Competing Authorities in the Middle East and North Africa

About the Project

Theoretical Framework 

This project draws upon a theoretical framework presented in the Cambridge University Press Elements book, Everyday Choices: The Role of Competing Authorities and Social Institutions in Politics and Development. Everyday Choices presents a framework and language to describe how individuals’ memberships in multiple, often competing, communities affect politics and development. It highlights that individuals are members of multiple communities – religious orders, family or kinship groups, ethnic communities – that make claims on them and create additional, often non-obvious, incentives that shape individual actions. Understanding how individuals experience these demands and, consequently, view the choices before them is essential if scholars and practitioners are to fully understand political processes and development outcomes.  

Competing Authorities focuses on understanding the variation in the influence of these authorities (e.g., state, religious, ethnic). Drawing on their own original research, scholars in this project will collaborate to develop a unified understanding of how various authorities compete to maintain or expand power over various communities and why and when some authorities play greater roles than others regarding governance in the MENA region. Studies will focus on when, how, and why different authorities influence 1) land access and property rights protection, 2) political participation; 3) service provision; and 4) dispute resolution. 

Edited Volume

An edited volume incorporating all of these elements is currently in progress. The volume, co-edited by Ellen Lust and Mark Tessler, will include chapters from the following contributors: 

• Francesco Colin, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Sylvia I. Bergh, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Tiina Hyypä, University of Helsinki
• James Worrall, University of Leeds
• Sefa Secen, Nazareth University
• Salim Hmimnat, Mohammed V University
• Jérémie Langlois, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Farhad Mamshai, Virginia Tech
• Ariel I. Ahram, Virginia Tech
• Salam Alsaadi, University of Toronto
• May Tamimova, University of Oxford
• Irene Kamiloudi, University of Gothenburg
• Ellen Lust, Cornell University