Erin Snider
Assistant Professor
Department of International Affairs
Bush School of Government and Public Service
As a scholar of politics, Erin Snider conducts research on the international and comparative politics of the Middle East, foreign assistance, the political economy of development, and democratization.
The Arts & Humanities Fellowship will allow Snider to study the economic dimensions of the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world—both its antecedents and those aspects now shaping the trajectory of political transitions in that region. Located at the intersection of political economy, international relations, and fiscal sociology, this project will investigate the relationship between uprisings in the region and the economic interests of domestic and international actors.
Questions about the economy and the structure of economic power remain relatively unexplored by scholars in the wake of the uprisings. The economic sphere thus represents a new arena of contestation between emergent political actors in the region and traditional patrons and a rich area in which to consider questions of power, security, and legitimacy emerging from the Arab uprisings.
The fellowship will support Snider’s fieldwork in the Middle East and contribute to a new book project examining the political economy of the Arab Spring: Engineering Transition: The Political Economy of Aid and Security in the New Middle East.