Hurst Publishers, 2014

In his disturbing and timely political history of the ‘Deep State’ in the Middle East, Jean-Pierre Filiu reveals how the autocracies of Syria, Egypt, and Yemen crushed the democratic uprisings of the ‘Arab Revolution’. They did so by turning to the shadowy intelligence agencies and internal security arms of the so-called ‘Deep State’ — emulating strategies pioneered in Kemalist Turkey — who had decades of experience in dealing with internal dissent, as well as to street gangs (the Baltaguiyya in Egypt) or death squads (the Shabbiha in Syria) to enforce their will.

Alongside intimidation, imprisonment and murder, the Arab counter-revolutionaries released from prison and secretly armed and funded many hardline Islamists, thereby boosting Salafi–Jihadi groups such as Islamic State, in the hope of convincing the Western powers to back their dictatorships. They also succeeded in dividing the opposition forces ranged against them, going so far as to ruthlessly discard politicians and generals from among their own elite in the pursuit of absolute, unfettered, power.

The impact of the Arab counter-revolution surprised most observers, who thought they had seen it all from the despots and security mafias of the Middle East: their perversity, their brutality, their voracity. But the wider world underestimated their ferocious readiness to literally burn down their countries in order to cling to absolute power. Bashar al-Assad clambered to the top of this murderous class of tyrants, driving nearly half of the Syrian population into exile and executing tens of thousands of his opponents. He has set a grisly precedent, one that other Arab autocrats may yet resort to.

Reviews

‘It takes patience, clarity and perspective to explain the whole grim picture [in the Middle East] and the links between its constituent parts. These qualities are on impressive display in an important new book by the French scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu. His particular skill is to describe the development, survival and resurgence of the Arab “deep state,” the security agencies that have kept it going and the “monster they helped create” – in its most extreme form the jihadis of the Islamic state (Isis). … The answer, Filiu concludes bravely, has to be more democracy, not less, not a fatalistic acceptance that change can never come to the Middle East.’ — The Guardian

‘Far and away the best and most up-to-date survey of the Arab Security State and its ability to master the various waves of popular uprisings it faced during the Arab Spring. Based on a set of challenging hypotheses as well as an unrivalled feel for Arab political behaviour it must become required reading.’ — Roger Owen, Emeritus Professor of Middle East History, Harvard University

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Congratutlations to Dr Joan Monras, winner of the Young Labour Economist Prize 2015, awarded by the European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) for his paper on Economic Shocks and Internal Migration.

This paper looks at the question how local negative demand shocks can be ameliorated by internal migrations. This question has been first addressed by Blanchard and Katz (1992). What makes this paper different from previous work is the finding that it is inflows rather than outflows that respond to regional demand shocks.

The paper illustrates that net in-migration rates decreased in areas more affected by the Great Recession and comes to the important conclusion that internal migration might help to alleviate up to one third of the effects of the crisis on wages in the most affected locations. What is really interesting is that this effect is due to a decrease in in-migration into locations affected by negative shocks rather than an increase in out-migration.

The paper not only provides a carefully explained identification strategy, but also structures the empirical analysis along a model of internal migration.

It addresses a very important issue and does so in a highly original and convincing way

The Bureaucratization of the World in the Neoliberal Era, An International and Comparative Perspective

by Béatrice Hibou

Palgrave Macmillan, May 2015

At the point where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Béatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying a set of norms, rules, and procedures that form contemporary beurocracy. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control: even more, it produces social and political indifference.

Under the pretext of depoliticization, this trend cannot hide the exercise of normalizing and excluding power. Bureaucratization is not something external to society: it unfolds through the very same actors who are its target and who, consciously or not, play an essential role in this process. Operating as it does through individuals, bureaucratization does not come 'from above': it is a much wider process of 'bureaucratic participation', a response to the need to voice material and vested interests and give answers to legitimate demands, as well as expressing the quest for efficiency, but it also reflects day-to-day conflicts and negotiations between actors. In this way, bureaucratic participation is constructed through power relations, and paradoxically relies on informalities that alone make the neoliberal art of government possible.

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Béatrice Hibou is a CNRS researcher at the Sciences Po Centre for International Studies - CERI. Based on political economy, her comparative research focuses on imperial fabrics, State formation, political orders, modes of domination, collective action and comparative historical sociology of the economy. She also dedicates a number of studies to political organisation in Africa.
She has published a number of books related to these issues :  The Force of Obedience: the Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia (2011, Cambridge) ; Privatizing the State (2004, Hurst-Columbia University Press) ; The Criminalization of the State in Africa (co-ed., 1998, Bloomington-Indiana University Press)

Fertility Policies and Social Security Reforms in China, Nicolas Coeurdacier, Stéphane Guibaud and Keyu Jin (PDF, 660Ko), 2014, IMF Economic Review, 62(3), 371-408.

This paper analyzes the impact of relaxing fertility controls and expanding social security in China. We develop an overlapping generations model in which fertility decisions and capital accumulation are endogenously determined in the presence of social security. In our model, children are an alternative savings technology—as they transfer resources to their retired parents. Important feedback links arise between fertility and social security variables: an expansion of social security benefits reduces fertility—partially offsetting the effects of relaxing the one-child policy. The feedback loop between social security variables and fertility suggests that abandoning fertility restrictions may not be as effective in helping to finance China’s intended pension reform, especially if children are an important source of old-age support. The sustainability of the pension system is particularly at risk in the event of a growth slowdown. The objective of pension reforms may also be incongruent with other reforms, such as financial liberalization and financial integration.

Nicolas Coeurdacier is Associate Professor at the Sciences Po Departement of Economics
Stéphane Guibaud is Assistant Professor of Finance  at the Sciences Po Departement of Economics
Keyu Jin is Assistant Professor  at the LSE Centre for Macroeconomics

A just published book “Mobile Europe” written by Ettore Recchi, Professor of Sociology at OSC, presents analyses* about its main research interests: mobilities and European integration. They may help to reboot European integration.

Once upon a time, Europeans migrated – now, they move. Visas, passports, and a plethora of other authorizations are long gone for people willing to cross borders within the EU. European integration has paved the way to a supranational area in which the power of the state to control individuals’ choices of travel and settlement has been curbed, creating a sort of natural experiment of a borderless world region. The EU has thus established the market-embedded political infrastructure of a unique ‘human mobility system’ – the European free movement regime. By virtue of it, EU citizens enjoy a unique right to freely move across 28 different sovereign countries. In spite of the proliferation of international agreements and alliances in different regions of the globe, nothing as such exists elsewhere. The individual freedom of cross-border mobility distinguishes the EU from other merely neo-liberal international integration projects like NAFTA. Historically, this is a most unusual and forward-looking achievement that is today overlooked at a time of widespread pessimism on the future of the EU.
Mobile Europe first outlines the historical premises and the political-economic rationales of this regime, and then delves into its effects on individuals’ lives. Demographically, free movement has gained ground over time, especially with the EU enlargements of the 2000s. In part, EU movers supplant third country nationals as a reservoir of migrant workforce. However, there is more to it. Free movement underpins a huge diversity of mobility projects which do not fit traditional migration patterns. It also works as a political umbrella to the broadening ‘social appetite’ for spatial mobility. All over the world, the number of people crossing nation-state frontiers – whatever the reason, from labour migration to all sorts of tourism – has exponentially increased in the last decades. A major socio-political puzzle is how this expansion of international mobility experiences feeds back on citizenship practices and sense of belonging. On the basis of original data collected since the early 2000s, the author concludes that intra-EU movements do nurture an enhanced cosmopolitan sensitivity but, in fact, are not sufficient by themselves to generate a critical mass of EU-oriented political participation. Nonetheless, EU movers form a potentially strategic population in view of the re-booting of European integration inspired more by a common political vision than market-driven dynamics.

* The exploited data  have mainly been elaborated  in the framework of three international research projects on mobility in Europe funded by the European Commission : Pioneur, Moveact, Eucross.

Additional resources

Final Report Summary of EUCROSS - The Europeanisation of Everyday Life: Cross-Border Practices and Transnational Identities among EU and Third-Country Citizens

"Globalised Minds, Roots in the City: Urban Upper-middle Classes in Europe" by Alberta Andreotti, Patrick Le Galès, Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes, January 2015, Wiley-Blackwell

Elites, Privilege and Excellence : The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage

Routledge - World Yearbook of Education 2015 Series - February 2015

Edited by : Agnès van Zanten (Sciences Po, OSC), Stephen Ball (Institute of Education, University of London),
& Brigitte Darchy-Koechlin (Department of Research Development, French Ministry of  Higher Education and Research)

This book focuses on educational elites and inequality, particularly on the ways in which established and emergent groups located at the top of the social hierarchy and power structure reproduce, establish or redefine their position.

