Summer Programming Note

It's been a while since I've updated here, partly because relatively little new has happened in Bahrain (though Tuesday's parliamentary vote on the contested 2013-14 budget could get interesting) and partly because I've been working to finish several projects--including for a book on Bahrain based on my dissertation--before leaving for summer vacation in a week.  This will be my first time returning to the U.S. in about two years, so posts will likely be few and far between until late August.

In the meantime, I am eagerly awaiting the release of several publications long in the making, including an article on civic engagement in Qatar and another on Bahrain in the Journal of Arabian Studies.  Then, in late summer or early fall will finally appear the edited volume on Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf that I've mentioned before.  The Bahrain piece in particular, due out in just a few days, should make for some good fun.

I'll end for now by noting a recent POMEPS Conversation with Mark Tessler, my dissertation chair at the University of Michigan and one-half of the brains behind the ongoing Arab Barometer survey project of which my 2009 Bahrain study forms a part.  The video interview, conducted by Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch, addresses "the evolution of Arab public opinion research," and I think offers a good explanation of the usefulness of individual-level survey data in examining policy as well as more theoretical questions of interest to political scientists and students of the Middle East.

Update: A timely paper by Brooking's Richard McDaniel on the United States' need for a "Plan B" for strategic military access to the Gulf if its naval presence in Bahrain ultimately becomes untenable.