Iran's Shortsighted Policies in Iraq: Between Inflaming and Containing of Radical Sunni Islam: 2003–2015

The main goal of the 2003 war with Iraq of the coalition forces led by the United States was to topple Saddam Hussein's regime and establish a new political system that would adopt democratic practices. Iran, a country that deemed Saddam's regime to be a threat, considered this war to be very helpful in many ways — first because it put an end to Clinton's “dual containment” approach and would thus help Iran to become a regional superpower at Iraq's expense. Second, a war with Iraq could put an end to the decades of oppression of the Shi'a community in Iraq. This article argues that Iran's involvement in Iraq's internal affairs created chaos in Iraq and contributed to the sectarian conflict against Sunni terror groups, notably the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known by the Arabic name Daesh, a terror group with the most extreme form of Sunni Radical Islam ever known. The sectarian conflict that resulted from the above is now taking place between the Sunnis and the Shi'a of both Persian and Arab backgrounds and this clash could not have become as radical as it is without Iran's aggressive foreign policy. It should, however, be noted that Iran is not the sole player in the country and therefore its part in inflaming sectarian conflicts should be viewed through a realistic prism that allows other forces — domestic and foreign — to be seen as having influenced the events for their benefit.     

Perceptions and Misperceptions of Regime Stability and Iran's Convoluted Rise to Regional Influence

This article seeks to explain revolutionary Iran's convoluted rise to regional prominence over the last three decades. We hold that perceptions and misperceptions of regime stability (both of one's self and of others) by the relevant actors have played a major role in Iran's recent. The main logic is that the success of many strategies employed by relevant regional actors to augment their regional influence (both Iran seeking more influence and others seeking to stem that influence) have crucially hinged on making correct assessments of regime stability. This study has both theoretical and empirical findings. Theoretically, we find that failures to accurately estimate regime stability stem from three main sources: (1) objective uncertainties regarding the target state's level of regime stability, given the high strength of societal forces shaping state‐society relations in the Middle East and given the distinct variation between autocrats in terms of their ability to develop effective counterrevolutionary/repressive tools; (2) ideological blinders, from which both the United States and regional actors frequently suffer, which have often led them to be falsely optimistic regarding the existence of either subversive opportunities or opportunities to stabilize regimes facing domestic pressures; and (3) incorrect theories regarding sources of regime stability which lead experts and policymakers to overlook factors which may destabilize a regime. This article has two major empirical findings. First, Iran's rise may be at least partly attributed to Iran demonstrating a slightly better learning curve at the tactical level (i.e., learning subversive skills from its Lebanese experience in the 1980s–1990s and applying them to Iraq in the 2000s–2010s) as well as at the strategic level (i.e., understanding the limits of its subversive capacities and correctly assessing when it can engage in successful stabilizing operations). Second, two errors committed by the United States have been far more consequential than those committed by Iran for the regional balance of power: First, the George W. Bush Administration myopically opened up subversive opportunities for Iran when it invaded Iraq in 2003 by thinking that it could stabilize a democratic regime and insulate it from outside influence; second, on two occasions Washington overestimated the transformative effect that its concessions to Iran would have in terms of sufficiently empowering reformists so as to bring about complete regime transformation from within.     

Ulama in Islamic Law‐Making and Adjudication in Contemporary Egypt

The article examines the legislative and judicial tasks of Islamic jurists and how they carried it out in constitutional or general legal structure. While the Pakistani experiment was inspired by the Iranian model of jurists' involvement in legislatures, Egypt took a different path by not recognizing any official role for Islamic jurists with ambiguous recognition of Islamic jurisprudence. The legislative role could take the form of incorporating Islamic jurists into the legislature, establishing a committee partially made up of Islamic jurists, or handing over some legislative task to an Islamic jurisprudential institution. Despite the fact that Islamization was intended to respond to the people's requests, it employed autocratic and authoritarian mechanisms. The project attempted to replace the typical class of socially recognized jurists with appointed committees entrusted with Islamic codification. The experiment was challenged for its operation and its Islamicity but never introduced Shari'a courts or Islamic clerical legislation.     

Examining the Impact of Turkey's Approach Vis‐à‐Vis Syria into Turkey's Iraq Policy

The tension between “international order” and justice has long been a focus of critical attention of many scholars. Today, with the rise of the humanitarian crises, the debate is once again visible, and Turkish foreign policy is one of the most important areas of observation of this tension. Indeed, the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 paved the way for Turkey to actively engage in regional affairs. Meanwhile, the need to bring human justice into world politics makes Turkish foreign policy decision makers operate on a much more humanitarian basis. Nevertheless, active humanitarian engagement poses an important challenge to traditional Turkish foreign policy as it is mainly based on the notion of “non‐interference,” as well as on the elementary components of international order, by raising suspicions on the intentions of the Turkish authorities. This article aims to explore the challenges Turkey has been facing since the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq, and diagnose Turkish foreign policy vis‐à‐vis Iraq in the shadow of the Syrian civil war from Hedley Bull's framework of “order” and “justice.” It argues that Turkey's recent fluctuations in the Middle East could be linked to Turkey's failure to reconcile the requirements of “order” with those of “justice” and the Turkish governing party's (AKP) attempts to use justice as an important instrument to consolidate its power both in Turkey and in the Middle East.     

Social Policy Perspectives on Economic Inequality in Wealthy Countries

This essay reviews the policy‐oriented literature on economic inequality in wealthy countries published from 2008 to 2018. We focus on this decade because it is a period bookended by both the beginnings of the Great Recession of 2008–2009 as well as the recovery. During this timeframe, attention to inequality by social policy scholars grew substantially, which we argue reflects an interest in both inequality trends as well as redistributive social policy. We observe in the literature sustained efforts to understand both the relationship between social policy and economic inequality, as well as determinants of changes to redistributive social policy. We also note substantial variation in research traditions, as well as opportunities to address substantive, methodological, and theoretical gaps. Our review summarizes the approaches and findings from the literature and discusses the implications of the findings for the study of economic inequality within the academic field of public policy.     

Sustainability Policy Research: A Review and Synthesis

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical approaches drawn from influential journal articles and books on sustainability policy published over the last 10 years (2007 through 2017). Due to the widespread application of sustainability as a concept and space limitations, the paper more narrowly focuses on sustainability research in three critical policy areas: climate change, urban development, and agroecology and food systems. Drawing from information provided primarily by citation indexes, the study identifies and analyzes the research literature related to sustainability in these three fields. Future theoretical and empirical research approaches that can better integrate and connect the current diffuse and incongruent literature on sustainability are discussed in the paper. The findings of the literature review generate a number of possible future research directions that are discussed in the study.     

Capacity Building toward Resilience: How Communities Recover,Learn, and Change in the Aftermath of Extreme Events

When faced with natural disasters, communities respond in diverse ways, with processes that reflect the extent of damage experienced by the community, their resource availability, and stakeholder needs. Local‐level processes drive decisions about mitigating future flood risks, such as if, how, and where to rebuild, as well as changes in zoning practices and public outreach programs. Because of their potentially recurring nature, floods offer an opportunity for communities to learn from and adapt to these experiences with the goal of increasing resiliency through deliberation, modification of former policies, and adoption of new policies. By following the response to the September 2013 floods in seven Colorado communities, this study investigates if, how, and why communities successfully learn from extreme events and change their local government policies to increase resilience and decrease vulnerability to future floods. We find that greater openness of post‐flood decision process is associated with more in‐depth deliberation, learning, and more substantive and frequent policy change.     

Studying Public Policy through Immigration Policy: Advances in Theory and Measurement

This essay provides a critical review of the field of immigration policy studies from the perspective of measurement and modeling. It serves to contextualize and broaden the views presented in the special issue. As such, we combine insights from American and comparative politics, pinpoint key limitations and challenges in the field, and identify areas of strength within each subfield which could inform theory and measurement development for the other. Ultimately, the concerns about conceptualization, definition, and measurement that we identify and discuss herein, do not apply only to immigration policy studies but to policy studies writ large.     

The Determinants of Political Cleavages in Jordan,Tunisia, and Yemen: An Analysis of Political Attitudes Structure in the Arab World

This article investigates the determinants of political cleavages composing the structure of political attitudes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen following the Arab Spring. Further, it tests whether political cleavages carry predictive weight on ordinary citizens’ electoral choices in general elections. Using the Sixth Wave of the World Values Survey, discriminant analysis was conducted to generate the dimensionality, type, and structure of political attitudes in the three nations. Findings suggest that the structure of political attitudes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen is multidimensional: the Islamic‐Secular division, a conflict along economic policy visions and an emerging divisive dimension concerning political reform. Evidence indicates that political cleavages do not possess significant predictive power in determining voters’ choice at elections booths. This research also points to the significance of social transformation processes such as modernization and globalization in causing a shift in values among ordinary citizens in the Arab World. This research argues that in countries where the effects of modernization and globalization are higher, a weakening of the Islamic‐Secular division is witnessed. This research is important since it paves the way for further empirical analysis on political ideology in the Middle East. It shatters conjectures concluding that Arab polities are only divided by a single hierarchical dimension: Islamic‐Secular. It contributes to comparative research on the dimensionality of political ideology by showing that the Arab World is similar to the industrialized world in the dimensionality, nature, and structuration of political ideology.     

Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism and Nationalism: The Evolution of Wataniyya into Qawmiyya

For many scholars, the Arab Spring was actually an Islamic Winter, especially when ISIS rose up in Iraq and Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood won democratic elections in Egypt and took control over the state. But in other unshaken regions in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and the GCC states, the Arab Spring or the Islamic Winter led to something different, which I will call “rethinking nationalism.” This article asserts that since Saudi Arabia's independence in 1932, the royal family has succeeded in forming Wahhabi nationalism, meaning that despite the fact that all Saudi civilians enjoy Saudi citizenship, only those who ascribe to the Wahhabism creed can be part of the nation in terms of political participation and policy decision‐making. Although some steps in affirmative action have been taken in recent years — also as a Saudi response to the Arab Spring — toward women and the Shi'a minority, these groups or sectors still are not perceived by the royal family as part of the nation, and probably not as equal citizens, for religious reasons that over the years have distinguished between real Saudi nationalist groups and Saudi civilians.     

Reconceptualizing the Policy Subsystem: Integration with Complexity Theory and Social Network Analysis

The concept of the policy subsystem is an essential building block for several of the basic frameworks of policy process studies. Over time issues have become more complex, crossing subsystem boundaries, and so subsystems have escalated in their complexity as well. It is increasingly insufficient to study just one policy subsystem and so scholars have turned to studying boundary‐spanning regimes or policy networks. In this essay, we review the major contributions to developing the concept of a policy subsystem and trace its evolution into broader conceptualizations like issue and policy networks. We argue that the future for theories of the policy process is in more explicit integration of complexity theory and more effective modeling of subsystems with the utilization of social network analysis. In closing, we discuss the enduring nature of the concept of policy subsystems and highlight studies that continue using it in innovative ways.