CLOSER – Party Systems and Social Cleavages in the Post-Ottoman Space of the MENA Region

Description:

CLOSER is a six-year ERC Synergy Grant project investigating party systems and social cleavages in the post-Ottoman space of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It addresses a major gap in our understanding of party politics in the region by exploring how social divisions shape political parties and party systems, while bringing new empirical material to a broader theory of social cleavages that has so far paid limited attention to the MENA.

CLOSER brings together an interdisciplinary team of historians, geographers, and political scientists. Using a comparative methodology, the project combines historical research, electoral data analysis, quantitative and qualitative text analysis, and other methods to examine the region’s political and social dynamics through six selected case studies: Tunisia, Egypt, the former British Mandate (today Israel, Palestine, and Jordan), Lebanon, Türkiye, and Kuwait. The project will test the explanatory power of the established model of four social cleavages: Religious/Secular, Workers/Owners, Center/Periphery, and Urban/Rural in the region, while extending the analysis beyond these four dimensions.

Main objectives:

• To test and extend cleavage theory beyond its traditional European focus by developing a comparative framework for understanding how social conflicts shape party politics and political party systems across democratic and authoritarian contexts in the MENA region.
• To provide fresh perspectives on contemporary political phenomena such as the rise of populism and the success of environmentalist parties, drawing on empirical evidence from the post-Ottoman space (1839–1876).

Expected impact:

Policy impact: The project’s findings, translated into policy recommendations, will improve understanding of MENA party systems and more generally speaking political systems, and strengthen the EU’s ability to anticipate and respond to political and social crises in the region, with implications for geopolitical relations, economic cooperation, or migration.

Academic impact: By bringing new empirical evidence from the MENA region into debates on party politics, electoral volatility and social cleavages, the project will contribute to ongoing theoretical discussions that have so far focused mostly on Western countries.

Societal impact: The project will provide insights into how political parties mediate between the state and diverse civil society actors, including religious institutions and grassroots movements, workers’ and professional unions, business groups, cultural institutions of linguistic minorities, agricultural cooperatives, and environmental associations.

Consortium:

• Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences – Corresponding Host Institution; Corresponding Principal Investigator: Clément Steuer, Ph.D.
• Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences – Host Institution; Principal Investigator: PhDr. Jan Zouplna, Ph.D.
• Université Libre de Bruxelles – Host Institution; Principal Investigator: Gilles Van Hamme, Ph.D.
• Institute of International Relations Prague – Additional Beneficiary

Links:

Project website

LinkedIn

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101224232 — CLOSER).

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.