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June 2020 Vol. 57 No. 10


Oxford University Press


The following review appeared in the June 2020 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.

Social & Behavioral Sciences
History, Geography & Area Studies - Middle East & North Africa

57-3426
DS119
MARC
El Kurd, Dana. Polarized and demobilized: legacies of authoritarianism in Palestine. Oxford, 2020 (c2019). 226p index ISBN 9780190095864, $60.00; ISBN 9780197524138 ebook, contact publisher for price.

El Kurd (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar) has produced a remarkable monograph that traces the effects of international involvement in Palestinian politics since the 1994 Oslo Accords. She aims to understand the reasons behind the massive post-1994 political shift in Palestine, as a previously well-organized and highly politicized society has given way to an authoritarian Palestinian Authority (PA) currently operating within a polarized and demobilized context. Drawing on an impressive mixed-method approach that includes interviews with elites, a data set on daily protests, and a survey experiment, El Kurd identifies the impact of foreign aid in post-1994 Palestinian politics. She convincingly argues that externally backed repression demobilized Palestinian society by strengthening authoritarianism, thereby breeding polarization and a lack of social cohesion. She traces her two-stage theory across five chapters, demonstrating how international involvement created a divergence between PA elites and the Palestinian society, while the PA’s growing authoritarianism exacerbated societal polarization and led to demobilization. The final chapter examines her framework’s applicability to the cases of Iraqi Kurdistan and Bahrain. A rigorous and impressively researched work, and a valuable and thought-provoking read for students of authoritarianism and Arab politics.

--G.Tsourapas, Harvard University

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty.