In fragmented societies, recruitment into the civilian bureaucracy has always proved a locus of contention. To alleviate state-society tensions, governments often sought to expand bureaucratic recruitment to absorb competing elite groups into power arrangements, from Lebanon, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland, to Kenya and China (McGarry & O’Leary 1999, Hood & Lodge 2006, 34-36, Hassan 2020, Liu 2021). Quota systems have especially been employed as a nation-building tool whereby critical constituencies’ “passive representation” in the administration is expected to generate loyalty to the state and regime longevity (Mosher 1968, Van de Walle & Scott 2009). Designed to alleviate the domination of one group in the state, positive discrimination instruments are meant to supplant inherited patronage-based arrangements, but also to compensate for the limits of merit-based examinations that have disproportionately favored certain groups, particularly in postcolonial states (Kuipers 2022). After the 1947 partition of British India, its powerful bureaucracy formed the backbone of Pakistan’s nascent state. In 1948, a provincial quota system was introduced for the recruitment into the civil service, ambitioning to “make the nation” more efficiently than poorly institutionalized party politics. Contentious quota politics, whereby misrepresented ethno-linguistic groups (Bengalis, rural Sindhis, Baluchis) demanded quota reforms, ultimately made a quota system be enshrined in the 1973 Constitution. Scheduled for a period of ten years, it was however extended for twenty, then forty years, deemed ineffective due to persisting inter-provincial disparities in economic and educational development. The paper investigates the failure of the quota system to democratize Pakistan’s upper civil service. To do so, it unpacks unexploited administrative records that compile family profiles, educational trajectories, and examination results of successful candidates to the civil service exam (1973-2021). It particularly investigates two of the most powerful bureaucratic cadres: the Pakistan Administrative Service, whose members staff Pakistan’s territorial, provincial, then federal administrations (N=1003), and the foreign service (N=673). Complemented by eight-months of fieldwork in Pakistan’s administrations and bureaucratic training institutions, the paper shows that the quota system was never designed to alleviate social inequalities to access state positions, but rather functioned as a mechanism whereby provincial elites seek to forge a consociational distribution of power and uphold elite status within their own province. Put differently, it suggests that nation-building in Pakistan has consistently been based on mitigating provincial-based rather than class-based struggle, perceived harmful to state-building. It ultimately accounts for the reproduction of the Pakistan bureaucracy’s authoritarian and counter-revolutionary tendency until today.

Under what conditions would elites distribute public goods to neighborhoods where the residents have collaborated with Daesh? How does variation in the attributes of a neighborhood (e.g. class, religion, partisanship or co-ethnicity) and collaboration status affect the prospects for disbursement of public good? Through a survey of 400 politicians, we assess preferences for allocating public good using a forced choice conjoint experiment design (Hainmueller et al., 2013). The experiment randomly varied the identity of a hypothetical neighborhood in [province/district/subdistrict] and the collaboration status. The respondent indicated whether they were likely to allocate the public good to the neighborhood. We find that elites are less willing to allocate public good to neighborhoods with high levels of collaboration. Elites primarily motivated by self-interest and take actions to enhance their electoral prospects. Given that public goods funds are limited, elites will use a strategic decision-making process when it comes to the allocation of these goods. Furthermore, elites wish to allocate goods to groups that help their reputation rather than harm it. Publicly allocating goods to individuals perceived as collaborators is expensive since it risks damaging their reputation with their main constituency and other politicians. The results of these experiments fill a critical gap in the existing literature on reintegration and social cohesion in post-conflict settings. Previous research has used survey data to evaluate the conditions under which civilians forgive civilians who have collaborated (Kao and Revkin 2021) but does not explore the determinants of social trust between elites and civilians. Other work has used evidence from lab-in-the-field experiments to measure the effects of civil war-related violence on pro-social behaviors including altruistic giving, public goods contributions, and trust-based transactions (Gilligan et al., 2014), but does not examine the effects of civilian collaboration with the insurgency on these outcomes. Other studies use data on ex-combatants to identify individual-level predictors of successful demobilization and reintegration (Humphreys and Weinstein, 2007; Annan et al., 2011), but do not systematically examine elite attitudes toward former combatants.This study will be the first to examine two important issues: 1) whether politicians hold a bias against those who are perceived to have collaborated with Daesh; and whether other attributes of neighborhoods influence a politician to be more likely to distribute public goods to neighborhoods in which collaborators live in.

The League of Arab States is one of the oldest regional organisations still in existence - what explains its survival, and what lessons does it have for the study of the Middle East? Surprisingly, the League has attracted limited academic attention, indeed the majority of the scholarly work focuses on what the League has 'failed' to achieve - usually in terms of promoting regional cooperation and mediating regional conflicts. In this paper, we challenge this common perspective by instead looking at the League's remarkable resilience rather than its perceived failure. The paper examines the reasons for the resilience of the organisation, not just in terms of pure survival but in its ability to reinvent itself despite the odds it faces. By examining the lifecycle(s) of the Arab League; its moments of decline (some have even talked even of gridlock or dormancy) and moments of revival, we present a conceptual framework for its resilience that specifies three scope conditions under which the League has been able to survive: Environment (Supply and Demand); Structure/Ambition (Bureaucratic Agency and Culture); and Depth and Diversity (Breadth and Flexibility). Utilising insights from a decade of fieldwork on, and at, the League, we demonstrate how the intersection of the three scope conditions enables the League not only to survive but to actually continue to develop and drive forward initiatives. Scrutinizing the lifecycle of the League provides useful insights which foster our understanding of the resilience of international organisations, helping us not only to map the scope conditions which underpin its cycles of rebirth and revival but also to identify the critical junctures and processes through which the League has been able to seize opportunities. These opportunities also link to wider regional processes, making the League an ideal site of study which can challenge existing perceptions of regional politics in the Arab World.

Democrat Party (DP) government was toppled in the first military intervention in Turkey’s republican history on May 27, 1960. After the coup, the soldiers who carried out this military action formed the National Unity Committee (NUC), which had 38 members of different ranks. The NUC declared its loyalty to NATO and CENTO in the coup declaration and the committee and its leader, General Cemal Gürsel, became the main actors in Turkish politics until the 1961 elections. The NUC period witnessed several challenges and changes in Turkish political, economic, and social life as well as foreign policy. In particular, the Kemalists, leftists, and anti-DP circles, who called the military intervention a revolution and mythicized the NUC’s role in Turkey’s independence from the USA, expected a major turnabout in the DP’s US-centric foreign policy. However, as this presentation shows on the basis of primary sources such as the US archives, Turkish parliamentary records, and the records of provisional governments, NUC governments followed the same path as the DP government in Turkish-American relations and maintained a US-centric foreign policy. Therefore, economic and military negotiations started between the two countries immediately after the coup because the Turkish economy was in a serious crisis and there was a need for new resources for military expenditures. Specifically, the declining living standards of officers before the coup forced the government to seek financial support from the USA. Moreover, Turkey’s military infrastructure had to be modernized and new missiles had to be deployed in the country to resist the Soviet threat. Thus, the main topics in Turkish-American relations during this period were the increase in US financial and military aid to Turkey, the retirement of officers from the army, NATO and US financial aid to Turkey, a possible Turkish-Soviet rapprochement, and the deployment of IRBMs. Despite the increase in US support, it fell short of the NUC government’s expectations. In summary, the NUC government continued the DP’s US-centric foreign policy and refused the Soviet peace offensive to grant economic and technical support to Turkey. Turkey’s dependence on the USA did not come to an end, contrary to the expectations of the groups supporting the military intervention for Turkey’s independence from the USA.

Criticisms of the feeble outcomes in decision-making regarding threat perceptions among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) underscore the necessity for a more nuanced understanding of these perceptions in addressing regional dilemmas. This conceptual article, employing contextual analysis as its methodology, delves into the effectiveness of the GCC in responding to threat perceptions. By examining significant incidents and the variations in their treatment, aiming to unravel the complexities within the GCC's approach to perceived threats. Contextual analysis allows for a deeper exploration of how historical, cultural, and political contexts shape the GCC member states' perceptions and responses to threats. This approach is instrumental in understanding the nuances of regional cooperation and conflict resolution strategies. This study examines the effectiveness of the GCC in fulfilling its stated duties in the face of major threats, particularly focusing on the execution of agreements and the impact of inefficiencies in conciliatory approaches that jeopardize the region's security and stability. Primary data collection in this study involves direct engagement with GCC members policy documents, official statements, providing firsthand insights into the member’s threat perception and decision-making processes. Through this analysis, the aim is to contribute to the discourse on regional security cooperation, a critical factor for maintaining equilibrium in the Arabian Gulf region. By scrutinizing the GCC's handling of threat perceptions, this article seeks to shed light on the intricacies of regional dynamics and the potential pathways for strengthening cooperation among member states. This exploration is vital for devising more robust and effective strategies for managing the complexities inherent in the Arabian Gulf's political landscape.