Nathan J. Brown

• PhD
• Professor at George Washington University

Book review

Israel's military victories have left all of its borders unsettled and ongoing conflict. The country's security now hinges on a gamble that those who can challenge Israel will not care enough to do so, and those who care enough to change things will not be able to. That strategy seems likely to work well — until it does not. New Lines Magazine: htt...

An abandoned peace process, increasingly severe Israeli restrictions on Gaza, and divided Palestinian leadership set the stage for the October 2023 surprise attack by Hamas. The devastating Israeli response has left much of the territory in ruins and decimated Hamas’s top ranks, while setting off a wider regional war involving Hezbollah, Lebanon, a...

The book is open access and may be downloaded (or purchased: here: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/n870zt44s _____________________. SUMMARY OF THE BOOK: Authoritarianism seems to be everywhere in the political world—even the definition of authoritarianism as any form of non-democratic governance has grown very broad. Attempts to explain...

The term “Israeli Islam” may sound like an oxymoron, but Islam is present in Israeli society—and inside the Israeli state. Just under one-fifth of Israelis are registered by the state as Muslims; Muhammad has been the most common name for Israeli babies for years. And a series of state structures oversees, supports, administers, monitors, and polic...

Palestinians are still here, but their institutions have decayed much more than diplomats realize. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/06/state-of-palestine-leadership-future?lang=en

f the two past suspensions are a guide, there is scant reason to have faith in the idea that abandoning Kuwait’s constitution is the best way to save it.

Despite the current fragmentation in leadership, Palestine could present itself as a national community under a set of authoritative institutions. https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/04/08/why-interim-constitution-could-help-palestine-domestic-and-international-payoffs-pub-92134

https://www.mei.edu/publications/reinventing-square-wheel-can-revitalized-palestinian-authority-lead-way-better-day The “revitalization” of the Palestinian Authority, if limited to “strengthening” the cabinet and making minor improvements in governance, will ensure that Gaza will remain a “super camp” and a source of recurring/persistent instabili...

As the war continues, deterioration at the level of governance, security, and public order will likely be deepened by the absence of a political horizon, diplomatic process, or future prospects: https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/03/there-might-be-no-day-after-in-gaza-pub-90920

This chapter covers how the one state reality has become insinuated into daily and political Palestinian life. Palestinian nationalism revolves around realizing a Palestinian nationalist vision in the form of a state instead of just about Israel. Over the past century, Palestinians have built a variety of national institutions designed to speak for...

This chapter discusses the state reality of Israel/Palestine. It offers an alternative history of Israel/Palestine that focuses on how parties debated alternative visions. After World War I, Palestine became a political unit with a future that was yet to be determined. Thus, Israel/Palestine is in a state of becoming something else due to the conte...

Die Zweistaatendiplomatie mit Israel und Palästina ist 30 Jahre nach dem Oslo-Abkommen am Ende. Immerhin wird über die traurige Realität am Ort des Geschehens gesprochen. https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-08/israel-palaestina-regierung-ein-staat-realitaet

Judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation has moved in recent decades from being the exception to the rule among Arab states. Not only has it spread, but contests about adjudication of constitutional disputes have become much more prominent and political reform efforts have sometimes included a great emphasis on establishing or streng...

https://www.972mag.com/antisemitism-american-jews-israel-ihra/ For years U.S. Jewish leaders tried to center diaspora identity around Israel. But the battle to redefine antisemitism shows it is no longer working. By Nathan J. Brown and Daniel Nerenberg

As expected, our article generated strong feelings and deep disagreements. We argued that a one-state reality already exists; that it is akin to apartheid; that the invocation of an improbable two-state solution now merely serves as a smokescreen to obscure this reality; that U.S. policy has uniquely enabled the entrenchment of a single state; and...

A one-state arrangement in Israel/Palestine is not a future possibility; it already exists, no matter what anyone thinks. Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, one state controls the entry and exit of people and goods, oversees security, and has the capacity to impose its decisions, laws, and policies on millions of people without the...

