In collaboration with Birzeit University
October 2015 - September 2017
The goal of this partnership between Birzeit University and LSE is to enhance political economy teaching and research in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). This will be carried out in two ways. The first involves exchange teaching between LSE and Birzeit University. The second involves a research project that will fill an important gap in knowledge about the political economy of the oPt, and feed into teaching on political economy research methods.
The research project will critically examine the role of the Palestinian business elite in the political economy of the occupied West Bank since the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994. This is based on the observation that influential business groups have become increasingly central to understanding a wide range of issues associated with the current state of affairs in the oPt, Israeli-Palestinian relations, as well as internal Palestinian dynamics and its dependency on regional and international configurations.
The rising influence of certain business actors can be seen in multiple ways ranging from the restructuring of the PA political elite away from the old political parties towards businessmen and pro-business technocrats, being frequent guests of international media outlets, to being active attendees of international peace initiatives, and involvement in formulating and presenting peace initiatives at the international level.
This research has four key objectives.:
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To examine the ways in which certain economic actors and business interest groups have been influencing PA policies and decision-making processes since its establishment in 1994. This includes mapping Palestinian business lobbies.
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To explore how, and with what impact, Palestinian capital is linked and integrated into Israeli capital (including joint business ventures and joint economic forums).
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To analyse the relationship between Palestinian business groups and regional capitalists. Understanding the character of Palestinian capital requires analysis of the diasporic origin of the Palestinian business elite and the complex network of capital accumulation on regional and international levels.
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To analyse the influence and impact of international donor aid on the development of Palestinian capitalism in the West Bank. Billions of dollars of donor aid has flooded the West Bank – and has supported certain Palestinian business elites/ groups in pursuit of advancing a particular form of capitalism.
The project will not research the changes that have taken place in the other occupied Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem and Gaza – because these areas have been subjected to different dynamics and thus a different type of political economy (that requires separate analyses).
Project Activities
In April 2016 Dr Jason Hickel in the Anthropology department at LSE travelled to Birzeit University for the first of a series of teaching visits organising through the collaboration project. During his trip, Dr Hickel led workshops for MA and PhD students at Birzeit University and gave two public lectures.
Research Team
Dr Mandy Turner is Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and director of the Kenyon Institute (Council for British Research in the Levant) in East Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the political economy of war-torn societies with a country focus on the occupied Palestinian territory, and she has published widely on this topic. Her most recent book is The Politics of International Intervention: The Tyranny of Peace (co-edited with Florian Kühn), Routledge, 2016.
Dr Tariq Dana is the director of the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies and a faculty member at the MA program in International Studies, where he teaches courses on global political economy. He is also a Policy Advisor at the Palestinian Policy Network (al-Shabaka).
Dana Erekat is a Research Fellow at the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies at Birzeit University. Her research focuses on development and planning in conflict areas. She previously served as Head of Aid Management and Senior Advisor to the Minister of Planning in Palestine, and as a consultant for the private sector and the World Bank. She holds a Master’s degree in City Planning from MIT and a B.A. in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley.