664 PS • July 2017 © American Political Science Association, 2017 doi:10.1017/S104909651700035X ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ POLITICS SYMPOSIUM International Political Economy and the New Middle East Erin A. Snider, Texas A&M University ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Q uestions about the economy were undeniably at the heart of the Arab uprisings. The clearest and most iconic expression of this was relayed in chants demanding “bread, freedom, and social justice” that echoed throughout public squares in the Arab world in 2011. For many in the region, this expression reflected deep frustration with declining living standards, dimin- ished opportunity, corruption, and—ultimately—the organiza- tion of the economy by authoritarian regimes. In the months thereafter, many scholars turned their attention toward understanding how economics mattered in the uprisings, raising fascinating questions about the interplay of processes linking the region’s economies with that of the international: the effects of globalization, changes in commodity prices, per- ceptions of inequality, the role of remittances, and the effects of neoliberal reform policies, among others. Inquiries into economic causes also opened a door to challenging questions about the motivations and role of international and regional actors in aiding and, in some cases, containing the political transitions that would follow. The uprisings may have represented a euphoric moment for citizens in the region but, for others, it represented a rupture and threat to their respective interests in the existing regional order. Expressions of support for the uprisings from donor governments and organizations often were suffused with apprehension about the best way to assist emerging and, in some cases, unknown political actors in an enormously fluid political environment. For other actors, that apprehension reflected an explicit fear that new political forces might jeopard- ize their own commercial and strategic interests in the region. Six years have passed since the uprisings began and it is striking to note how little these questions about the econ- omy and the structure of economic power in the region are discussed by scholars and analysts. The economic centrality of the uprisings was largely ignored and, in some respects, misunderstood by the literature on international political economy (IPE), the subdiscipline of international relations (IR) concerned with questions of power and wealth in the international system. IPE as a field has evolved considerably in the last three decades, embracing different approaches to explore the interaction between politics and economics, states and markets, globalization, multilateral institutions and cor- porations, and trade, among others. Yet, whereas foundational works in IPE enhanced our understanding of dimensions of the global economy, its engagement with the Middle East has been limited. The region’s absence from the conversation of mainstream IPE is particularly striking since 2011. Why does this matter? The consequence of this exclusion is ultimately an incomplete view of the global economy that impairs our ability to understand the complex political and economic changes currently unfolding in the region. The path of recent transitions in the Middle East raises critical questions about the nature of shifting power structures and their relationship to divergent outcomes in the region. What is the relationship between uprisings in the region and the economic interests of domestic, regional, and international actors? How have economic demands by different actors shaped political outcomes? If economic grievances were a driving force behind the uprisings, why have international donors and transitional governments been reticent to adopt more aggressive responses to redress socioeconomic issues? What influence have regional and international pressures had on the form of domestic transformations (or reversals) that have occurred thus far? These questions broadly capture critical issues of polit- ical economy that gave rise to the uprisings and that now shape the direction of transitions in the region. I argue that the questions raised by the uprisings should fundamentally reshape how we think about IPE, by attuning our attention to both how we study the economy and wrestling with contested ideas about the economy that often are elided in the main- stream IPE literature. Rethinking IPE through the lens of the uprisings also should push scholars to devote greater atten- tion to understanding how pressure from international and regional actors impacts domestic political economies in the region—a point echoed by other scholars in this symposium and rarely engaged by mainstream IPE (see Bush, Hazbun, and Salloukh in this issue). The following sections explore reasons for the omission of the Middle East from mainstream IPE and discuss how engaging developments in the region and the contributions of Middle East scholars would enhance the study of both IPE and Middle East political economy. The article concludes with thoughts on promising areas for convergence in IPE theory and Middle East studies. DISCIPLINARY DIVISIONS Contributors to a special issue of the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) in 2009 on the state of IPE provided insight into the relative absence of the Middle East from the field. A survey of IPE scholars in the United States found that more were “likely to believe East Asia is strategically impor- tant today compared to non-IPE people, 23% to 17%, while 6% fewer IPE scholars believe that the Middle East is the most strategically important region today” (Maliniak and Tierney