Mahmud Darwich
Biographic Data
| ID | 1546473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mahmud Darwich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mahmud |
| FAMILY NAME | Darwich |
| SIGNATURE | DARWICH M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4815-3378 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Navigating sectarianism: The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the international relations of the Middle East
While collective identity scholarship has generated insights into how social movements construct and mobilize identities to distinguish themsleves from others, it has paid comparatively less attention to why some groups reject divisive identities and instead align with broader collective identities. Using the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their rejection of sectarianism as a representative case study, the article examines why social movements c…
Port infrastructures and the making of historical time in the Horn of Africa: Narratives of urban modernity in Djibouti and Somaliland
As infrastructures mushroom across Africa, this article investigates narratives accompanying infrastructural investments in East African cities, Djibouti-city (Djibouti) and Berbera (Somaliland). While cities in the Global North move towards a post-industrial future, the Horn of Africa depicts other endpoints, breaking with experiences of colonisation while hoping to diminish asymmetries in a Western-dominated global system. Inspired by models th…
Asphalt, Water, and Power: The Politics of Infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa
The politics of infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa share some common historical, socio-economic, and political organizational structures. Infrastructure is a space of domination and contestation, where authoritarian regimes or colonial powers exert control over societies. This roundtable takes the politics of infrastructure as a starting point to examine relations of power, repression, and contestation in the region. Taking an int…
Infrastructures and International Relations: A Critical Reflection on Materials and Mobilities
In a world of accelerated movements, this article examines how infrastructures matter in international relations. We first show that the International Relations (IR) discipline has relegated infrastructures to the background of their studies and treated them as passive tools despite their forcible role in the establishment of the modern state system. By adopting a sociological definition of “the international,” this article emphasizes the central…
Challenges to a Global IR: A View from the Middle East
Forward to the Past? Regional Repercussions of the Gaza War
The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas marks the end of the long decade after the Arab uprisings. In this paper, we explore how the conflict has altered the regional political landscape in the Middle East, which bears similarities to the pre‐2011 dynamics but includes new elements. On the one hand, the war has taken the region “forward to the past” by revitalizing “Palestine” as a central issue, accentuating the so‐called Axis of Resistance, and i…
New Authoritarian Practices in the Middle East and North Africa
Examines new authoritarian practices and state control in MENA countries to target and neutralise dissidents Identifies the continuities and discontinuities in the practice of authoritarianism in the MENA region Promotes a comparative approach when analysing new forms of authoritarian control Offers an analysis of 17 MENA counties: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tu…
Foreign Policy Analysis and Armed Non-State Actors in World Politics: Lessons from the Middle East
The study of armed non-state actors (ANSAs) has grown exponentially in the last two decades. This article explores the foreign policy of ANSAs as a new empirical domain for foreign policy analysis (FPA) by drawing on various examples from the Middle East to show the merit of this area for novel empirical and theoretical studies. The article identifies the domain of ANSAs’ foreign policy showing how FPA research has so far remained state-centric a…
Alliance politics in the post-2011 Middle East: Advancing theoretical and empirical perspectives
Alliances in the post-2011 Middle East are characterized by anomalous shifts and upsurge of new actors leading to theoretical and empirical puzzles. This article argues that unravelling these patterns requires grappling with in-depth knowledge of regional politics and a serious engagement with the broader IR literature. Through this dual exploration, the article explores how the literature on alliance cohesion within IR could inform anomalous all…
Escalation in Failed Military Interventions: Saudi and Emirati Quagmires in Yemen
External interventions are an enduring feature of international relationships. While the causes for interventions have been at the heart of studies on interventions, the dynamics of termination versus escalation have received little attention. This article poses the question: why do intervenors persist in failed military interventions despite diminishing prospects of victory? Whereas some scholars adhered to rational choice approaches, others foc…
The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World: Reading Walt in Beirut, Wendt in Doha, and Abul-Fadl in Cairo
Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the …
IR in the Middle East: Foreign Policy Analysis in Theoretical Approaches
Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politic…
Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region
Examining differing perceptions of threats and the subsequent alliance choices of two Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Syria, during three pivotal wars in the region: the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the Lebanon War (2006), and the Gaza War (2009), May Darwich analyses how ideational and material forces influence leaders' perceptions in the Middle East, and their broader international relationships. Using these comparative cases studies, Darwich advan…
The Saudi Intervention in Yemen: Struggling for Status