This book argues that a one state reality already predominates in the territories controlled by the state of Israel. The book shows that starting with the one state reality rather than hoping for a two state solution reshapes how we regard the conflict, what we consider acceptable and unacceptable solutions, and how we discuss difficult normative q...

The One State Reality argues that a one state reality already predominates in the territories controlled by the state of Israel. The editors show that starting with the one state reality rather than hoping for a two state solution reshapes how we regard the conflict, what we consider acceptable and unacceptable solutions, and how we discuss difficu...

https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/88352 “Apartheid” is used emotionally when it comes to treatment of Palestinians, but increasingly it also has analytical usefulness.

https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Brown_et_al_Education_Reform.pdf This paper does not argue for a single path for eucational reform, but it seeks to shift the focus. Yes, there is a need for reform. Yes, there are some general directions that should be followed. But there is no single formula that has been discovered to bring this about, nor on...

Diwan https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/87535

Tunisia’s president has just prepared a new constitution, whose principal aim is to enhance his own authority. https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/87496

The field of family or “personal status” law is technical in some ways (precise legal provisions for guardianship or for registering divorces, for instance) but the details on such matters pack tremendous punch. https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/07/12/battle-over-family-law-in-egypt-shows-only-personal-can-be-political-and-then-only-so-far-pub-87...

Constitutionalism offers the prospect of delivering both liberal and democratic politics—the first by protecting rights in a manner that allows people to come together to pursue common benefits and purposes; the latter by distributing power to members of the People, many of whom are otherwise powerless. But actual constitutional processes sometimes...

Usaama al-Azami’s Islam and the Arab Revolutions: The Ulama Between Democracy and Autocracy is a study of how some very prominent religious scholars reacted to the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and its tumultuous aftermath—and how they reacted to each other. While ‘Islam’ is the first word in the book’s title, and while the figures studied attained p...

https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/from-political-islam-to-the-politics-of-islam/

Lumbering State, Restless Society offers a comprehensive and compelling understanding of modern Egypt. Nathan J. Brown, Shimaa Hatab, and Amr Adly guide readers through crucial developments in Egyptian politics, society, and economics from the middle of the twentieth century through the present. Integrating diverse perspectives and areas of experti...

https://www.mei.edu/publications/going-back-school-palestinian-textbooks

The understanding of law in the Middle East requires not simply different disciplinary perspectives but bringing disciplines into dialogue with each other. It also requires analysis that crosses historical periods in order to understand legal systems as ones that develop over time based on longstanding traditions and earlier transformations, not si...

In Egypt, coronavirus response efforts were led by the prime minister and other technocrats. What does this change mean for Egypt—and how long will it last? https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/07/23/how-much-will-pandemic-change-egyptian-governance-and-for-how-long-pub-82353

https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/05/28/steering-wide-egyptian-state-ideology-or-administration-pub-81924. The Egyptian regime is experimenting with a new approach to ensure that emerging leaders understand and are loyal to the state's mission as the current, security-minded regime defines it. The National Training Academy (NTA) and affiliated you...

As the new coronavirus and its economic and political consequences ripple cross the Arab world, Arab regimes are facing an extraordinary and possibly existential test. Their public health capacities may be strained but so too will their economic resources and coercive institutions. Moral suasion will grow increasingly important, even in the most re...

Egypt’s religious institutions are taking serious, but also uncertain, steps to fight the coronavirus pandemic. In Diwan, Carnegie Endowment Middle East Center blog

In Egypt today there is little room for politics on issues in which the regime has staked out clear positions or that are deemed to be connected to security. But there is still room for vigorous debate over matters that might seem mundane, but are still consequential for Egyptians, such as personal-status law. When it comes to marriage, divorce, an...

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of new research on constitution making. Comparative Constitution Making provides an up-to-date overview of this rapidly expanding field. Abstract Constitutions in the Arab world often attract attention for their religious clauses. But proclamations of official religion are not unusual. And more generally, re...

What should we be paying attention to now that Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy seems so unworthy of attention? Observers, including myself, have argued for some time that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has to be understood through the lens of long-term trends in demography and sociology rather than short-term diplomacy. This view is g...

The Trump administration’s economic vision for Palestinians is both breathless and blind. In Diwan, Carnegie Endowment Middle East Center blog

Issue Section: Book Reviews Law and Revolution is an ambitious work whose contributions, though real, do not match its ambitions. The book, the winner of the inaugural ICONS book prize in 2018, aims high indeed: Sultany targets those who have approached the largest questions that social theory, political philosophy, and legal thought have wrestled...

Modern Islamic political thought has grappled with the nature of state authority by using and reshaping the tools of classical legal and political thought. That is a tradition that gives rich guidance on what a ruler should and should not do, but it gives much less certain guidance (and all but renders invisible) the questions of administration and...

Palestinian-Israeli dynamics today are being driven more by sociology and demography than by diplomacy

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3346372 - Modern Islamic political thought has grappled with the nature of state authority by using and reshaping the tools of classical legal and political thought. That is a tradition that gives rich guidance on what a ruler should and should not do, but it gives much less certain guidance (and...

Arab constitutions contain some clauses that guarantee religious freedom but others that seem to allow state authorities to determine the way that religion is practised. Such apparently contradictory constitutional clauses are products of a set of historical circumstances and political realities that render their overall effect very coherent. Relig...

On the effect of the 2019 amendments to the Egyptian Constitution

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/18/heres-what-the-dissolution-of-the-legislative-council-means-for-the-future-of-palestinian-governance/?utm_term=.1c5d7428a2f6

Nathan Brown looks at the constitutions that were drafted in Arab countries after 2011 through the prism of the ‘new constitutionalism’, which emphasizes the need for democratic and participatory processes and has recently gained traction among constitutionalists. Instead of focusing on the actual texts that were produced, Brown looks at the peculi...

Analysis of constitution writing in the Arab world in the wake of the 2011 uprisings

An arcane dispute between Egypt's president and Al­Azhar is really about moral leadership in society.

What Is Political Islam. By Jocelyne Cesari. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2018. vii + 232 pp. $65.00 cloth - Volume 11 Issue 3 - Nathan J. Brown

While other Palestinian institutions are in crisis, Hamas has maintained its integrity and survived political turmoil. But to capitalize on this, it will need to revise its strategy. In 2017, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas made news by taking three major steps that did not involve firing a single shot: it issued a new charter; it elected a ne...

How well does the "electoral model" for mobilizing opposition travel? And what happens when the model is emulated without an election to serve as a focal point? This article examines the political mobilization that led to the fall of non-democratic leaders in the so-called "electoral model" countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, U...

The intensity of the international controversy over Palestinian textbooks has worked to mask a subtle domestic contest among Palestinians over the content of the curriculum and—even more subtly—over prevailing pedagogy. A coalition of educational reformers emerged in the 1990s that sought to develop a new sense of citizenship, a democratic ethos in...

The most significant development is not in the occupation itself but in the collapse of all attempts to devise alternatives.

The recent arrests of several Saudi political figures reinforce long­standing trends toward heightened centralization and more restive public discourse in the kingdom.

What role do and should constitutions play in mitigating intense disagreements over the religious character of a state? And what kind of constitutional solutions might reconcile democracy with the type of religious demands raised in contemporary democratising or democratic states? Tensions over religion-state relations are gaining increasing salien...

In a constitutional rupture, when the fundamental rules of political life are uncertain, it is unlikely that constitutional courts could play a major role. Yet in some remarkable cases, such courts transform into highly interventionist political actors, even achieving some success. This paper provides a series of short case studies highlighting Hun...

Do public policy debates between activists from different ideological camps in a nondemocratic and illiberal system bridge social divisions or deepen them? Focusing on three controversies regarding family law in Jordan, we argue that activist groups rarely talk to each other in public, and when they do, their discourses aim primarily at mobilizing...

European diplomacy should forge an international consensus that encourages legal frameworks over the use of force.