Episode 32: Joining us in this episode to talk about local politics and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili. Jen is the Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets and Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2020, Jen's book "Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan," received the Best Book Award in Social Sciences by the Central Eurasian Studies Society. Her second book, "Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan" (with Ilia Murtazashvili), was published in September 2021 with Cambridge University Press. In addition, Jennifer has also advised the United States Agency for International Development, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, the World Bank, the US Department of Defense, the United Nations Development Program, and UNICEF. Together with host Ellen Lust, Jen discusses how the Talibans have been received in Afghanistan after their takeover in August 2021. What has changed since the former Taliban rule? And how much do we really know?

Additional Work:

“Coercive Capacity, Land Reform and Political Order in Afghanistan," with Ilia Murtazashvili. Central Asian Survey 36, no. 2 (2017): 212–30.

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Episode 28: This month, we talk to Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, Assistant Professor of Politics and Global Studies at the University of Virginia. Gabrielle’s research examines citizenship practices and local governance, with a regional focus on India. In this episode, we discuss the problems that citizens face in Northern rural India, a setting noted for variable public administration and often callous treatment of citizens by officials.

Selected work: Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle.(2021). "Great Expectations, Great Grievances: The Politics of Citizens’ Complaints in India." Comparative Politics.

Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle. (2018). "Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle. (2017). "The Pursuit of Social Welfare - Citizen Claim-Making in Rural India." World Politics.

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Episode 24: This month, we talk to Intissar Kherigi, a Ph.D. student at Sciences Po Paris and GLD Collaborating Researcher, about Tunisia’s 2015-17 municipal boundary reforms. After the Arab uprisings in 2011, Tunisia saw changes in local governance and the adoption of a new constitution mandating the decentralization of power, leading the government to reorganize the country's municipal boundaries. Intissar analyses the ways in which local populations are challenging central state-driven municipal boundary reforms and the implications for local governance. She situates this within the historical processes of boundary formation in modern Tunisia and highlights the difficulties in breaking with colonial legacies.

Selected work: Kherigi, Intissar. (2021). "Municipal Boundaries and the Politics of Space in Tunisia," The Program on Governance and Local Development Working Paper No. 38, University of Gothenburg.

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Episode 23: This month we talk to GLD's Senior Research Fellow Kristen Kao about her work on post-conflict reconciliation in Iraq. Kristen tells us about her a study on the drivers of forgiveness versus revenge among diverse groups in Iraq and how her research could help promote long-term peace. Kristen Kao is a Senior Research Fellow with the Program on Governance and Local Development (GLD) at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a PhD and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and is an expert in survey methodology and experimental design in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa contexts.

Selected work: Kao, Kristen and Revkin, Mara. (2019). "How the Iraqi crackdown on the Islamic State may actually increase support for the Islamic State," The Washington Post Monkey Cage. Kao, Kristen and Revkin, Mara Redlich. (2018). “To punish or to pardon?” The Program on Governance and Local Development Working Paper No. 17, University of Gothenburg

Selected research projects: From Revenge to Forgiveness: Strengthening Durable Peace in Post-Conflict Societies.

To Punish or to Pardon? Attitudes Towards Justice and Reintegration for Europeans who Cooperated with the Islamic State.

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