04.07.2016

Departmental seminar: "Saudi-intervention and de-democratisation in Bahrain"

Marc Jones at Wednesday 6 July 4-6 pm, IfP, room 124

Speaker: Dr Marc Jones, <link internal-link internal link in current>postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen.

This presentation examines the challenges to democratization in Bahrain, with a particular focus on how the recent 2011 Uprising has resulted in a deepening of authoritarianism. It is argued that the recent unrest has brought into sharp relief the absence of “quality” democracy in Bahrain, and that any form of democratic transition is dependent on the will of a conservative Al Khalifa-Saudi nexus. While the pro-democracy movement may have prompted minor concessions on the part of the government, the extent of the popular mobilization triggered the Al Khalifa regime’s authoritarian reflex, and they have reacted to throttle the Uprising by putting in place legislative, ideological, and political barriers to reform, which points not only to a current de-democratization, but also a lack of future democratization.

Marc Jones is a Teach at Tübingen postdoctoral fellow since April 2016. He holds an MSc in Arabic and Arab World Studies and completed his PhD in 2016 at Durham University, where he wrote on the history of political repression in Bahrain. Marc has lived extensively in the Middle East, including Bahrain, Sudan, and Syria. He is the editor with Ala'a Shehabi of Bahrain's Uprising: Resistance and Repression in The Gulf (published by Zed Books in 2015) and is also a member of the investigative and transparency NGO Bahrain Watch.