CDDRL’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy held its annual conference at Stanford University on October 11 and 12, titled “The Struggle for Political Change in the Arab World.” The conference is an outgrowth of ARD’s efforts to support new research on the dynamics of political change in the countries of the Arab world. Scholars from across different disciplines sought to understand how social, economic, and political dynamics at the national level, as well as international and regional conflict and power rivalries, impact struggles for political and social change in the region.
Overview of Panels and Speakers
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Following opening remarks by FSI Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, the first panel titled “The Boundaries of Authoritarianism post-Arab Uprisings” featured CDDRL Senior Research Scholar Amr Hamzawy. His paper examined how the regime of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has employed discursive strategies to discredit calls for democratic change in the country. Sean Yom, Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University, outlined how the protest strategies of Jordanian youth have limited their effectiveness in advancing meaningful political change. University of California, Davis Scholar Samia Errazzouki discussed the failure of state-led political and economic reform in Morocco.
Chaired by Harvard University Fellow Hicham Alaoui, the second panel was titled “Popular Uprisings and Uncertain Transitions.” University of California, Santa Cruz Political Scientist Thomas Serres provided an overview of the economic disruptions that contributed to Algeria’s uprising. Lindsay Benstead, who is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Portland State University, analyzed the electoral successes of Tunisia’s Ennahda Party. Khalid Medani, Professor of Political Science at McGill University, explained how Sudanese protesters leveraged new strategies of contention to force Omar Al-Bashir out of power.
Farah Al-Nakib (right) and Michael Herb (left)
The third panel, titled “Politics, Succession and Sectarianism in the GCC States,” included Oxford University Fellow Toby Matthiesen, who discussed how Saudi Arabia and the GCC states have increasingly sought to protect their regimes by actively molding the politics of their autocratic patrons in the region, and by using new technologies to upgrade the effectiveness of their surveillance states. Georgia State University Political Scientist Michael Herb explained how the aging of the Saudi line of succession contributed to the political ascendancy of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and the decay of family rule in the country. Cal Poly Historian Farah Al-Nakib described how Kuwait’s royal family has used its sponsorship of large-scale development projects to sidestep the country’s political polarization, undermine the power of the parliament, and weaken public access to spaces of political contestation.
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The fourth panel focused on “Social Strife and Proxy Conflict in the Middle East.” Chatham House Scholar Lina Khatib described Syria’s transformation during the civil war from a highly centralized security state to a transactional state in which the regime depends heavily on local powerbrokers. Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, discussed differences in how local communities in Yemen have been affected by the country’s conflict. David Patel, who serves as Associate Director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, argued that Iraq’s democratic institutions have been impressively robust to a series of existential challenges, but he also highlighted a widespread feeling among the Iraqi public that its parliamentary system is failing to deliver.
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Finally, the fifth panel examined the topic of “International Forces in the Arab Political Arena.” Stanford University Political Scientist Lisa Blaydes suggested that China’s efforts to involve itself in the regional economy may improve its reputation among economically-frustrated Arab citizens, but that such efforts also spell trouble for democracy and human rights in the Middle East. Hamid & Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University Abbas Milani argued that Iran’s ideological commitment to exporting the Islamic Revolution has been remarkably consistent for several decades. Colin Kahl, Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at FSI, reviewed the strategies of US administrations toward the Middle East, and posited that President Trump’s approach of pursuing maximalist objectives with minimal commitments is particularly likely to heighten instability in the region. FSI Scholar Ayca Alemdaroglu emphasized that Turkey’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy has failed to achieve its objectives in the face of mounting regional upheaval.
Common Themes of Political Change and Continuity
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Several themes emerged from conference presentations. First, across the panels, scholars discussed the lessons learned by autocrats and activists alike in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and the ways in which these lessons have transformed regional politics. Hamzawy emphasized that the Sisi regime in Egypt has increasingly relied on intensive repression over cooptation to maintain stability, while at the same time refusing to grant even limited political openings as existed under Hosni Mubarak’s presidency. In part, this change appears to be rooted in the regime’s belief that relaxing the state’s authoritarian posture had contributed to the revolutionary upheaval of 2011. Likewise, Matthiesen suggested that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council States have learned to become more aggressive in strengthening their surveillance apparatus and policing popular discourse transnationally. By contrast, Serres discussed how the Algerian military and bureaucracy have responded to mass protests not by intensifying repression, but instead by attempting to coopt anti-corruption initiatives and democratic reforms to limit political and economic change. Similarly, regarding Kuwait, Al-Nakib illustrated how the restructuring of urban spaces has proved itself a subtle but successful strategy for the royal family to rehabilitate its reputation while limiting geographic focal points for popular politics.
