Roundtable | Governance in the Arab World: New Research Agendas
The governance challenges confronting states and societies of the Arab world have continued to limit human development in the countries of the region. In the best functioning Arab states, populations confront problems of economic stagnation, poor or weak governance, and growing income inequality. These problems are compounded in many societies by the additional burdens of political conflict, humanitarian catastrophe, and destruction of critical infrastructure.
This roundtable brings together a group of scholars to reflect on these pressing problems and the imperative for new research agendas and lines of inquiry to address them.
CHAIR: Lisa Blaydes
SPEAKERS:
- Alexandra Blackman
- Diana Greenwald
- Salma Mousa
- Christiana Parreira
- David Patel
About the Speakers
Lisa Blaydes
Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project. Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.
Alexandra Domike Blackman
Alexandra Domike Blackman is an Assistant Professor in Cornell University’s Department of Government. In 2019-2020, she was a Post-Doctoral Associate at New York University - Abu Dhabi. Blackman’s work focuses on the development of religious identities in the political sphere, the challenges facing female politicians, and political party development in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Politics & Religion, and Journal of Peace Research. Blackman was a Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellow in Cairo, Egypt (2010-2011) and a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC (2011-2012).
Diana B. Greenwald
Salma Mousa
Salma Mousa is a scholar of social cohesion — typically using field experiments and partnerships with local governments and NGOs to explore the question of how to build it in the Middle East and beyond. Currently an Assistant Professor at UCLA's political science department, her research has been published in Science and covered by The Economist, BBC, Der Spiegel, the Times of London, and PBS NOVA. Mousa received her PhD from Stanford University's political science department in 2020 and was previously an Assistant Professor of political science at Yale University.
Christiana Parreira
Christiana Parreira is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the role of local political institutions and actors in governance, looking primarily at post-conflict contexts in the Middle East and North Africa. Her forthcoming book project examines how local governments and elections facilitated predatory state-building practices in Lebanon. In other research, she examines determinants of governance quality and distributive outcomes in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Global South. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2020. Before joining the Graduate Institute, she served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a pre-doctoral associate at the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative.
David Siddhartha Patel
David Siddhartha Patel is a residential visiting scholar at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. His research focuses on religious authority, social order, identity, and state-building in the contemporary Middle East. His book Order Out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq (Cornell University Press, 2022) examines the role of mosques and clerical networks in generating order after state collapse and is based upon independent field research he conducted in Basra. It won the Best Book Award from the APSA MENA Politics section and honorable mention for the Political Networks section’s Best Book Award. Patel is currently working on two book-length projects. The first, “Defunct States of the Middle East,” chronicles the more than two dozen territorial polities that disappeared from the map of the region after 1918: how they came to be, how they died, and how they are remembered today. The second, “The Market for Ayatollahs,” examines competition and collusion between Shi‘a religious authorities in Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran and how that relationship constrains varieties of Shi‘ism in the world today. Before joining MEI, he was a senior fellow and associate director for research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and, previously, an assistant professor of government at Cornell University. He holds a BA in economics and political science from Duke University and a PhD in political science from Stanford University.
Encina Hall E008, Garden-level East (616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford)
This event is open to Stanford-affiliates only.
Salma Mousa
An Egyptian-Canadian raised in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Canada, Salma Mousa received her PhD in Political Science from Stanford University in 2020. A scholar of comparative politics, her research focuses on migration, conflict, and social cohesion. Salma's dissertation investigates strategies for building trust and tolerance after war. Leveraging field experiments among Iraqis displaced by ISIS, American schoolchildren, and British soccer fans, she shows how intergroup contact can change real-world behaviors — even if underlying prejudice remains unchanged. A secondary research agenda tackles the challenge of integrating refugees in the United States. Combining a meta-analytic review, ethnographic fieldwork, and field experiments with resettlement agencies, this project identifies risk factors and promising policies for new arrivals. Salma has held fellowships at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Stanford’s Immigration Policy Lab, the Freeman Spogli Institute, the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation, the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Her work has been supported by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL), the Innovations for Poverty Action Lab (IPA), the King Center on Global Development, the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS), the Program on Governance and Local Development (GLD), and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Her research has been featured by The Economist, BBC, and Der Spiegel, on the front page of the Times of London and on PBS NOVA.
Lisa Blaydes
Encina Hall West, Room 408
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project. Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.
