Shamiran Mako | Boston University (original) (raw)
Papers by Shamiran Mako
International Peacekeeping, 2023
Elite cohesion structures interethnic bargaining and institutional design in post-conflict divide... more Elite cohesion structures interethnic bargaining and institutional design in post-conflict divided societies. Although works have explored how interethnic elite bargaining affects institutional design and conflict and cooperation in multiethnic states, less attention has been paid to historical antecedents that precondition bargaining strategies and outcomes in post-conflict spaces. This article explores elite bargaining dynamics among Iraqi dissident and exiled elites prior to 2003 to explain fractionalization and incongruent institutional design following regime change. Treating elite interactions as antecedent conditions for explaining statebuilding outcomes, it situates Iraq’s informal consociational power-sharing institutional design, muhassasa, within preceding patterns of interethnic fragmentation of the anti-Ba‘thist opposition movement prior to 2003. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with dissident elites from Iraq’s pre-2003 opposition and exiled groups and American policymakers, this paper illustrates how ethnic elite competition for control and state capture impeded the adoption and design of consensual and durable power-sharing institutions following regime change. Thus, although collective grievances with Ba‘thist-era exclusion and repression facilitated interethnic mobilization among disparate elite, expedient statebuilding and the reliance on fractionalized opposition groups obstructed the development and evolution of a cohesive, durable, and inclusive conflict mitigating institutional design after 2003.
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 2024
n this afterword to the special issue on Consociationalism and the State: Lebanon and Iraq in Com... more n this afterword to the special issue on Consociationalism and the State: Lebanon and Iraq in Comparative Perspective, we reflect on the insights from the articles in the special issue and their contributions to the wider field of consociationalism studies, including the relationship between the state, state formation, and consociationalism; the interplay between consociationalism and identity construction and change; and the functionality, longevity, and agility of the consociational state. We suggest that the emergent research agenda on consociationalism and the state should engage further with ideas of agency and with wider cross-regional comparisons from the global south in order to show how historically contingent developments precondition conflict processes, group grievances, and post-conflict preferences in power-sharing systems.
Perspectives on Politics, 2023
APSA-MENA newsletter, 2022
International Politics, 2021
In the wake of the Arab uprisings, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen experienced military intervent... more In the wake of the Arab uprisings, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen experienced military interventions following popular protests absent civil strife where citizens coalesced around common grievances. Why did external actors pursue military interventions during the Arab uprisings? What prompted such interventions? This article explicates the structural conditions underpinning external interventions during the MENA region's largest pro-democracy wave. I posit the simultaneity of the protests within a given temporal setting produced a permissive strategic environment that created a window of opportunity for external actors to alter the balance of power to maintain competing spheres of influence. The cross-national comparison contributes novel case studies to the extant literature on foreign military interventions to illustrate how and why regional shocks structure interest and opportunity for states seeking to leverage geostrategic interests through military interventions.
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2021
Peacebuilding and transitional justice are viewed as integral components of statebuilding in post... more Peacebuilding and transitional justice are viewed as integral components of statebuilding in post-conflict spaces. This Special Issue critically evaluates statebuilding and peacebuilding in Iraq through macro and micro-level analyses of Iraq's political development following foreign-imposed regime change. In line with the articles in the Special Issue, this introduction critically examines Iraq's post-2003 trajectory as an outcome of the failure of securitized statebuilding and the absence of legitimacy in externally-imposed democratization. It concludes by highlighting the impact of expedient and exogenous statebuilding on transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding.
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2021
Lustration, as an instrument of transitional justice, determines the extent to which members of t... more Lustration, as an instrument of transitional justice, determines the extent to which members of the former regime or combatant groups can be reintegrated into a democratizing state. This article examines the effects of de-Ba'athification in the lead up to and following foreign-imposed regime change in Iraq. I demonstrate that exclusive and unconstrained lustration created an institutional mechanism that targeted and excluded key segments of the population as perceived regime collaborators, which subverted peacebuilding during the transitional period of the occupation. I conclude by illuminating the enduring effects of exclusionary lustration on subsequent attempts at state-and peacebuilding in divided, post-colonial societies.
