Smuggling is typically thought of as furtive and hidden, taking place under the radar and beyond the reach of the state. But in many cases, governments tacitly permit illicit cross-border commerce, or even devise informal arrangements to regulate it.

Bio:

With the fall of the al-Asad dynasty in Syria in the early hours of Sunday 8th December 2024, nearly fourteen years after the start of the Arab Spring, a question arises: Has the warning given by Bashshar al-Asad in his speech at Damascus University in the autumn of 2005 come true? Have his departure and the breakdown of al-muqāwamah wa-l-ṣumūd - identified commonly as the strategy of resistance - really brought chaos to the region? If that is not the case, why did the decisive actors keep him in power in Syria for approximatively another 20 years after he made that presentation?

Israelis have shown increasingly hardline, right-wing, nationalist trends in public opinion surveys in recent years, leading to lower support for peace, or faith that any democratic-oriented solution to the conflict is possible. Have October 7 and the war in Gaza changed attitudes? Which trends have displayed continuity, which public attitudes are new, and what kind of future do Israelis support?

Following a democratic transition, new political identities and cleavages can emerge or those repressed under autocracy can re-emerge. In new democracies, groups that were repressed often punish political actors associated with the ancien regime. Examining the first municipal elections after the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, we find that tribal identities – marginalized under authoritarian rule – (re)emerged as a politically salient identity. Despite decades of policies designed to suppress tribes, our findings demonstrate that tribal identity influenced recent electoral politics.

Bio:
Richard is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research is on contemporary international approaches to peacemaking, and why peace processes fail or succeed, with a particular focus on Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan, and considering other examples.

Jointly convened with South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX).