Shortly after the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in Tehran, grassroot campaigns were formed in Rojhelat, the Kurdish territory in Iran, aiming to protect their communities against the pandemic. These campaigns were organized by unionists, environmentalists, women and labour activists across civil society in the Kurdish community. Self-organized, autonomous and horizontally structured, these campaigns made a space for direct participation of individuals in defending their communities against the pandemic when public social and health services were lacking and the state had effectively withdrawn from the scene. Initially they emerged in urban centers, but soon spread to the countryside where people were mobilized to protect their communities by organizing their own campaigns. The self-help local councils organized in horizontal networks in town and country soon established effective communication and cooperation lines to conduct their duties for which they had been created. The activities of the local councils soon surpassed their initial objectives involving a wide range of operations related directly to the life, conduct and reproduction of individuals, families, localities and communities in the region. In other words, they extended their activities to the biopolitical field, the erstwhile exclusive domain of sovereign power and its security apparatuses overseeing the management and control of biopolitical issues as an essential part of securing domination and order. This, although leading to the closure/exclusion and marginalization of popular local councils, also at the same time produced a new space of confrontation and resistance with its own specific subjectivities which are likely to play an important role in the future political developments in Rojhelat. This presentation will address the new articulations of sovereign domination and Kurdish resistance in the biopolitical field structured by the Covid-19 pandemic drawing on the online field research conducted in various urban and rural location in Rojhelat.

We developed a comprehensive policy tracker of government responses (PTGR) to the COVID-19 crisis for 12 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the 6 Golf Cooperation Council states. Our PTGR is to some extent similar to ones developed by Oxford University (Blavatnik School, 2020), the OECD (OECD, 2020), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2020) and is in a solid tradition of governance and policy indicators (Bouckaert & Van Dooren, 2016; Bradley, 2015; Davis, Fisher, Kingsbury, & Merry, 2012; Karabell, 2014; Maggetti & Gilardi, 2016; Merry, Davis, & Kingsbury, 2015; Pollitt, 2011; Rottenburg, Merry, Park, & Mugler, 2015; Kaufmann et al., 2009). However, the Oxford and OECD trackers provide very little coverage of the MENA region while the IMF tracker is very limited in scope. Therefore, our PTGR is a unique and precious resource of data on what governments in the region did, and are doing, to address and mitigate the crisis. Our project resulted in a tailored quantitative and qualitative dataset to advise policymakers and inform decision-making by providing a reliable knowledge base of policy interventions in the region. The methodology focuses on three areas of government response, with qualitative and quantitative data for policy interventions in each area. The areas are: (1) public health (closings; travel restrictions; contact tracing; isolation and quarantine; testing; case trajectories), (2) economic (fiscal and monetary measures; support for businesses, employers and employees; investment in health; production and supply chain, trade restrictions/incentives, and food security), and (3) social (education system; protection of vulnerable groups; religious observance; social services and welfare). The data are drawn from official government sources, datasets from intergovernmental organizations, other official documents, reliable media sources, and peer-reviewed publications. Policy trackers and governance indicators have grown in large numbers in the last decade (Arndt & Oman, 2008; Buduru & Pal, 2010; Pal & Ireland, 2009). This is a well-established field, but with virtually no real traction in the MENA region. The best of the indicators do have data on MENA, but only in very broad “governance” dimensions such as “government effectiveness.” Our project is unique and original in that it tracks and maps policy responses in the region to the COVID-19 crisis comprehensively and in real time. Our research has produced the largest and most comprehensive and complete dataset on policies and government measures in response to COVID-19 in MENA.

This paper analyzes the political roles and policy-making of authoritarian first ladies during the Covid pandemic of 2020 in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In so doing, it aims to contribute to a better understanding of first lady politics and (de-)legitimation under authoritarianism which is a largely under-researched field. Contrary to the very active role of first ladies in the MENA region in many policy areas in the past decade, first ladies have been rather quiet during the current pandemic. This is even more surprising given that female leadership worldwide has been highly praised during the current pandemic. This paper inquires into this puzzle through a case study of Queen Rania of Jordan. It presents the findings of the analysis of the activities, speeches and other public appearances of Queen Rania between March 2020 and February 2021 and contextualizes those in the political action taking by her husband and her son, i.e. the King and the Crown Prince.