Marc Lynch

After Egypt: The Limits and Promise of Online Challenges to the Authoritarian Arab State

TheuprisingswhichsweptacrosstheArabworldbeginninginDecember2010poseaseriouschallengetomanyofthecorefindings of the political science literature focused on the durability of the authoritarian Middle Eastern state.The impact of social media on contentiouspoliticsrepresentsoneofthemanyareaswhichwillrequiresignificantnewthinking.Thedramaticchangeintheinformation environment over the last decade has changed individual competencies, the ability to organize for collective action, and the transmission of information from the local to the international level. It has also strengthened some of the core competencies of authoritarianstatesevenasithasunderminedothers.Thelongtermevolutionofanewkindofpublicspheremaymattermorethan immediate political outcomes, however. Rigorous testing of competing hypotheses about the impact of the new social media will requirenotonlyconceptualdevelopmentbutalsotheuseofnewkindsofdataanalysisnottraditionallyadoptedinMiddleEastarea studies.

Beyond the Arab Street: Iraq and the Arab Public Sphere

The common view of the “Arab street” fails to capture essential dimensions of the role of public opinion and public discourse in the politics of Arab states. The rising importance of transnational Arab television and print media has created a public arena outside the control of states. Arguments about issues of shared concern in this Arabist public sphere have had important implications for political identity, beliefs, expectations, and behavior. Arab responses to the ongoing crisis in Iraq demonstrate the political significance of these debates.

Why Engage? China and the Logic of Communicative Engagement

With the breakdown of American relations with China after 1989 and the rapid growth of Chinese power in the 1990s, the American policy of engagement attempted to encourage China to become a moderate participant in the international status quo through the building of economic interdependence, participation in international institutions and strategic dialogues. The widespread belief in the failure of this policy has helped to drive the spiraling conflict between the two states. Drawing on Habermass distinction between strategic and communicative action, this article argues that the unacknowledged rationalist theoretical foundations of the policy of engagement explain its empirical experience. Engagement rested on a strategic mode of action, in which the building of interdependencies and dialogues were instrumental policies to change the target state. Rationalist signaling models demonstrate effectively why engagement is likely to fail within such a strategic mode of action. The policy of engagement carries within it the potential for a communicative mode of action, however, in which states enter into public dialogues in order to more effectively communicate, discover and shape preferences, and arrive at mutually acceptable institutions. Communicative engagement, designed to allow for the free exchange of reasoned argument under conditions which minimize the direct application of power, provides a superior means to achieve the avowed goals of engagement. Through an analysis of an important potentially conflictual strategic relationship, this article advances the emerging dialogue between rationalist and critical theories by focusing on communication, uncertainty and the transformative potential of public discourse. It draws on a theory of communicative action rooted in Habermas to evaluate the empirical record of engagement in the 1990s, and to articulate theoretical foundations for a communicative engagement which more effectively communicates and shapes state preferences.

Watching From Afar: Media Consumption Patterns Around the Arab Spring

Uses of new media in the context of the Arab Spring have attracted scholarly attention from a wide array of disciplines. Amid the anecdotes and speculation, most of the available empirical research in this area has examined how new media have enabled participants and spectators to produce and circulate protest-related content. In contrast, the current study investigates patterns of consumption of Arab Spring- related content using a unique data set constructed by combining archived Twitter content with metadata drawn from the URL shortening service Bit.ly. This data set allows us to explore two critical research questions: First, were links posted to Twitter (among other platforms) followed primarily by individuals inside the affected country, within the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region or by those outside the region and country? And second, who attracted more attention online: protesters and other nonelite citizens or traditional news organizations? Our findings suggest that the vast majority of attention to Arab Spring content came from outside of the MENA region and, furthermore, that mass media, rather than citizen media, overwhelmingly held the worlds attention during the protests. We thus conclude that Twitter was broadly useful as an information channel for non-MENA onlookers but less so for protesters on the ground.Uses of new media in the context of the Arab Spring have attracted scholarly attention from a wide array of disciplines. Amid the anecdotes and speculation, most of the available empirical research in this area has examined how new media have enabled participants and spectators to produce and circulate protest-related content. In contrast, the current study investigates patterns of consumption of Arab Spring–related content using a unique data set constructed by combining archived Twitter content with metadata drawn from the URL shortening service Bit.ly. This data set allows us to explore two critical research questions: First, were links posted to Twitter (among other platforms) followed primarily by individuals inside the affected country, within the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region or by those outside the region and country? And second, who attracted more attention online: protesters and other nonelite citizens or traditional news organizations? Our findings suggest that the vast majority of attention to Arab Spring content came from outside of the MENA region and, furthermore, that mass media, rather than citizen media, overwhelmingly held the world’s attention during the protests. We thus conclude that Twitter was broadly useful as an information channel for non-MENA onlookers but less so for protesters on the ground.

Islam Divided Between Salafi-jihad and the Ikhwan

The Muslim Brotherhood poses a unique challenge to efforts to combat Al Qaeda and like-minded groups. It is one of the key sources of Islamist thought and political activism, and plays a significant role in shaping the political and cultural environment in an Islamist direction. At the same time, it opposes Al Qaeda for ideological, organizational, and political reasons and represents one of the major challenges to the salafi-jihadist movement globally. This dual nature of the Muslim Brotherhood has long posed a difficult challenge to efforts to combat violent extremism. Does its non-violent Islamism represent a solution, by capturing Islamists within a relatively moderate organization and stopping their further radicalization (a “firewall”), or is it part of the problem, a “conveyor belt” towards extremism? This article surveys the differences between the two approaches, including their views of an Islamic state, democracy, violence, and takfir, and the significant escalation of those tensions in recent years. It concludes that the MB should be allowed to wage its battles against extremist challengers, but should not be misunderstood as a liberal organization or supported in a short-term convergence of interests.

Explaining the Awakening: Engagement, Publicity, and the Transformation of Iraqi Sunni Political Attitudes

This article explores the reasons for the dramatic change in Sunni Arab Iraqi attitudes toward the United States from 2004 to 2007, which made possible the “Awakenings,” local groups of mostly Sunni tribes and former insurgents that decided to cooperate with the United States against al Qaeda in Iraq. While there have been many studies of the military strategy, there has been little attention paid to the reasons for the underlying attitude change. This article argues that the dramatic changes in the information environment and in the nature of direct contacts across a range of Sunni society played a crucial role. It draws on a wide range of Arabic language primary sources that have generally been neglected in U.S. military-centric accounts. No single dialogue flipped the Sunnis, and the change would not likely have happened without the material changes underpinning their interests. But years of ongoing, intensive dialogues across a wide range of interlocutors reshaped the foundations of the relationship and to convince those involved individuals of the possibility of a strategic shift. American counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and the surge helped by proliferating the points of contact with Iraqis and by transforming the relations at the individual level. This has broad implications for key debates in contemporary U.S. foreign policy, as well as for counterinsurgency and international relations (IR) theory.

How the Media Trashed the Transitions

Abstract:The media played a key role in mobilizing the Arab uprisings of 2010–11, but played a far more negative role in the transitions which ensued. Rather than constituting new public spheres for the negotiation of new identities and institutions, or acting as watchdogs on the emergent regimes, the media in most Arab states contributed to social polarization, popular discontent, and the resurgence of old regimes. While the potentially destructive role of media can be found in all attempted democratic transitions, the Arab cases had several unique characteristics, including the prominent role of transnational broadcasting, the new social media environment, and divisive questions about Islamist movements. This article traces the role of the media in the Arab transitions across three distinct levels: transnational broadcasting, domestic public and private broadcasting, and social media. All three played destructive roles, with transnational television becoming a weapon for proxy wars by regional powers, national media being captured by old elites and private interests, and social media encouraging polarization and informational clustering. Very similar patterns emerge in Egypt and Tunisia, the two key potential democratic transitions following the Arab uprisings.

Online Fragmentation in Wartime A Longitudinal Analysis of Tweets about Syria, 2011–2013

Theorists have long predicted that like-minded individuals will tend to use social media to self-segregate into enclaves and that this tendency toward homophily will increase over time. Many studies have found moment-in-time evidence of network homophily, but very few have been able to directly measure longitudinal changes in the diversity of social media users’ habits. This is due in part to a lack of appropriate tools and methods for such investigations. This study takes a step toward developing those methods. Drawing on the complete historical record of public retweets posted between January 2011 and August 2013, we propose and justify a partial method of measuring increases or decreases in network homophily. We demonstrate that Twitter network communities that focused on Syria are in general highly fragmented and homophilous; however, only one of the nine detected network communities that persisted over time exhibited a clear increase in homophily.

Globalization and International Democracy

Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, David Held, Anthony McGrevv, David Goldblatt, Jonathan Perraton (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). 540 pp., paper (ISBN: 0-8047-3627-8),

America and Egypt After the Uprisings

29.95; cloth (ISBN: 0-8047-3625-1),