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Activists have also learned their own lessons from the aftermath of the Arab Spring. According to Yom, Jordanian activists continue to look to the leaderless revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt as a model to be emulated. As a result, they prioritize agility and horizontality in their protests, and they forgo the organization of formal political movements. This approach has succeeded in acquiring short-term concessions from the regime but has failed to generate broader structural changes. On the other hand, activists in Sudan appear to have been more successful at using lessons from the Arab Spring to push for systematic transformations of their political system. According to Medani, Sudanese protesters developed novel tactics to avoid the repression of the coercive apparatus, and they were effective at gradually forging a counterhegemonic discourse that clearly exposed the regime’s failures to the public. Following the overthrow of Omar Al-Bashir, activists in Sudan have also insisted on dismantling the political and economic might of the deep state to avoid following Egypt’s path.
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Second, the conference discussion indicated widespread dissatisfaction with formal political institutions across the region. For instance, Hamzawy suggested that Sisi’s regime has been relatively successful at discrediting civilian political institutions, including the legislature and civilian-led ministries. Errazzouki highlighted widespread dissatisfaction in Morocco with existing political institutions. Likewise, Yom’s discussion of activists in Jordan emphasized their lack of interest in entering formal politics. In Kuwait, the royal court has found an opening to pursue urban development projects outside of normal institutions in part because of the public’s frustration with gridlock in the legislature. Patel speculated that frustration with the parliament and muhasasa system in Iraq may finally prompt major changes to the country’s political process.
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Third, despite this disillusionment with formal politics, these political institutions have proved remarkably durable in countries across the region. For example, though current frustrations may finally prompt change in Iraq, Patel also highlighted the resilience of the parliamentary system in the face of a sectarian civil war, US troop withdrawal, the rise of ISIS, and a number of other major challenges. For both Algeria and Sudan, Serres and Medani stressed that militaries continue to exercise significant influence despite the popular uprisings. Meanwhile, for Egypt, Hamzawy noted the firm grip of the current military regime on power, and for Morocco, Errazzouki described the lack of systematic changes to the country’s ruling monarchy, even after years of popular pressure.
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Fourth, this durability has not precluded a number of important shifts within existing political institutions. Regarding Syria, for instance, Khatib explained how the survival of Bashar al-Asad’s presidency has depended on moving state institutions away from a centralized security state to a transactional state reliant on local actors with a degree of independence from the regime. Herb described how the consensus-based family rule of the Saudi monarchy fell victim to deaths among the aging senior princes, which opened up opportunities for the king to appoint more officials in a manner that heightened his direct influence. Herb suggested that Mohammad Bin Salman recognized this change and knew that he would likely lose relevance upon his father’s death; as a result, he was motivated to gamble on consolidating his control while his father still held the power to issue royal decrees. In Algeria, the influence of the military and bureaucracy may remain paramount for now, but Serres also pointed out that protesters have succeeded in stripping away the civilian intermediaries who used to protect these institutions. Regarding the durability of local institutions, Yadav noted how pre-conflict and even pre-unification institutions in Yemen have continued to operate effectively in a number of local communities around the country.
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Fifth, foreign interventions will continue to destabilize the region and impede prospects for democratization or post-conflict reconstructions in the coming years. Khatib noted that Russia has positioned itself as the agenda setter who can bring the Syrian state back to its feet, but also that Russia and Iran are competing to profit off the country’s reconstruction. For Yemen, Yadav argued that fragmentation at the local level has important implications for best practices in the international community’s reconstruction efforts, but that current actors are not well positioned to understand these trends. Kahl predicted that the Middle East strategy of the Trump administration would likely contribute to further destabilization of the region because of its emphasis on empowering allies to do what they want and go after Iran while the United States maintains its distance. Meanwhile, Blaydes’ presentation on China’s regional involvement, Milani’s discussion of Iran’s efforts to export the Islamic Revolution, and Matthiesen’s observations about the GCC States’ authoritarian coordination all illustrated how intervening states are reducing prospects for democratic political change.
