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SUMMARY:Syria series: Humanitarianism\, state sovereignty and authoritaria
 n regime maintenance in the Syria conflict. - Reinoud Leenders\, King's Co
 llege London
DTSTART:20160509T150000Z
DTEND:20160509T160000Z
UID:TALK66106@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Adam Coutts
DESCRIPTION:This seminar aims to dissect the UN-led humanitarian aid effor
 t in Syria and the regime’s responses to it by joining together perspect
 ives on state sovereignty\, humanitarianism and authoritarian regime resil
 ience. \n\nThe seminar is based on a forthcoming paper by Reinoud Leenders
  and Kholoud Mansour. The paper argues that the Syrian conflict countered\
 , and perhaps aborted\, the emergence of contingent or diluted state sover
 eignty in the less developed world as it catapulted state sovereignty clai
 ms firmly back into the humanitarian realm through the regime’s projecti
 on of its categorical state sovereignty assertions onto and through the la
 rgest UN-led humanitarian assistance effort in decades. Accordingly\, the 
 Syrian regime obtained access to benefits and resources critical to its su
 rvival. These were accrued endogenously to the humanitarian aid\, and by w
 ay of the benefits associated with the regime’s reinforced claims on sta
 te sovereignty more generally. We maintain that the illusory claims of the
  Syrian regime about its qualities and achievements since 2011 no longer d
 raw in a large domestic audience now its naked and brutal repression of Sy
 rian citizens has become ubiquitous\; in its place the regime’s claim-ma
 king and consensual pretence has shifted to external audiences comprised o
 f UN humanitarian agencies and donor states as the latter reinforced and s
 ustained the Syrian regime’s empirically implausible claims on state sov
 ereignty.\n\nReinoud Leenders (PhD SOAS) is Reader in International Relati
 ons and Middle East Studies in the War Studies Department at King’s Coll
 ege London. His work deals with the political economy of corruption\, auth
 oritarian governance\, refugee issues\, and conflict in the Middle East in
 cluding Syria. He authored Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State Building 
 in Post-War Lebanon (Cornell University Press 2012) and co-edited (with St
 even Heydemann) Middle East Authoritarianism: Governance\, Contestation an
 d regime Resilience in Syria and Iran (Stanford University Press 2013). He
  formerly worked for the International Crisis Group based in Beirut\, and 
 for the University of Amsterdam.
LOCATION: Room SG2\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, C
 B3 9DT
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