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2023. ISBN 978-1108778015. A contribution to: H-Diplo | Robert... more
Review of Dipali Mukhopadhyay and Kimberly Howe. Good Rebel Governance: Revolutionary Politics and Western Intervention in Syria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2023. ISBN 978-1108778015.
A contribution to:
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Roundtable Review 15-47
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108778015
14 June 2024 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt15-47
A contribution to:
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Roundtable Review 15-47
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108778015
14 June 2024 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt15-47
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Review of Carothers, ed., Uncharted Journey, and Fukuyama, State Building, Governance, and World Order in the 21st Century.
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This piece is part of a series titled "Nonstate armed actors and illicit economies in 2023" from Brookings's Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors. n Syria's civil war, now entering its 12th year, the state/nonstate divide has become... more
This piece is part of a series titled "Nonstate armed actors and illicit economies in 2023" from Brookings's Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors. n Syria's civil war, now entering its 12th year, the state/nonstate divide has become increasingly blurred. Nowhere is this more evident than in the practices adopted by ruling elites in regime-and opposition-held areas to ensure access to resources. Over time, both state actors and nonstate armed groups have produced parallel, interconnected, and interdependent political economies in which the boundaries between formal and informal, licit and illicit, regulation and coercion have largely vanished. Border areas in Syria now constitute a single economic ecosystem, linked by dense ties among networks of traders, smugglers, regime of�cials, brokers, and armed groups. Competing zones of political control have had little effect on economic collaboration across con�ict lines. When it comes to trade, pragmatism reigns.
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Coauthor: Karam Shaar
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Summarizes transformations in authoritarian governance in MENA following Arab uprisings. Argues that in some cases, more repressive-exclusionary modes of governance are emerging to manage the challenges of mass politics.
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An op ed that was originally published in the Monkey Cage blog of the Washington Post.
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Op Ed published on November 2, 2016.
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Co-edited with Marc Lynch, with chapters from each of us as well as:
Raymond Hinnebusch
Toby Dodge
Lisa Anderson
Bassel Salloukh
Dipali Mukhopadhyay
Jillian Schwedler
Sean Yom
Dan Slater
Raymond Hinnebusch
Toby Dodge
Lisa Anderson
Bassel Salloukh
Dipali Mukhopadhyay
Jillian Schwedler
Sean Yom
Dan Slater