Transitional Justice and Forced Migration: Critical Perspectives from the Global South, 2019
POMEPS Studies 35: Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq, 2019
Since its introduction by Raphael Lemkin during the Second World War, cultural genocide has serve... more Since its introduction by Raphael Lemkin during the Second World War, cultural genocide has served as a conceptual framework for the non-physical destruction of a group. Following a vigorous debate over the legitimacy of the concept by states fearing prosecution for ethnocidal acts, namely Australia, the United States, Sweden, and Canada, cultural genocide/ethnocide was abrogated from the 1948 Genocide Convention. This pivotal move has shifted the frame of analysis and has sparked a contentious debate about the distinguishing elements of the physical destruction of a people and their cultural dissipation.
The achievements of the indigenous peoples' movement throughout the 1980s reignited the debate surrounding cultural genocide within the international arena. This paper is both a survey of cultural genocide of indigenous populations of North America, South America, and Australia, as well as the role of indigenous social movements within the international arena. It analyzes the development of cultural genocide within international law by Raphael Lemkin, its subsequent debate by the United Nations’ Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, its omission from the Genocide Convention, and its reintroduction by indigenous peoples’ mobilization to the international arena. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (Philippines), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and various findings of the ICTY relating to cultural genocide, the conference findings of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe relating to minorities, along with Lemkin's original reference to the term, will be used as frameworks for illuminating the extent and gravity of such crimes.
Books by Shamiran Mako
Cambridge University Press, 2021
Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick ... more Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick and nonviolent outcomes in the direction of regime change, democracy, and social transformation? Why was a democratic transition limited to Tunisia, and why did region-wide democratization not occur? After the Arab Uprisings offers an explanatory framework to answer these central questions, based on four key themes: state and regime type, civil society, gender relations and women's mobilizations, and external influence. Applying these to seven cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, Valentine M. Moghadam and Shamiran Mako highlight the salience of domestic and external factors and forces, uniquely presenting women's legal status, social positions, and organizational capacity, along with the presence or absence of external intervention, as key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings, and extending the analysis to the present day.
International Peacekeeping, 2023
Elite cohesion structures interethnic bargaining and institutional design in post-conflict divide... more Elite cohesion structures interethnic bargaining and institutional design in post-conflict divided societies. Although works have explored how interethnic elite bargaining affects institutional design and conflict and cooperation in multiethnic states, less attention has been paid to historical antecedents that precondition bargaining strategies and outcomes in post-conflict spaces. This article explores elite bargaining dynamics among Iraqi dissident and exiled elites prior to 2003 to explain fractionalization and incongruent institutional design following regime change. Treating elite interactions as antecedent conditions for explaining statebuilding outcomes, it situates Iraq’s informal consociational power-sharing institutional design, muhassasa, within preceding patterns of interethnic fragmentation of the anti-Ba‘thist opposition movement prior to 2003. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with dissident elites from Iraq’s pre-2003 opposition and exiled groups and American policymakers, this paper illustrates how ethnic elite competition for control and state capture impeded the adoption and design of consensual and durable power-sharing institutions following regime change. Thus, although collective grievances with Ba‘thist-era exclusion and repression facilitated interethnic mobilization among disparate elite, expedient statebuilding and the reliance on fractionalized opposition groups obstructed the development and evolution of a cohesive, durable, and inclusive conflict mitigating institutional design after 2003.
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 2024
n this afterword to the special issue on Consociationalism and the State: Lebanon and Iraq in Com... more n this afterword to the special issue on Consociationalism and the State: Lebanon and Iraq in Comparative Perspective, we reflect on the insights from the articles in the special issue and their contributions to the wider field of consociationalism studies, including the relationship between the state, state formation, and consociationalism; the interplay between consociationalism and identity construction and change; and the functionality, longevity, and agility of the consociational state. We suggest that the emergent research agenda on consociationalism and the state should engage further with ideas of agency and with wider cross-regional comparisons from the global south in order to show how historically contingent developments precondition conflict processes, group grievances, and post-conflict preferences in power-sharing systems.
Perspectives on Politics, 2023
APSA-MENA newsletter, 2022
International Politics, 2021
In the wake of the Arab uprisings, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen experienced military intervent... more In the wake of the Arab uprisings, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen experienced military interventions following popular protests absent civil strife where citizens coalesced around common grievances. Why did external actors pursue military interventions during the Arab uprisings? What prompted such interventions? This article explicates the structural conditions underpinning external interventions during the MENA region's largest pro-democracy wave. I posit the simultaneity of the protests within a given temporal setting produced a permissive strategic environment that created a window of opportunity for external actors to alter the balance of power to maintain competing spheres of influence. The cross-national comparison contributes novel case studies to the extant literature on foreign military interventions to illustrate how and why regional shocks structure interest and opportunity for states seeking to leverage geostrategic interests through military interventions.
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2021
Peacebuilding and transitional justice are viewed as integral components of statebuilding in post... more Peacebuilding and transitional justice are viewed as integral components of statebuilding in post-conflict spaces. This Special Issue critically evaluates statebuilding and peacebuilding in Iraq through macro and micro-level analyses of Iraq's political development following foreign-imposed regime change. In line with the articles in the Special Issue, this introduction critically examines Iraq's post-2003 trajectory as an outcome of the failure of securitized statebuilding and the absence of legitimacy in externally-imposed democratization. It concludes by highlighting the impact of expedient and exogenous statebuilding on transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding.
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2021
Lustration, as an instrument of transitional justice, determines the extent to which members of t... more Lustration, as an instrument of transitional justice, determines the extent to which members of the former regime or combatant groups can be reintegrated into a democratizing state. This article examines the effects of de-Ba'athification in the lead up to and following foreign-imposed regime change in Iraq. I demonstrate that exclusive and unconstrained lustration created an institutional mechanism that targeted and excluded key segments of the population as perceived regime collaborators, which subverted peacebuilding during the transitional period of the occupation. I conclude by illuminating the enduring effects of exclusionary lustration on subsequent attempts at state-and peacebuilding in divided, post-colonial societies.
Transitional Justice and Forced Migration: Critical Perspectives from the Global South, 2019
POMEPS Studies 35: Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq, 2019
Since its introduction by Raphael Lemkin during the Second World War, cultural genocide has serve... more Since its introduction by Raphael Lemkin during the Second World War, cultural genocide has served as a conceptual framework for the non-physical destruction of a group. Following a vigorous debate over the legitimacy of the concept by states fearing prosecution for ethnocidal acts, namely Australia, the United States, Sweden, and Canada, cultural genocide/ethnocide was abrogated from the 1948 Genocide Convention. This pivotal move has shifted the frame of analysis and has sparked a contentious debate about the distinguishing elements of the physical destruction of a people and their cultural dissipation.
The achievements of the indigenous peoples' movement throughout the 1980s reignited the debate surrounding cultural genocide within the international arena. This paper is both a survey of cultural genocide of indigenous populations of North America, South America, and Australia, as well as the role of indigenous social movements within the international arena. It analyzes the development of cultural genocide within international law by Raphael Lemkin, its subsequent debate by the United Nations’ Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, its omission from the Genocide Convention, and its reintroduction by indigenous peoples’ mobilization to the international arena. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (Philippines), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and various findings of the ICTY relating to cultural genocide, the conference findings of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe relating to minorities, along with Lemkin's original reference to the term, will be used as frameworks for illuminating the extent and gravity of such crimes.
Cambridge University Press, 2021
Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick ... more Why were some, but not all the Arab mass social protests of 2011 accompanied by relatively quick and nonviolent outcomes in the direction of regime change, democracy, and social transformation? Why was a democratic transition limited to Tunisia, and why did region-wide democratization not occur? After the Arab Uprisings offers an explanatory framework to answer these central questions, based on four key themes: state and regime type, civil society, gender relations and women's mobilizations, and external influence. Applying these to seven cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, Valentine M. Moghadam and Shamiran Mako highlight the salience of domestic and external factors and forces, uniquely presenting women's legal status, social positions, and organizational capacity, along with the presence or absence of external intervention, as key elements in explaining the divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings, and extending the analysis to the present day.