On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes on Yemen with the aim of restoring the rule of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and destroying the Houthi movement. Scholars and policy analysts moved quickly to examine the Yemen war as a sectarian struggle and a byproduct of Saudi-Iranian rivalry in the region. However, these traditional explanations fall short of unravelling the Saudi motive behind launching a large-scale operation in Yemen, …
International politics of authoritarian resilience and breakdown in the Middle East
The hope and disappointment that accompanied the 2011 Arab uprisings have demonstrated the centrality of international factors in affecting regime change and shaping transitions in the Middle East and North Africa. Although the impact of international factors on the survival of authoritarian regimes has gained attention in recent years, it remains subject to wide disagreement in both academic and policy circles. Some scholars stress the role of d…
Creating the enemy, constructing the threat: The diffusion of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East
On 25 December 2013, the military-backed government in Egypt declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. A few months later, the Saudi Kingdom followed suit and attempted to build a regional coalition to counter this constructed enemy. Although the Saudi Kingdom, acting as an aspiring regional autocratic power, exerted pressure to compel other regimes to follow its lead, the recipient states varied in their willingness to conv…
Ideational and Material Forces in Threat Perception: The Divergent Cases of Syria and Saudi Arabia During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
How do states perceive threats? Why are material forces sometimes more prominent in shaping threat perceptions, whereas ideational forces are the motivator in other instances? This article aims to move beyond the task of determining whether material or ideational factors matter to offer an integrated framework based on analytical eclecticism that specifies the conditions under which one of these two factors becomes salient in regimes’ threat perc…
Casting the Other as an existential threat: The securitisation of sectarianism in the international relations of the Syria crisis
With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Sunni–Shiite divide came back to the fore in regional politics. In this context, sectarian identities have now acquired a security dimension, as actors have started framing each other as existential threats. This article aims to examine the process by which sectarian identities become security issues and sources of conflict. We claim that primordial and instrumentalist and rationalist approaches to i…
Muted modernists: The struggle over divine politics in Saudi Arabia
The Ontological (In)security of Similarity Wahhabism Versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy
It has long been argued that identity matters in international relations. Yet how identity impacts enmity and conflict among states remains the subject of debate. The existing literature asserts that differences in identity can be a source of conflict, whereas convergence and similarity lead to cooperation. Nevertheless, empirical evidence from the Middle East has long defied this hypothesis. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which prides itself on be…
Democracy promotion and foreign policy: Identity and interests in US, EU and Non-Western democracies, by Daniela Huber
International
In an effort to further support International Workshop alumni along their scholarly careers, APSA off ers over $75,000 in small grants each year to members of the Africa Workshops (with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) and MENA Workshops (with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New
O longo inverno de Rita
Creating the enemy, constructing the threat: The diffusion of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East
On 25 December 2013, the military-backed government in Egypt declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. A few months later, the Saudi Kingdom followed suit and attempted to build a regional coalition to counter this constructed enemy. Although the Saudi Kingdom, acting as an aspiring regional autocratic power, exerted pressure to compel other regimes to follow its lead, the recipient states varied in their willingness to conv…
Casting the Other as an existential threat: The securitisation of sectarianism in the international relations of the Syria crisis
With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Sunni–Shiite divide came back to the fore in regional politics. In this context, sectarian identities have now acquired a security dimension, as actors have started framing each other as existential threats. This article aims to examine the process by which sectarian identities become security issues and sources of conflict. We claim that primordial and instrumentalist and rationalist approaches to i…
The Ontological (In)security of Similarity Wahhabism Versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy
It has long been argued that identity matters in international relations. Yet how identity impacts enmity and conflict among states remains the subject of debate. The existing literature asserts that differences in identity can be a source of conflict, whereas convergence and similarity lead to cooperation. Nevertheless, empirical evidence from the Middle East has long defied this hypothesis. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which prides itself on be…
Forward to the Past? Regional Repercussions of the Gaza War
The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas marks the end of the long decade after the Arab uprisings. In this paper, we explore how the conflict has altered the regional political landscape in the Middle East, which bears similarities to the pre‐2011 dynamics but includes new elements. On the one hand, the war has taken the region “forward to the past” by revitalizing “Palestine” as a central issue, accentuating the so‐called Axis of Resistance, and i…
Foreign Policy Analysis and Armed Non-State Actors in World Politics: Lessons from the Middle East
The study of armed non-state actors (ANSAs) has grown exponentially in the last two decades. This article explores the foreign policy of ANSAs as a new empirical domain for foreign policy analysis (FPA) by drawing on various examples from the Middle East to show the merit of this area for novel empirical and theoretical studies. The article identifies the domain of ANSAs’ foreign policy showing how FPA research has so far remained state-centric a…
