Samer Abboud

Topics of Interest:
Privatization; Neoliberalism; Reconstruction; War Economies; Political Subjectivity

Countries/Regions of Interest:
Syria; Lebanon; Iraq; Levant

List of Publications

Selected Publications:
Abboud, S. (2016).  The Struggle for the New Arab State: Postcolonialism, Privatisation and Political Change.  London: Pluto Press (contracted) Series: World Politics and Policy in the 21st Century: New Challenges, Progressive Openings.

Abboud, S. (2015). Syria. Cambridge: Polity Press (in press).

Abboud, S. (2015). Conflict, Governance, and De-centralized Authority in Syria. In Seeberg, P. et al (eds.). The Levant in Transformation. London: Palgrave. (in press)

Abboud, S. (2015). Locating the ‘Social’ in the Social Market Economy.  In Hinnebusch, R. and Tina Zintl (eds.).  Syria: From Reform to Revolt. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, pp. 45-65.

Abboud, S. and B. Muller (2012).  Rethinking Hizballah: Authority, Legitimacy, Violence. London: Ashgate.

Abboud, S. and Fred Lawson (2012).  Antinomies of Economic Governance in Contemporary Syria.  In Abbas, K. (ed).  Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge, pp. 330-341.

Abboud, S. (2012). Economic Transformation and Diffusion of Authoritarian Power in Syria. In Sadiki, L and Heiko Wimmonen (eds.).  Unmaking Power: Negotiating the Democratic Void in the Arab Middle East.  London: Routledge.

Abboud, S. (2012).  Fragmentation in the Syrian Opposition.  Orient, No. 3, pp. 64-69.

Abboud, S. (2011).  Oil and Financialization in the Gulf Cooperation Council.  In M. Legrenzi & B. Momani (Eds.), The Shifting Geo-economic Power of the Gulf.  London: Ashgate, pp. 91-108.

Abboud, S (2010). Image, Rhetoric and Reality: The Obama Administration and the Middle East.  New Political Science. Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 278-284.

Abboud, S. (2009).  The Siege of Nahr al-Barid and the Palestinians in Lebanon.  Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1-2, pp. 31-48.

Abboud, S. (2009).  Syrian Trade Policy. In S. Abboud and S. Said Syrian Foreign Trade and Economic Reform. St. Andrews, Scotland: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Abboud, S. (2008).  The Transitions Paradigm and the Case of Syria.  In S. Abboud & F. Arslanian, Syria’s Economy and the Transition Paradigm. St. Andrews, Scotland: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Abboud, S. (2008).  Failures (and successes?) of neo-liberal economic policy in Iraq.   International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 425-442.

My research has developed rather broadly around an interest in how neoliberalism has manifest in the Arab World, with an emphasis on how policies of privatization and marketization have shaped the political economies of countries in the region, especially Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. I completed my doctorate at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University in Exeter in 2007 where I wrote a thesis entitled “The Political Economy of Marketization in Syria”. This research focused on the post-2000 market reforms and the multiple transitions and transformations embedded therein. I was rather interested in the convergence of authoritarian and neoliberal modes of governance in the Syrian context and how state power was diffused through marketization policies.

Since then, I have continued to conduct research on Syria’s post-2000 political economy with a specific interest in the question of marketization and authoritarian diffusion shaped political subjectivities. In particular, I was interested both in how marketization policies articulated and acted upon various notions of political subjects through the framework of the “social market economy” and how these policies created spaces for new forms of political-economic subjectivity and agency with different social groups.

I have also published on reconstruction issues in Iraq and Lebanon with an emphasis on how neoliberal frameworks and policies shaped reconstruction policies in those countries. In the Lebanese context I was interested in how neoliberalism shaped the trajectory of the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp reconstruction, while in the Iraqi context I asked how neoliberal policies framed and shaped the occupation authority’s reconstruction programs.

My research today falls along two parallel tracks. First, I remain interested in how neoliberalism fostered new forms of political subjectivity and agency. I am currently preparing a manuscript entitled “The Struggle for the New Arab State: Postcolonialism, Privatization, and Political Change in the Arab World” (contracted by Pluto) in which I explore how different modes of privatization pursued in the region (divestment of assets, diffusion of social and economic responsibility to the market, or public-private partnerships) created the conditions of possibility for the emergence of new forms of political agency and how this agency was exercised in comparative contexts. Here, I am broadly interested in how debate and contestation over privatization has unfolded in the region. Second, I have maintained an interest in Syria throughout the course of the crisis and have pursued research more broadly into the question of how the war economy has taken shape and what impacts this has had on the Syrian business community.