Journal of Middle Eastern Politics & Policy

Since Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, Libya has been wracked by instability. Yet Jacob Mundy challenges the conventional wisdom that tribalism is the root problem.

Kuwait’s opposition notched a major victory in parliamentary elections held on November 26, winning around half of the National Assembly’s 50 elected seats. Though polls were originally scheduled for June 2017, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah dissolved the legislature on October 16 after the government was unable to make headway in passing subsidy reforms – even […]

Embed from Getty Images  Israeli riot police clashed with settlers living in the Amona “outpost” settlement in 2006 A controversial bill in Israel aims to legalize settlements in the occupied West Bank built on privately owned Palestinian land. The bill was proposed after an Israeli court ordered the demolition of the Amona “outpost,” a West Bank settlement […]

Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who ruled Cuba for nearly half a century, died on November 25 at the age of 90. Despite Cuba’s small size and the long distance separating it from the Middle East, Castro’s Cuba played an active role in the region in the 1960s and 70s. Claiming to act in promotion […]

Embed from Getty Images Since 2011, conflict and political upheavals have rocked the Middle East, challenging traditional alliances and the balance of power in the region. New relationships have developed – most noticeably cooperation between Russia and Iran, particularly in Syria. To look further into this new landscape, JMEPP spoke with Mark N. Katz, professor of government […]

War seems an inescapable fact of human life. But in past decades it has been civilians, not soldiers, that have borne a disproportionate brunt of warfare across the planet. Historians often reference that, in the last major battle of the 19th century in Solferino, 40,000 combatants were either wounded or killed but only one civilian […]

Embed from Getty Images This article was originally published in JMEPP’s Spring 2016 print edition. Abstract Since King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud assumed the Saudi Arabian throne on 23 January 2015, there have been clear continuities in both Saudi domestic and foreign policies to maintain regime security and stability for the ruling elite; however, […]

An unfortunate characteristic of the discourse on Islamism is the muddling of definitions, terminology, historical references, and political positions. It is not uncommon to find criticisms of contemporary Islamist parties rooted in criticisms of premodern Islamic ideas. Even the basic definition of political Islam and “Islamism” is unclear, with no consensus as to what the […]

The number of refugees is at its highest-ever level, at more than 20 million worldwide. The Syrian civil war is the biggest source of refugees today, and neighboring countries Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey bear much of the brunt. Syrian refugees now represent roughly 20% of Lebanon’s population, which has put enormous strains on the small […]

Embed from Getty Images   For Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, enemies are everywhere. His speeches and official comments are littered with references to the hostile elements lurking in Turkey, the so-called “parallel state.” Erdoğan has long used the “parallel state” term to refer to the movement founded in the early 1970s by Turkish Muslim […]

Embed from Getty Images With last week’s election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the anxiety of Arab and Muslim Americans was perhaps the timeliest topic of discussion at the tenth annual Harvard Arab Weekend. In a panel on Saturday, entitled “Arab and Muslim America: Facing Today’s Challenges,” four activists and professors spoke passionately on the […]

  In times of conflict, humanitarian organizations aim to meet the “basic needs” of those in crisis. But too often this model of emergency intervention ignores chronic conditions – and especially the pressing question of mental health, according to Fouad M. Fouad, a professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of […]