Working Papers

Before the War on Terror: The History of Security Institutions and Counterterrorism Adaptation after 9/11

After 9/11, governments around the world adopted new counterterrorism laws and expanded security cooperation. However, many states did not start from scratch. They already had courts, intelligence agencies, emergency powers, and detention practices that could be adapted to new counterterrorism demands. This paper asks how those pre-existing institutions shaped later change. Focusing mainly on Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, it shows that post-2001 reforms usually expanded existing institutions rather than replacing them. It also examines the Arab Spring as another major political shock that, despite leadership changes, permitted these security institutions to remain and be adapted to new political contexts. The paper argues that these institutions were shaped by earlier colonial, Cold War, regional, and Western security relationships. Counterterrorism change is thus best understood as a historical process in which new international pressures work through older institutional pathways.

The Rise of the Madani Party: The Evolution of Political Parties in the Middle East (with Marsin Alshamary)

What explains the rise of madani parties in the Middle East and North Africa? After the Arab Spring, there was a proliferation of political parties across the region. Many of these parties self-identified as “madani” parties, a designation organic to the Middle East that typically connotes a mild political secularism and a focus on anti-corruption, institutions, and the rule of law. In this paper, we argue that madani parties emerge in response to the perceived governing failures of Islamist parties. As a result, madani parties define themselves through the rejection of ideological conflict. They prioritize a procedural and technocratic vision of governance and eschew positive ideological projects. In practice, these parties have proliferated in number in recent years but have generally been weak and fragmented due to their lack of clear political programs. Empirically, we examine the establishment and trajectory of parties in the Middle East through the construction of a novel dataset and, subsequently, through comparative analysis of parties in Egypt and Iraq. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of madani party proliferation for opposition politics in the region.

Islam, the War on Terror, and Pitfalls of the Moderate-Radical Dichotomy

This paper reassesses the inclusion-moderation literature, which examines the impact of political inclusion on Islamist moderation. I first show that Global War on Terror narratives shaped how scholars study Islamist organizations. I then examine 53 works of scholarship from the literature published between 1994 and 2022. I find that existing conceptualizations of moderation overwhelmingly center normative preferences for democracy, pluralism, de-Islamization, non-violence, or “working within the system.” I explore how commitment to “democracy” or non-violence in corrupt and violent authoritarian regimes serves to bolster authoritarianism rather than lead to democratization. I recommend that scholars move away from normative conceptualizations towards relational ones that prioritize the extent to which actors seek to transform existing political systems. This approach simplifies the moderate-radical dichotomy, limits normative bias, and contextualizes changes in actors’ commitments to democracy, pluralism, and non-violence.

Mobilization without Organization (with Alexei Abrahams and Dana El Kurd)

Since their rise in the 2000s, social media have had a complicated relationship with social movements. Although they offer unprecedented connectivity, they may also facilitate “mobilization without organization” (Tufekci 2017) or “mobilization without movement” (Yom 2022), generating fragile movements that lack organizational maturity. This paper contributes original evidence from the Palestinian struggle, which is reliant on social media because of geographical diffuseness, the co-optation of formal institutions, and the repression of political parties. We investigate by scraping Twitter and Instagram, conducting face-to-face interviews with activists, and documenting protest data. Our analysis suggests that movements heavily reliant on social media are not necessarily doomed to this trap, as civil society organizations have acquired a growing online footprint. Yet this new de facto structure is emerging organically, without a formal process for conferring authority or ensuring accountability.