The volume is organized around three main issues:

• analyzing the way in which parents, students and graduates in positions of social advantage use their assets and capitals in relation to educational strategies, and how these are different for old and new and cultural and economic elites;
• studying how elite institutions have adapted their strategies to take into account changes in the social structure, in policy and in their institutional environment and exploring the impact of these strategies on educational systems at the national and global levels;
• mapping the new global dynamics in elite education and how new forms of 'international education' and 'transnational cultural capital' as well as new global educational elite pathways shape elite students’ identities, status and trajectories.

Making use of a social and an institutional approach as well as a focus on practices and policies, the volume draws on research conducted on secondary schools and on higher education.
In addition, the global contributions within the book allow for a comparison and contrast of situations in different countries. This results in a comprehensive picture of common processes and national differences concerning advantage and excellence and a thorough examination of the impact of globalization on the strategies, identities and trajectories of elite groups and individuals alongside more general cultural and economic processes.

Jenny Andersson, a CNRS fellow and researcher at the Centre d’études européennes at Sciences Po, has been awarded the prestigious CNRS* Bronze Medal for her research.

CNRS Bronze Medal rewards the first work of a researcher, which makes him/her a talented specialist in his field. This award represents a CNRS encouragement to pursue well on track and already produced fruitful results.

Besides, Jenny Andersson, economic historian, is the principal investigator of the Futurepol project, funded by the European Research Council. The Futurepol project "Knowledge production and future governance in the post war period " aims to make a political history of the future.

In addition, Jenny Andersson continues to work on her core research interests ie. the history of social democracy and the political economy of the Welfare State.

February 2015

* CNRS : The "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" is the French National Center for Scientific Research

The Royal Economic Society and The Econometrics Journal announced January 19th, 2015 that the 2013 Denis Sargan Econometrics Prize is awarded to the Department's Koen Jochmans.

The Denis Sargan Econometrics Prize is awarded to the best article published in The Econometrics Journal in a given year by a researcher who is within five years of being awarded their doctorate.

Koen Jochman won the prize for his paper Pairwise-comparison estimation with non-parametric controls published in The Econometrics Journal, Vol. 16, Issue No. 3, pp. 340-372.

Congratulations!

More about Koen Jochmans and his research

More about the Royal Economic Society

Sciences Po recruited 16 researchers and professors during the 2013-2014 academic year, in four of the major social science disciplines taught at Sciences Po: economy, law, sociology and political science.

Graduates of Harvard, the London School of Economics, or the Université Pierre et Marie Curie; specialists in the economics of migration, intellectual property, public violence or the politics of risk.

Discover the diverse backgrounds of these new recruits.

The 2014 Deutsche Bahn Prize went to Yann Algan and Émeric Henry - both researchers at Sciences Po's Departement of Economics - and to their co-authors Yochai Benckler and Jerome Hergeux (Harvard).

Each year, the Deutsche Bahn Prize rewards CEPR Fellows for outstanding research in organisation and management.

The paper - Social Motives and the Organization of Production: Experimental Evidence from Open Source Software - analyzes the behaviour of 1,200 open source software (OSS) developers and uses the behaviour of the OSS developers in experimental trust, dictator, and public games to predict and explain the behavior of OSS developers in software projects.
The authors find that those developers with higher social motivation tend to participate in fewer projects, but cooperate more intensively. By highlighting the role of social motivation and self-selection of like-minded types into project teams, the paper contributes to the important question of how organizations that are lacking formal structure and hierarchies can solve problems of free-riding of their members.

More about Yann Algan and his research - More about Émeric Henry and his research

Christophe Jaffrelot has been awarded the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in the commentary and interpretative category for "incisive writing on India's new political sadhus", which included his articles on Swami Aseemanand and Baba Ramdev, published in the Indian magazine Caravan in 2011.
The seventh edition of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards, held in Delhi on 9 September, is the most coveted annual event in the Indian media calendar. The awards, instituted by the Indian Express Group, celebrate excellence in journalism, recognise courage and commitment and showcase outstanding contributions and individuals every year.

Christophe Jaffrelot is CNRS research director at Sciences Po - CERI where he served as director from 2000 to 2008 and teaches South Asian politics and history. Arguably one of the world’s most respected researchers on Indian society and politics, he has published many works, including "The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s"; "India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India"; and "Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System".