Check out my interview with the indomitable Dahlia Rahaimy of Saudi Times on how the new generation of Saudis is navigating a changing labour market and social contract: sauditimes.org/narratives/c...

My friend Dr. Joanne Liu, former international president of Doctors Without Borders, was cancelled at NYU. The vice-president in education asked to see her powerpoint, prior to her lecture. One slide showed the number of humanitarian workers who died in Gaza. NYU cancelled the event.

Video: The Opportunities and Risks of Industrial Policy in the Gulf with Fuad Hasanov, @shertog.bsky.social, and Tim Callen. agsiw.org/programs/the...

Correction: The 18 March event on industrial policy in the GCC monarchies will be on Zoom, so no need to be in Washington DC to join Fuad Hasanov, Tim Callen and me for our discussion: tinyurl.com/rwc8n737 (1pm ET)

In case you were wondering: Everything you type into ChatGPT is stored forever and can be made public
www.newscientist.com/article/2472...

New article out this week with @shertog.bsky.social. We discuss how technology and energy transitions, along with structrural changes in the international system, might provide openings for a new Gulf growth model. Available in Arabic too.
prosyn.org/PMnsTdm

If you're in Washington DC on 18 March, consider joining Fuad Hasanov, Tim Callen and me for a discussion about the new era of industrial policy in the GCC monarchies: agsiw.org/programs/the... (1pm at AGSIW, 1050 Connecticut Avenue)

Do let me know if you'd like a pdf version of the book!

Are in Boston on 13 March? If yes, consider coming to my 4:30 pm Harvard's Middle East seminar talk about how divisions between insiders and outsiders hold back Arab economies (for location see below). I'll discuss continuing work building on this 2022 monograph: tinyurl.com/9vr2phhn

I also show that most political unrest in the region since 2010 has been rooted in outsider grievances. The GCC “social contract” and the Gulf rentier state are undergoing fundamental change.

Outsiders face unemployment or much more precarious and worse paid (non-elite) jobs in the private sector. Drawing on political economy theories of dual labour markets, I tease out the political interests and cleavages resulting from this division.

New paper accepted by Studies in Comparative International Development, just in time for Xmas! I investigate the growing divide in GCC labour markets between “insider” citizens holding a secure public sector job and “outsider” citizens who don't: tinyurl.com/575w4rtz (ungated)

Cartoon by Ruben L. Oppenheimer in Dutch newspaper NRC.

Me rereading my own code from 2 months ago:

“thanks so much for the feedback”

La fameuse fenêtre d’Overton

New paper by yours truly, Gudrun Østby, Adrian Arellano and Thomas Hegghammer about links between economic deprivation and terrorism & how to better empirically identify them now published in International Studies Review: lnkd.in/e64sw9m4
(non-paywalled preprint available here: lnkd.in/eQkUq2ad)

Check out the new (open access) APSR article by Ferdinand Eibl and me about why some oil-rich states build generous welfare states while others become kleptocracies: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...