Conférence

Understanding Authoritarianism in the Middle East:

What Can Interpretive Political Science Contribute?

Daniel Neep

Directeur du CBRL à Damas

Mercredi 7 décembre 2011, à 18h

IFPO-Amman
Jabal Amman, entre le 3e et le 4e cercle, rue Abu Firas Al-Hamadani, immeuble 16, en face de l'hôpital Farah.

Wednesday 7th December 2011, at 6 p.m. at IFPO-Amman

Over the past decade, one question has dominated the study of the Middle East in political science: Why do authoritarian regimes survive? In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings of 2011, this question seems to have lost much of its importance. But why was it that political scientists failed to anticipate the Arab spring? Did a focus on authoritarian survival cause them to neglect the green shoots of grassroots mobilization? In this lecture, I argue that the shortcomings of political science exist not in its study of authoritarianism as such, but in the models of social science that dominate the discipline. I suggest that an interpretive approach, which privileges culture, meaning and reflexivity, does not simply offer a thicker description of authoritarian politics; it allows political scientists to understand authoritarianism in innovative new ways. Building on debates in the methodology and philosophy of the social sciences, in this lecture I outline a new approach for empirical research on authoritarianism in the Middle East.

Daniel Neep is Research Director (Syria), Council for British Research in the Levant and Lecturer in Middle East Politics, University of Exeter. His book, Occupying Syria: Insurgency, Space and State Formation under the French Mandate, will be published with Cambridge University Press in 2012. His research interests include state-society relations, authoritarianism, interpretive social science, and the production of social knowledge in the Middle East.