Below I have listed my research interests. I do not view them as separate spheres, though we may study them in this fashion in order to gain analytical and policy traction. It can be difficult, for example, to understand the international relations of the Middle East without some understanding of the domestic developments and conditions within the individual countries of the region.
I am happy to supervise students who work in any of these areas.
- Middle East politics: I concentrate in particular on the political and security relations of regional countries. In this context, I seek to understand the role that identity plays in bilateral and multilateral relations among regional countries. The two countries that I focus most on are Israel and Turkey. Stemming from my research on the latter, I also study the energy politics of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia and the Caucasus.
- Foreign policy analysis (FPA): As a subset of International Relations, my work in FPA has concentrated on the role of identity and of emotions in foreign policy decision-making; how this influences a state’s foreign policy; and the impact this can have on regional and global interactions. This has enhanced my interest in political psychology, and the role that cognitive and emotional processes of individuals have on world politics.
- International Relations (IR): In this broader field, I work on international security in its various manifestations–particularly new definitions and understandings of security (such as human security)–and the role of identity on global interactions.
I should add here that I strongly believe that academic research should be used for more than just answering theoretical questions; that it should be used to serve a higher purpose, whether that is for resolving global problems (e.g., poverty, environmental degradation, etc), improving inter-human relationships, contributing to the formation of one’s country’s public or foreign policy, and so on.
My current research:
Based on my research interests, I am currently engaged in six projects.
1. The impact of ethnic communities on Canadian foreign policy.
This is a multi-stage project, in which I explore the activities and influence that organized ethnic communities can and do have on Canadian foreign policy. There has been little done on this issue since the mid-1990s, while most past studies are problematic on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Because they draw on evidence that is anecdotal, circumstantial, or too narrow, and because their theoretical frameworks tend to lack clearly defined variables and rigor, they have been led to misleading or even inaccurate understanding of the conditions under which communal groups can influence the foreign policymaking process.
This problem has been enhanced by the intensifying debate in the United States on the influence of the Jewish community on American foreign policy, which has trickled to some extent into Canada. This clouds our understanding of the foreign policymaking process, can lead to a misinformed public debate about a country’s foreign policy, and can hamper the formulation of effective policies. I am interested in expanding our understanding of this issue through a more rigorous theoretical analysis and more complete empirical evidence.
2. The confluence between identity and political actors in the making of Canadian policymaking. (With Chris Anderson.)
This builds on the previous project, but I expand it here to examine the role of ethnic communities in shaping Canadian policy across a range of foreign and domestic policy issues.
3. The significance of emotion in foreign policymaking.
Here I examine the role that these processes can play in decision-making. Emotions have long been ignored in both IR and FPA. As they have come to play a more central role in studies by psychologists, neural scientists, and decision researchers, so have IR scholars become more interested in them–but large gaps remain in our knowledge and understanding of these processes. My case studies are Israeli foreign policy (the decision to pursue the Oslo Accords) and Turkish foreign policy (the decision by the Islamist government in 2002 to actively lobby for EU membership).
As part of this research, I also explore the close connection between Constructivism, as IR theory, and emotions. The focus by Constructivists on the social world has obscured to some extent the role that emotions play as building blocks in this social world. I argue that Constructivism in fact relies heavily on emotions in its conceptual frameworks, but this is not explicitly acknowledged in theory development and empirical studies.
4. Israeli identity and the settlement enterprise. (With Mira Sucharov.)
This is part of my work on identity and policymaking. Here we are interested in understanding the Israeli settlement project, and specifically why some settlements are considered acceptable by Israelis, and some are considered illegal and unacceptable. We connect different literatures (for example, between identity and urban space) to better understand how such norms are created.
5. Constructing Victimhood in IR. (With Tami Amanda Jacoby.)
We explore here processes of victimization in international conflicts. Our understanding of victimization (who is a victim and how is one labeled as a victim) is under-developed in IR. This is because most of the literature focuses on issues of justice, reconciliation, and so on in the context of ethnic conflicts and civil wars. But we do not have a good understanding of these processes when both (or more) actors in an inter-state conflict claim victimhood. Given the highly relevant policy implications of such claims (e.g., who “deserves” more support over the other), a better grasp of victimization is necessary.
6. Learning a Palestinian state: Changing ideas among Israeli prime ministers. (With Guy Ziv.)
In this paper, we examine the literature on learning and on foreign policy change. We compare insights gleaned from it to explain the cases of Israeli leaders’ support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. This study is appropriate given the changes different Israeli leaders have made since Yitzhak Rabin signed the 1993 Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Every Israeli prime minister has ended his opposition to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet some leaders appear to have reached similar conclusions in very different ways. Some seem to have undergone genuine changes in beliefs, while others seem not to have learned, but rather were pushed to alter their policies due to domestic or international forces. How do we know when a given process occurs? Understanding such variation in leaders’ policy reorientation is important for understanding the timing of, and the extent to which, a leader changes her core policy position.
7. Turkey as a regional, not middle power.
There is considerable confusion regarding the role and influence of Turkey in regional affairs. It is frequently referred to as both a middle and a regional power. But these are two different identities, with different policy implications. I argue that Turkey is not a middle power, because its role in larger international dynamics and decisions is minimal. But it is a regional power, in that given its resources and interests, it can and does play an important role in politics of its surrounding regions. The distinction between the two is important, since they mean and call for different policies.
8. The continuing uniqueness of Israel in IR theory development.
In the development of IR theory, Israel has almost never been used as a test case, or a case study on which to build theoretical observations. It is normally considered too unique among the countries of the world to be effective enough to do so. I argue that this uniqueness is largely assumed, rather than real, and that there are several directions one could take to incorporate Israel as a case study in theory development.