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Sixth, even as interventionist countries have contributed to the destabilization of the region, they have also confronted major obstacles themselves – and in some cases have failed outright to achieve their primary objectives. Khatib noted that Iran has faced backlash in Syria, while Abbas Milani and David Patel pointed to backlash against Iran in Iraq. Kahl emphasized that the Trump administration’s Middle East policy was unlikely to achieve its goals. Blaydes observed that China has not acquired greater salience in the Middle East despite its more active economic involvement, and individuals in many of the region’s countries – particularly those that are more developed – do not see China’s growth as a positive force. She also stressed the reputational risks China is taking in pursuing potentially unpopular investments through the Belt and Road Initiative. The GCC States are attempting to prop up strongmen in both Libya and Sudan, but this strategy has struggled in the face of local political dynamics; furthermore, the intervention in Yemen has been a disaster for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Finally, Alemdaroglu stressed that Turkey’s ambitious “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy, which reflects a desire to revive Turkish influence in areas ruled by the Ottoman Empire, has largely failed. In particular, the architect of the policy, former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, lost his job; the country miscalculated badly in how it handled the aftermath of the Arab Spring; and Turkey’s relations with many of its neighbors have soured.
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ARD 2019 Annual Conference participants. Front row (from left): Sean Yom, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Lindsay Benstead, David Patel, Michael Herb. Middle row (from left): Colin Kahl, Lina Khatib, Hicham Alaoui, Larry Diamond, Samia Errazzouki, Lisa Blaydes, Hesham Sallam. Back row (from left): Toby Matthiesen, Ayca Alemdaroglu, Abbas Milani, Amr Hamzawy, Michael McFaul, Scott Williamson
U.S.-Turkish relations have plunged to a new nadir. In the past month, a senior Republican senator has suggested suspending Turkey’s membership in the NATO alliance, while the secretary of state implied a readiness to use military force against America’s wayward ally.
In these circumstances, U.S. nuclear weapons have no business in Turkey. It is time to bring them home.
The signs of a strained and deteriorating relationship are hard to miss. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly autocratic leader, has turned away from both Europe and the United States. He instead is actively cultivating a close relationship with fellow authoritarian Vladimir Putin, as evidenced by their eight meetings just this year.
Erdogan rejected buying U.S. Patriot air defense missiles in favor of Russian S-400s—missiles that are incompatible with NATO’s integrated air defense system. As a result, the United States excluded Turkey from taking part in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, leaving the question of Turkey’s next-generation fighter literally up in the air.
Following President Donald Trump’s rash decision to withdraw the small U.S. military contingent from eastern Syria, Erdogan launched the Turkish army on a major offensive. In doing so, he showed no regard for the Kurdish forces that did so much in collaboration with the U.S. military to destroy ISIS at great cost—some ten thousand Kurdish fighters killed. At one point, Turkish artillery bracketed a position still occupied by U.S. troops. Trump has threatened various sanctions and repeatedly expressed his readiness to “devastate” the Turkish economy.
One other worrying matter. Erdogan says he wants nuclear weapons. In September, he told his political party: “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads. But the West insists ‘we can’t have them.’ This, I cannot accept.”
Turkey is not the place to host U.S. nuclear arms.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. military maintains 150 B61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe for use in conflict by the U.S. and certain allied air forces. Reportedly, fifty of those are located at an American facility at the Turkish airbase at Incirlik (bases in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy host the other one hundred). The 39th Weapons Systems Security Group, numbering about five hundred U.S. Air Force personnel, secures and maintains the bombs at Incirlik.
The United States has deployed nuclear weapons in Europe going back to the 1950s, though the number today is drastically lower than the peak of more than seven thousand in the 1970s. The long-stated purpose of these deployments has been to help deter an attack against NATO member states in Europe while reassuring European allies of America’s commitment to their defense.
Ten years ago, many in Europe questioned the need for such forward-basing of U.S. nuclear arms. That talk has become muted as Moscow adopted a belligerent attitude toward the West, and the Russian military seized Crimea and provoked an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Washington and NATO still see a need for American nuclear bombs in Europe. While any use of a nuclear weapon would have a military effect, the Alliance has come to regard these bombs as having primarily a political purpose: deterrence and, should deterrence fail and a conflict break out, to signal (by their use) that matters are about to escalate to potentially horrific levels and thus bring the conflict to an end.
