The authoritarian regimes in Arab countries have responded to the pressures for transformation and coping with challenges in different ways. Some have failed in their management of this transition, leading to armed conflicts or the state’s collapse, while others have simply reproduced an authoritarian form of power, as stable as it is fragile. What exactly has determined the way each responds, the paths they have taken and the outcomes in each specific case? Can the “end of the rentier state model” provide a useful framework for understanding the crisis in many Arab states and their options for the future?

This conference, presented by Karim Hauser, who is responsible for Casa Árabe’s Governance Area, will be given by Yezid Sayigh, an associate researcher with the Carnegie Middle East Centre.

Yezid Sayigh is an associate researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut. His main lines of work focus on the Syrian crisis, the political role of Arab armies, transformation in the security sector in Arab transitions, the re-invention of authoritarianism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process. Before this, Sayigh was a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Kings College in London. From 1994 to 2003, he was an assistant to the director of studies at the Centre of International Studies in Cambridge, and from 1998 to 2003, he directed the Middle Eastern Studies program at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Sayigh was also an advisor and negotiator for the Palestinian delegation during the peace talks with Israel from 1991 to 1994. 

Similarly, he has authored many publications, including Dilemmas of Reform: Policing in Arab Transitions (March 2016); Haidar al-’Abadi’s First Year in Office: What Prospects For Iraq? (September 2015); Crumbling States: Security Sector Reform in Libya and Yemen (June 2015); Missed Opportunity: The Politics of Police Reform in Egypt and Tunisia (March 2015).