LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

Speaker: Raphael Espinoza, IMF Chair: Danny Quah, LSE Raphael Espinoza analyses the challenges created by the changes the economies of the Gulf states have undergone in the last decade, spurred by high oil prices and ambitious diversification plans. Recorded on 15 May 2014. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speakers: Ambassador John Limbert, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern (Iranian) Affairs; Chris Emery, University of Plymouth; Roham Alvandi, LSE Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre The historic September 2013 phone call between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama represented the highest-level contact between Iran and the United States since relations between the two countries were severed in 1980, in the midst of the Tehran hostage crisis. This roundtable examines the troubled history of US-Iran relations, past failed efforts at détente, and the prospects for a breakthrough in US-Iran relations in 2014. Recorded on 15 May 2014.

Speaker: Zaid Al-Ali, International IDEA Discussant: Toby Dodge, LSE In this lecture, launching Zaid al-Ali’s new book 'The Struggle for Iraq’s Future', the author provides a uniquely insightful interpretation of Iraq’s nation-building progress in the wake of the 2003 war. Al-Ali argues that the 2005 constitution is illegitimate and established a system of government so extreme that it could never be implemented, creating a void that the country has been struggling to fill since. Recorded on Wednesday 7 May.

Speaker: Maha Abdelrahman, University of Cambridge Discussant: Ahmad Shokr, New York University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE In this seminar, Dr Abdelrahman raises questions about some of the general features of new social movements such as decentralised organisational structures, working outside formal politics and a decision not to capture the state, specifically during moments of revolutionary upheaval. She uses the case of the 25 January uprising in Egypt to examine these features in relation to the inability of revolutionary forces to harness the power of the mobilised masses and to provide a coherent alternative(s) against institutions of the counter-revolution. Recorded on 6 May 2014.

Speaker: Jennifer Jenkins, University of Southampton Chair: Roham Alvandi, LSE The Nazi-Soviet Pact, a central topic in the scholarship on the Second World War, is generally studied in its political and European dimensions. In this talk, Professor Jenkins takes a new look at the Nazi-Soviet Pact by embedding it in German and Soviet economic policies toward the Near East, specifically with Iran, from the early Weimar period forward. She also explores the history of German-Soviet-Persian economic cooperation in the interwar period, Iran's importance as a zone of cooperation between Germany and the USSR, and its place in the making of the Pact. Recorded on 30 April 2014.

Speaker: Raymond Hinnebusch, University of St Andrews Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre In this talk, Professor Hinnebusch examines Iraq-Syria relations with the aim of using their changing relations as indicators of changes in the regional states and regional states system. Recorded on 19 March 2014.

Speakers: Yvan Guichaoua, University of East Anglia; Imad Mesdoua Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies The South of Algeria belongs to the widely integrated Saharan political economy also composed of large chunks of the Malian and Nigerian territories. As such, Algeria plays a key role in the livelihoods and geographical social and political mobility of Sahelian communities. In this talk, Dr Guichaoua examines the role of Algeria in recent (Tuareg then Jihadist) insurgencies in Mali and Niger as portrayed by various actors of the political crises in the Sahel. In turn, Imad Mesdoua examines the rationales guiding Algerian foreign policy in light of growing instability throughout the Sahel and Maghreb regions. Recorded on 10 March 2014.

Speaker: Steffen Hertog, LSE Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Gulf private sectors contribute the majority of national capital formation and employment, and have diversified into a wide range of manufacturing and service activities. National development strategies rely on private business as a primary driver of growth and development. At the same time, however, business contributes little to economic policy-making and is isolated in national politics, regularly failing to be represented in elected bodies. This talk explains this passive and isolated role of business by looking at how, despite all diversification, it remains structurally dependent on state spending and subsidies, and how its interests are at odds with those of GCC citizens at large. Recorded on 5 March 2014. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speakes: Adam Hanieh, SOAS Chair: Kamil Mehdi, LSE Middle East Centre In this talk, Dr Hanieh draws on his new book, 'Lineages of Revolt', as well as recent fieldwork in the West Bank, to examine the political economy of Palestinian neoliberalism in the most recent period. He discusses the essential contours of Palestinian Authority development strategy, its links to donor-led imperatives and the Israeli occupation, as well as the wider regional political economy. Recorded on 24 February 2014.

Speaker: Salwa Ismail, SOAS Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE In this seminar, Professor Ismail discusses dimensions of contention and oppositional action anchored in urban space. She addresses the following questions: How, in the context of the Arab Revolutions, did the urban-based mass protests link with existing patterns of urban political action? What forms of contentious action undergird and animate these protests? In answering these questions, she focuses on urban popular forces in Cairo, their modes of inhabiting the city, and on the politics of the urban everyday. Recorded on 12 February 2014. This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.