The one hundred B61 bombs deployed at bases in NATO countries other than Turkey can fulfill those requirements. There is no requirement to have U.S. nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members in order to deter attack and provide assurance to the twenty-seven European members of the Alliance; that can readily be done with B61 bombs based in four countries.
Moreover, while the U.S., German, Dutch, Belgian and Italian air forces each have dual-capable aircraft certified to carry nuclear weapons and crews trained in nuclear delivery, questions arose some time ago as to whether that is so with the Turkish Air Force. In that case, the most likely scenario in which a Turkish-based nuclear bomb would be used would envisage a U.S. fighter flying into Incirlik, loading a B61 bomb, and then taking off to fly to and strike its target. It would seem much simpler to launch a nuclear-armed U.S. F-16 from its base at Aviano, Italy.
The rationale for maintaining nuclear weapons at Incirlik becomes more dubious by the day. It is time for the U.S. Air Force to bring them home.
Steven Pifer is a William Perry research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer.
Under the title “Political Contestation and New Social Forces in the Middle East and North Africa,” the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy convened its 2018 annual conference on April 27 and 28 at Stanford University. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars from across several disciplines, the conference examined how dynamics of governance and modes of political participation have evolved in recent years in light of the resurgence of authoritarian trends throughout the region.
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Delivering the opening remarks of the conference, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond reflected on the state of struggle for political change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In a panel titled “Youth, Culture, and Expressions of Resistance,” FSI Scholar Ayca Alemdaroglu discussed strategies the Turkish state has pursued to preempt and contain dissent among youth. Adel Iskandar, Assistant Professor of Communications at Simon Fraser University, explained the various ways through which Egyptian youth employ social media to express political dissent. Yasemin Ipek, Assistant Professor of Global Affairs at George Mason University, unpacked the phenomenon of “entrepreneurial activism” among Lebanese youth and discussed its role in cross-sectarian mobilization.
The conference’s second panel, tilted “Situating Gender in the Law and the Economy,” featured Texas Christian University Historian Hanan Hammad, who assessed the achievements of the movement to fight gender-based violence in Egypt. Focusing on Gulf Cooperation Council states, Alessandra Gonzales, a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, analyzed the differences in female executive hiring practices across local and foreign firms. Stanford University Political Scientist and FSI Senior Fellow Lisa Blaydes presented findings from her research on women’s attitudes toward Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Egypt.
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Speaking on a panel titled “Social Movements and Visions for Change,” Free University of Berlin Scholar Dina El-Sharnouby discussed the 2011 revolutionary movement in Egypt and the visions for social change it espouses in the contemporary moment. Oklahoma City University Political Scientist Mohamed Daadaoui analyzed the Moroccan regime’s strategies of control following the Arab Uprisings and their impact on various opposition actors. Nora Doaiji, a PhD Student in History at Harvard University, shared findings from her research examining the challenges confronting the women’s movement in Saudi Arabia.
The fourth panel of the conference, “The Economy, the State, and New Social Actors,” featured George Washington University Associate Professor of Geography Mona Atia, who presented on territorial restructuring and the politics governing poverty in Morocco. Amr Adly, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, analyzed the relationship between the state and big business in Egypt after the 2013 military coup. Rice University Professor of Economics Mahmoud El-Gamal shared findings from his research on the economic determinants of democratization and de-democratization trends in Egypt during the past decade.
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The final panel focused on the international and regional dimensions of the struggle for political change in the Arab world, and featured Hicham Alaoui, a Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Georgetown University Political Scientist Daniel Brumberg, and Nancy Okail, the Executive Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
The conference included a special session featuring former fellows of the American Middle Eastern Network at Stanford (AMENDS), an organization dedicated to promoting understanding around the Middle East, and supporting young leaders working to ignite concrete social and economic development in the region. AMENDS affiliates from five different MENA countries shared with the Stanford community their experiences in working toward social change in their respective countries.
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ARD 2018 Annual Conference participants.
Front row (from left): Hanan Hammad, Hamza Arsbi, Ayca Alemdaroglu, Mahdi Lafram, Lior Lapid.
Second to front row (from left): Dina El-Sharnouby, Daniel Brumberg, Radidja Nemar, Mona Atia.
Third to front row (from left): Hesham Sallam, Joel Beinin, Nora Doaiji, Hicham Alaoui, Mohamed Daadaoui, Salma Takky, Larry Diamond, Amr Adly, Sultan Al Amer, Heba Al-Hayek.
Back row (from left): Amr Gharbeia, Mahmoud El-Gamal, Amr Hamzawy
Islamism has imitated, or colluded with, the state autocracies it claims to oppose. It has failed to suggest its own answers to economic problems, social justice, education or corruption, writes Hicham Alaoui in Le Monde diplomatique. Click here to read the full article, which is based on research that Alaoui presented at UC Berkeley and CDDRL on October 10 and 11, respectively.
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Supporters of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi at a Muslim Brotherhood rally. December 12, 2012.
My research examines political extremism, destigmatization, and radicalization, focusing on the role of popularity cues in online media. My related research examines a broad range of threats to democratic governance, including authoritarian encroachment, ethnic prejudice in public goods allocation, and misinformation.
My dissertation won APSA's Ernst B. Haas Award for the best dissertation on European Politics. I am currently working on my book project, Engineering Extremism, with generous funding from the William F. Milton Fund at Harvard.
My published work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Governance, International Studies Quarterly, Public Administration Review, and the Virginia Journal of International Law, along with an edited volume in Democratization (Oxford University Press). My research has been featured in KQED/NPR, The Washington Post, and VICE News.
I received my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. I was a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet. I hold a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude; Phi Beta Kappa) from Cornell University and an M.A. (with Distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley.
Bringing together more than 25 scholars from Europe, Turkey, and the United States, the conference will explore the contemporary Turkey through the conceptual lenses of space, narrative, and affect/emotion. The event will start with a public screening of “Clair Obscur” (Dir. Yesim Ustaoglu) on April 27 and conclude with a public screening of “The Last Schnitzel” (Dir. Ismet Kurtulus & Kaan Arici) on April 29.
Please take a moment to review the conference program, which includes speaker bios, paper titles, and abstracts. The conference sessions will be open only to faculty members, students, and researchers who register in advance at this link. The venue information will be provided only to the confirmed RSVPs.
The Abbasi Program is delighted to organize this event in collaboration with Stanford’s Mediterranean Studies, The Europe Center, CDDRL Arab Reform & Democracy Program, Global Studies Division, and CDDRL.
Venue information will be provided to the confirmed RSVPs.
Open only to Stanford affiliates. RSVP here to confirm the event venue and availability.
Gülru Gezer (Consul General of Turkey to Los Angeles) will discuss the contemporary Turkish foreign policy with special respect to the current regional crisis involving Syria, Russia, Turkey, and the European Union.
Raife Gülru Gezer is Consul General of Turkey to Los Angeles. She graduated from the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the Boğaziçi University, and holds an M.A. in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium. After briefly working as an editor at the Turkish channel NTV'S international news department, she joined Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held various positions in the European Union Political Affairs Deputy Directorate. In 2007 she was posted to the Turkish Embassy in Damascus where she worked for two years. She then served at the Turkish Permanent Representation to the EU from 2009-10, and as the Chief of Cabinet of the Under Secretaryof the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2010-2014. Gülru Gezer speaks fluent English and Russian.
The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to welcome Egyptian economist Samer Atallah as a visiting scholar for the 2015-16 academic year. Atallah has taught economics at the American University in Cairo (AUC) since 2011, and his work focuses on development economics and political economy of democratization. He is a leading contributor to debates on economic public policy in Egypt, and previously served as an advisor to the 2012 presidential campaign of Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fettouh. He holds a PhD in Economics from McGill University and a Masters Degree in Engineering from University of California, Berkeley. His research on the Arab world has received the support of the Arab Council for Social Sciences and the Economic Research Fund, and spans a wide range of areas, including; education, electoral behavior, public opinion, trade policies, and political institutions in resource dependent economies.
During his residency at CDDRL, Atallah will work on a series of publications examining salient questions in the political economy of the Arab World, including the impact of trade and capital flows on governance in Egypt and Tunisia, and the relationship between education and wealth inequality in Egypt. Atallah’s fellowship is generously funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to support scholars from the Arab world. In the following interview, Atallah discusses his current research projects and their relevance to important public policy debates.
What are your research goals and priorities during your residency at CDDRL?
First of all, I would like to say that I am extremely delighted to be here and excited at this valuable opportunity to collaborate with distinguished scholars at CDDRL and Stanford University, which promises to be a nourishing environment for my research.
My research agenda during my residency here at CDDRL includes working on two projects, both of which are related to broader questions of democratization and development. This first one is a comprehensive theoretical and empirical study investigating how political and economic institutions evolve as economies become integrated in the global economy. I am interested in understanding how trade and capital flows impact institutions - in the economic sense of the term - and the implications of that impact on political change. For instance, the experiences of economic liberalization in countries like Egypt and Tunisia had unquestionable consequences on the distribution of wealth within their respective societies. Economic liberalization policies had equally important effects on the performance and evolution of their legal, economic governance and political institutions. My own research seeks to investigate how these institutional changes have evolved and the impact of these processes on political change. The second project is an empirical study examining the relationship between wealth inequality and educational inequality in Egypt.
In what ways do your projects speak to contemporary debates on the origins and trajectories of the Arab uprisings?
I would argue that the divergence in outcomes across the various uprisings in Arab region cannot be understood without seriously thinking about the different historical evolution of political and economic institutions in these countries. These institutions impact the functioning of the economy, its growth, and the social inclusiveness of that growth—factors that were very pertinent to the popular mobilization that advanced the post-2010 uprisings. Certainly these institutions are in part the product of how the economy is managed in a given country in the short-run. At the same time, they are the result of long-term external and internal factors that we need to investigate and understand.
A case in point is the bureaucratic apparatus in Egypt. That sizable bureaucracy is the outcome of a long-standing policy of guaranteed employment, which the government had adopted in the 1960s to secure political support. Whereas economic liberalization policies adopted by President Anwar al-Sadat in the 1970s shrunk the economic role of the state, the size of the bureaucracy, nevertheless, increased significantly. Thus, the question we confront as researchers is why have these institutions remained stagnant and shielded from change despite the fact the nature and priorities of the economy have shifted. This is a major concern in my own research.
What lessons, if any, does your work offer policy-makers involved in the areas of economic and human development?
My second project on inequality and education speaks to one of the central factors that have animated the post-2010 uprisings in the Arab world, namely economic inclusion. In the context of Egypt, educational inequality has contributed greatly to the huge disparities in income and wealth in the country. Exacerbating and reinforcing these disparities is an intergenerational dependency in educational attainment—that is, children of uneducated parents are highly likely to remain uneducated, and by implication, economically underprivileged. This is an area that leaves a lot of room for policy interventions.
But such interventions must be grounded in a better understanding of the causes of this dependency and why it persists. Toward that end, my research seeks to investigate how the type and range of assets in a given household affect schooling and education decisions. Other key determinants of these decisions include access to credit, spatial distribution of educational facilities, and volatility of household income. With a sufficiently nuanced understanding of the problem at hand, all of these factors present potential areas for policy interventions to alter the incentives for school enrolment and quality of education delivery. Such interventions could potentially lead to a better distribution of education and income in the long run.
What are the potentially important research questions that address Arab reform and democracy?
I believe the recent upheavals in the Arab world have pushed us to re-evaluate our understanding of the underlying reasons and implications of political and economic change. This has opened up a multitude of lines of inquiry related to the economic incentives and costs of political change. One such endeavor entails an ambitious effort to compare the evolution of social movements, economic policies, and political structures in the Arab world with other regions of the world. For instance, I think we could draw multiple parallels between the Arab experience and that of many Latin American countries, especially with respect to the role of military institutions, the impact of economic liberalization, social inequality, and civil society movements. Having said that, there is also a lot of work that needs be done in understanding and analyzing the divergent outcomes of the Arab uprisings.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia is an economist who trained at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He spent several years at the World Bank before returning to India to serve as the Economic Advisor to the Finance Minister. The Government of India then appointed him to several senior positions, including Secretary of Commerce and Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance. In 1998, he was appointed as a Member of the Planning Commission and Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. In 2001, he became the Director of Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund, resigning this position in 2004 to become the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
He has written widely about India and the world economy, co-authoring Redistribution with Growth: An Approach to Policy, and editing Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy: Issues for Reforming the Global Financial Architecture with Y.V. Reddy and S.S. Tarapore.
The Payne Distinguished Lectureship is named for Frank and Arthur Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. This lectureship, hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, brings speakers with an international reputation for leadership and visionary thinking to Stanford to deliver a major public lecture.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission 2004-2014, Government of India
Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission 2004-2014, Government of India
Farah Al-Nakib (right) and Michael Herb (left)
