Call for proposals: Authoritarianisms, Regime Resilience and State-Society Relations: Comparing Political Change in Syria and Iran

Deadline October 30, 2009

Steven Heydemann (U.S. Institute for Peace and Georgetown University) and Reinoud Leenders (University of Amsterdam) are pleased to invite you to submit a proposal for writing a paper within the framework of a joint research effort on Authoritarianisms, Regime Resilience and State-Society Relations: Comparing Political Change in Syria and Iran. The paper is to be presented in a project workshop and will be considered for publication in an edited volume or a special edition of a major academic journal. The project is part of the Knowledge Programme Civil Society in West Asia based at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.


Main context:
Following nearly two decades hopes for and predictions of genuine and far-reaching democratic reform in the Middle East seem to have reached a dead-end. Congruently, conventional academic analysis on democratization and "civil society", often grounded in Tocquevillian conceptual frameworks, have increasingly been criticized for their limited value in studying contemporary Middle Eastern politics. After all, authoritarianism in the region seems vibrant and, in many cases, more unyielding than ever before. As a result, many students of the region feel compelled to change their focus of investigation. Rather than exploring the reasons why the Middle East lacks democratic politics, the more appropriate research question pertains to the ways in which authoritarianism works and how it can be best understood.

Research themes and questions:
In view of the main pitfalls and lacunae that our approach to authoritarianisms aims to address, its research agenda can be broadly described as including the following main themes or research questions.

1) To what extent and how do democratic or liberal-democratic agendas, discourses, and practice help frame and affect authoritarian politics in the region?

2) How and to what extent can political change be understood as strategies of "authoritarian upgrading" by regimes adjusting to new global, regional, and domestic challenges?

3) How do non-state actors (individuals, organizations, movements, networks) operate in authoritarian conditions, formally and informally; how and why do they cross and/or fuse state-society boundaries and in the process become instrumental to drawing or blending such boundaries; and what implications follow from this in terms of non-state actor's roles in (intentionally or inadvertently) sustaining, modifying and/or contesting "authoritarianis"?

4) What variations can be detected in forms of authoritarianism dependent on place, time, and circumstances, and to what extent can alternative denominators capture these differences better than generic conceptions of "authoritarianism"?

5) How do contemporary modes of authoritarian governance in the Arab world compare to authoritarian practices and strategies of regime maintenance in other cases? Can we find indicators of authoritarian learning, or evidence that new, cross-regional patterns of authoritarian governance are becoming consolidated?


Possible queries and paper proposals (with a CV detailing past research—and publication efforts) should be sent to Reinoud Leenders or Steven Heydemann .