Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Based on what we have studied this semester, the most important tools for studying authoritarianism and change in MENA are resource endowments, demographics, and historic factors. Resource endowments tell us a lot about a country and how it operates. Studying the region according resource endowments, like Cammett, Diwan, Richards, and Waterbury do helps us organize…

Russell E. Lucas describes the monarch as a personalistic ruler that does not rule alone, but rather stands at the center of a regime coalition that can include a broad social base. He explains that political pluralism is allowed not only within the regime coalition but also in the legal opposition. Monarchies are generally constitutionally…

The documentary, A Siege of Salt and Sand, depicts the climate disaster occurring in Tunisia by detailing the impacts that climate change has had on the everyday lives of the people. The documentary focuses on drought, rising sea levels, and desertification that has contributed to infertile land, a reduction in fruit and vegetable production, and dangerous…

It is clear that the presence of large oil revenues has impacted development paths in MENA and ultimately produced damaging political and social outcomes in the region; however, this is not due solely to the region’s large size of those rents. Oil rents, in conjunction with a state’s labor abundance, state capacity, and history have…

In Lisa Anderson’s 2006 article, “Searching Where the Light Shines: Studying Democratization in the Middle East,” she discusses the problems she sees with political scientists’ attempts to understand the political forces at work in MENA. Approaching the issue from multiple perspectives, Anderson argues that the main problems she sees consist of a projection of Western…