Infrastructures and International Relations: A Critical Reflection on Materials and Mobilities
In a world of accelerated movements, this article examines how infrastructures matter in international relations. We first show that the International Relations (IR) discipline has relegated infrastructures to the background of their studies and treated them as passive tools despite their forcible role in the establishment of the modern state system. By adopting a sociological definition of “the international,” this article emphasizes the central…
IR in the Middle East: Foreign Policy Analysis in Theoretical Approaches
Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politic…
The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World: Reading Walt in Beirut, Wendt in Doha, and Abul-Fadl in Cairo
Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the …
Port infrastructures and the making of historical time in the Horn of Africa: Narratives of urban modernity in Djibouti and Somaliland
As infrastructures mushroom across Africa, this article investigates narratives accompanying infrastructural investments in East African cities, Djibouti-city (Djibouti) and Berbera (Somaliland). While cities in the Global North move towards a post-industrial future, the Horn of Africa depicts other endpoints, breaking with experiences of colonisation while hoping to diminish asymmetries in a Western-dominated global system. Inspired by models th…
Alliance politics in the post-2011 Middle East: Advancing theoretical and empirical perspectives
Alliances in the post-2011 Middle East are characterized by anomalous shifts and upsurge of new actors leading to theoretical and empirical puzzles. This article argues that unravelling these patterns requires grappling with in-depth knowledge of regional politics and a serious engagement with the broader IR literature. Through this dual exploration, the article explores how the literature on alliance cohesion within IR could inform anomalous all…
Ideational and Material Forces in Threat Perception: The Divergent Cases of Syria and Saudi Arabia During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
How do states perceive threats? Why are material forces sometimes more prominent in shaping threat perceptions, whereas ideational forces are the motivator in other instances? This article aims to move beyond the task of determining whether material or ideational factors matter to offer an integrated framework based on analytical eclecticism that specifies the conditions under which one of these two factors becomes salient in regimes’ threat perc…
O longo inverno de Rita
International
In an effort to further support International Workshop alumni along their scholarly careers, APSA off ers over $75,000 in small grants each year to members of the Africa Workshops (with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) and MENA Workshops (with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New
Ideational and Material Forces in Threat Perception: The Divergent Cases of Syria and Saudi Arabia During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
How do states perceive threats? Why are material forces sometimes more prominent in shaping threat perceptions, whereas ideational forces are the motivator in other instances? This article aims to move beyond the task of determining whether material or ideational factors matter to offer an integrated framework based on analytical eclecticism that specifies the conditions under which one of these two factors becomes salient in regimes’ threat perc…
Casting the Other as an existential threat: The securitisation of sectarianism in the international relations of the Syria crisis
With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Sunni–Shiite divide came back to the fore in regional politics. In this context, sectarian identities have now acquired a security dimension, as actors have started framing each other as existential threats. This article aims to examine the process by which sectarian identities become security issues and sources of conflict. We claim that primordial and instrumentalist and rationalist approaches to i…
Muted modernists: The struggle over divine politics in Saudi Arabia
The Ontological (In)security of Similarity Wahhabism Versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy
It has long been argued that identity matters in international relations. Yet how identity impacts enmity and conflict among states remains the subject of debate. The existing literature asserts that differences in identity can be a source of conflict, whereas convergence and similarity lead to cooperation. Nevertheless, empirical evidence from the Middle East has long defied this hypothesis. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which prides itself on be…
Democracy promotion and foreign policy: Identity and interests in US, EU and Non-Western democracies, by Daniela Huber
International politics of authoritarian resilience and breakdown in the Middle East
The hope and disappointment that accompanied the 2011 Arab uprisings have demonstrated the centrality of international factors in affecting regime change and shaping transitions in the Middle East and North Africa. Although the impact of international factors on the survival of authoritarian regimes has gained attention in recent years, it remains subject to wide disagreement in both academic and policy circles. Some scholars stress the role of d…
Creating the enemy, constructing the threat: The diffusion of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East
On 25 December 2013, the military-backed government in Egypt declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. A few months later, the Saudi Kingdom followed suit and attempted to build a regional coalition to counter this constructed enemy. Although the Saudi Kingdom, acting as an aspiring regional autocratic power, exerted pressure to compel other regimes to follow its lead, the recipient states varied in their willingness to conv…
The Saudi Intervention in Yemen: Struggling for Status
On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes on Yemen with the aim of restoring the rule of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and destroying the Houthi movement. Scholars and policy analysts moved quickly to examine the Yemen war as a sectarian struggle and a byproduct of Saudi-Iranian rivalry in the region. However, these traditional explanations fall short of unravelling the Saudi motive behind launching a large-scale operation in Yemen, …
Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region
Examining differing perceptions of threats and the subsequent alliance choices of two Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Syria, during three pivotal wars in the region: the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the Lebanon War (2006), and the Gaza War (2009), May Darwich analyses how ideational and material forces influence leaders' perceptions in the Middle East, and their broader international relationships. Using these comparative cases studies, Darwich advan…
Escalation in Failed Military Interventions: Saudi and Emirati Quagmires in Yemen
External interventions are an enduring feature of international relationships. While the causes for interventions have been at the heart of studies on interventions, the dynamics of termination versus escalation have received little attention. This article poses the question: why do intervenors persist in failed military interventions despite diminishing prospects of victory? Whereas some scholars adhered to rational choice approaches, others foc…
The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World: Reading Walt in Beirut, Wendt in Doha, and Abul-Fadl in Cairo
Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the …
IR in the Middle East: Foreign Policy Analysis in Theoretical Approaches
Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politic…
Foreign Policy Analysis and Armed Non-State Actors in World Politics: Lessons from the Middle East
The study of armed non-state actors (ANSAs) has grown exponentially in the last two decades. This article explores the foreign policy of ANSAs as a new empirical domain for foreign policy analysis (FPA) by drawing on various examples from the Middle East to show the merit of this area for novel empirical and theoretical studies. The article identifies the domain of ANSAs’ foreign policy showing how FPA research has so far remained state-centric a…
Alliance politics in the post-2011 Middle East: Advancing theoretical and empirical perspectives
Alliances in the post-2011 Middle East are characterized by anomalous shifts and upsurge of new actors leading to theoretical and empirical puzzles. This article argues that unravelling these patterns requires grappling with in-depth knowledge of regional politics and a serious engagement with the broader IR literature. Through this dual exploration, the article explores how the literature on alliance cohesion within IR could inform anomalous all…
New Authoritarian Practices in the Middle East and North Africa
Examines new authoritarian practices and state control in MENA countries to target and neutralise dissidents Identifies the continuities and discontinuities in the practice of authoritarianism in the MENA region Promotes a comparative approach when analysing new forms of authoritarian control Offers an analysis of 17 MENA counties: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tu…
Infrastructures and International Relations: A Critical Reflection on Materials and Mobilities
In a world of accelerated movements, this article examines how infrastructures matter in international relations. We first show that the International Relations (IR) discipline has relegated infrastructures to the background of their studies and treated them as passive tools despite their forcible role in the establishment of the modern state system. By adopting a sociological definition of “the international,” this article emphasizes the central…
Challenges to a Global IR: A View from the Middle East
Forward to the Past? Regional Repercussions of the Gaza War
The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas marks the end of the long decade after the Arab uprisings. In this paper, we explore how the conflict has altered the regional political landscape in the Middle East, which bears similarities to the pre‐2011 dynamics but includes new elements. On the one hand, the war has taken the region “forward to the past” by revitalizing “Palestine” as a central issue, accentuating the so‐called Axis of Resistance, and i…
Port infrastructures and the making of historical time in the Horn of Africa: Narratives of urban modernity in Djibouti and Somaliland
As infrastructures mushroom across Africa, this article investigates narratives accompanying infrastructural investments in East African cities, Djibouti-city (Djibouti) and Berbera (Somaliland). While cities in the Global North move towards a post-industrial future, the Horn of Africa depicts other endpoints, breaking with experiences of colonisation while hoping to diminish asymmetries in a Western-dominated global system. Inspired by models th…
Asphalt, Water, and Power: The Politics of Infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa
The politics of infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa share some common historical, socio-economic, and political organizational structures. Infrastructure is a space of domination and contestation, where authoritarian regimes or colonial powers exert control over societies. This roundtable takes the politics of infrastructure as a starting point to examine relations of power, repression, and contestation in the region. Taking an int…
Navigating sectarianism: The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the international relations of the Middle East
While collective identity scholarship has generated insights into how social movements construct and mobilize identities to distinguish themsleves from others, it has paid comparatively less attention to why some groups reject divisive identities and instead align with broader collective identities. Using the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their rejection of sectarianism as a representative case study, the article examines why social movements c…
Political science (19 works) · Politics (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Middle East (11 works) · Political economy (10 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 works) · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts (9 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (9 works)