One of my favorite moments of the year, is when Institut des Finances publishes its citizen budget, a very accessible, yet extremely precise analysis of the Lebanese budget. Kudos to a talented and dedicated team of civil servants who make it possible. institutdesfinances.gov.lb/publication/ci…

This Earth Day, journalists Dana Hourany (Dana Hourany) and Yara El Murr (Yara) look into how the Israeli occupation has been scorching and poisoning the lands of southern Lebanon using white phosphorus munitions.

“Today, it is glaringly obvious that it was wrong for the United States to assume that it could ignore Arab public opinion about the treatment of Palestinians. Arabs have not, in fact, lost interest in the issue.” - Marc Lynch foreignaffairs.com/israel/coming-…

🧵Synaps' research director Alex Simon is just back from intensive fieldwork in Iraq, as part of a project with ifpo on local economic trends. In such a rich, dynamic context, 8 days was just enough to start collecting impressions—and images.

“From Protest to Parliament: Anti-Sectarian Mobilization and Lebanon's New Opposition" - Daniel L. Tavana's study that investigates #Lebanon's 2019 "October Revolution" protests and their impact on reducing identity-based polarization and supporting non-identitarian challengers.

A few days ago the World Bank published a report entitled “Lebanon Poverty and Equity Assessment 2024: Weathering a Protracted Crisis” which evaluates the current state of poverty and inequality in the country. (1/9)

Squeezed into a podcast studio, we find Christiana Parreira, Intissar Kherigi, ezra karmel, & Ellen M Lust - recording an episode on decentralization and local governance in the MENA. 🎧This episode is a mashup with Middle East Law and Governance (Brill) podcast and will be out on Monday: bit.ly/456gLQj

It was a pleasure talking about local governance in the Middle East with these folks! Thanks to the GLD team for welcoming us to Gothenburg.

Israel’s push to create a ‘dead zone’ in Lebanon: Over nearly 9 months of simmering conflict with Hizbollah, Israel’s military has laid waste to swathes of southern Lebanon. We spent the past couple of months looking at the extent of the damage: ft.com/content/9b4c3c…

Jordan’s environmental crisis is often framed as a simple case of scarcity: too many people, too little water. It is that, but it’s also more: It’s privatization, profit, state decay. My latest tells this story, and asks what we all can learn from it synaps.network/en/post/Jordan…

READ NOW: Issue 311 asks what a “green future” means for the Middle East and North Africa. “Post-Fossil Politics” traces how the region’s land, resources and communities are entangled with and impacted by the global shift toward decarbonization. bit.ly/3WptTx0

The never-ending suspense in Lebanon has inevitably rattled our team, especially given the long succession of other crises it adds into. It’s not just us: We see distress peaking all around. We thought a small contribution would be to open up about steps we’ve taken to cope 🧵

APSA MENA CFA for early-career scholars who would like to participate in a 1-week workshop on identity politics in the MENA region, organized in partnership with the Center for the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies at Kuwait University. Details here: web.apsanet.org/mena/wp-conten…

Four years after the #Beirut blast, nobody has been held to account. This ongoing impunity is intentional & by design, with Lebanese authorities effectively preventing victims & survivors from having any form of justice or seeking the truth about what happened.

Publication alert: Two years passed since we organized our roundtable Sciences Po on Lebanon's concomitant crises. Our collection on 'Rethinking Power-Sharing in Lebanon' is finally out! brill.com/view/journals/… Thanks to the wonderful authors & journal editors! Middle East Law and Governance (Brill) (1/3)

What fuels agrarian unrest in post-2011 Tunisia? What positions do peasant and rural women occupy during these contentious moments? My new open-access paper for Antipode explores these questions.

New piece from @HRW on Lebanon’s nationwide electricity blackout last week. The Lebanese government’s mismanagement of the electricity sector & its failure to carry out reforms is diminishing access to electricity, & impacting access to other rights. hrw.org/news/2024/08/2…

If you are at APSA this week and work on political behavior and/or authoritarian regimes, pass by our panel tomorrow (Thursday) at 2pm in Franklin 13 (Marriott). I'll be presenting work on Lebanon with Christiana Parreira and Lindsay Walsh!

In #Gaza, #Israel has taken away people's ability to feed themselves. “Around my family home we had a 3 dunum orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree + a rose were left. I had bees + produced honey. All of it is gone now.” amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

If you're into cities and politics like me, you'll find this new AJPS paper by Noah Nathan absolutely fascinating onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aj…