Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Funktion:
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter & Emmy Noether Nachwuchsgruppenleiter
E-Mail:
benjamin.schuetze [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de
Telefon:
+49 (0)761 888 78 30
Twitter:
Forschungsbereiche:
Externe Intervention und 'Demokratieförderung', transregionale autoritäre Praktiken, wirtschaftliche Liberalisierung, Militärkollaboration, erneuerbare Energieprojekte
Regionale Schwerpunkte:
Naher und Mittlerer Osten
Ausbildung:
2011-2016 | PhD (without corrections), Prof. Tripp, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK (Feldforschungsaufenthalte in Jordanien, Brüssel und Washington DC) |
2009-2010 | MA Near & Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS, University of London, UK |
2006-2009 | BA Arabistik und Politikwissenschaft, Universität Leipzig |
2008-2009 | Auslandssemester an der American University of Beirut (AUB), Libanon |
Berufserfahrung / Forschungsfelder:
ab 2022 | Head of DFG-funded Emmy Noether Junior Research Group 'Renewable Energies, Renewed Authoritarianisms? The Political Economy of Solar Energy in the MENA' |
2021-2022 | Junior Fellow, Young Academy for Sustainability Research, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg |
2020-2021 | Arnold Bergstraesser Institut, Senior Researcher |
2016-2021 | Universität Freiburg, Lehrstuhl für Entwicklungstheorien und Entwicklungspolitik, Seminar für Wissenschaftliche Politik, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (postdoc) |
2013-2014 | SOAS, University of London, Department of Politics and International Studies, graduate teaching assistant |
2010-2011 | United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Crisis Prevention and Recovery Unit, Beirut / Libanon, Carlo-Schmid-fellow |
Projekte
DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group: Renewable Energies, Renewed Authoritarianisms? The Political Economy of Solar Energy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Thyssen foundation: Promises of Democratic Connection? The Politics of Transregional Energy Infrastructure Expansion
EUCOR seed money: Making Infrastructure Global? Design and Governance of Infrastructural Expansion in the Global South
Netzwerke
Research Network External Democracy Promotion EDP
FRIAS Young Academy for Sustainability Research
Sonstiges
Mitglied des International Editorial Advisory Boards von Middle East Critique
Mitglied des FRIAS Steuerungsgremiums
Co-speaker der DAVO Arbeitsgruppe Postkoloniale Perspektiven
Beratungstätigkeiten
(2022) Unlikely Companions of Energy Transitions? Opportunities and Challenges of Triangular Cooperation between the EU and the GCC in the MENA, policy report, EuroMeSCo, EU (co-authored with Eckart Woertz)
(2020) The Socio-Economic Effects of Solar Energy in the Middle East and North Africa, expert study, Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) Climate and Energy Project MENA
(2018-19) Politökonomische Kurzanalyse (PÖK) Jordanien (Neufassung 2018, Überarbeitung 2019), Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ).
Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen
Monographien:
(2019) Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and European Policy in Jordan (Cambridge University Press); reviewed in The Middle East Journal and Democratization.
Artikel & Buchkapitel (Auswahl):
(2023) "Prefiguring politics: transregional energy infrastructures as a lens for the study of authoritarian practices" (co-authored with Alke Jenss), Globalizations, online-first.
(2022) "Infrastructuring Authoritarian Power: Arab Gulf-Chinese Transregional Collaboration beyond the State" (co-authored with Julia Gurol), International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 231-249, open access.
(2021) "Rethinking Authoritarian Power: The Logistics Space and Authoritarian Practices in and between Secondary Port Cities of the Global South" (co-authored with Alke Jenss), International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 65, pp. 82-94, open-access.
(2020) "Essential Readings on 'Democracy Promotion'", Jadaliyya, Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI), July 21.
(2018) "Marketing parliament: The constitutive effects of external attempts at parliamentary strengthening in Jordan", Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 237-58.
(2017) "Simulating, marketing, and playing war: US-Jordanian military collaboration and the politics of commercial security", Security Dialogue, Vol. 48, No. 5, pp. 431-50.
(2017) "Jordan’s KASOTC: Privatising anti-terror training", Al Jazeera, July 17.
Publikationen
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Benjamin Schütze
Security in Context Blog
While transregional energy infrastructure projects like the Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC) and MedRing quite literally connect regions anew and envisage borderless energy flows, as we argue in an article recently published with Globalizations, these projects potentially prefigure politics: removing opportunities for democratic contestation, and fixing some specific energy futures in place and preventing others.
2023
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Gurol-Haller, Dr. Julia / Dr. Alke Jenss / Dr. Fabricio Rodríguez / Dr. Benjamin Schütze / Cita (Universität Freiburg), Wetterich
GLOBALIZATIONS
Research on authoritarian connections beyond the state requires a transregional practices approach. This special issue is an invitation to combine critical approaches to the study of authoritarian power by paying attention to spaces of contestation, authoritarian practices, as well as non-state actors and agency below and beyond the scale of the state. We focus on authoritarian practices and their spatial and temporal articulations in (1) transregional infrastructures, (2) global processes of capital accumulation and (3) nature-society relations.
2023
Beiträge zu Konferenzen
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
HUMSS Colloquium
Countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa are pursuing ambitious targets for a transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While this shift marks an important point of transition, the region’s political economy is still predominantly analysed through the prism of fossil fuels and state-centric approaches. Authoritarian power is widely understood as directly linked to the diffusion of oil revenues and the ways in which states use these to reinforce authoritarian rule.
2022
Beiträge zu Konferenzen
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Online seminar
Countries throughout the MENA are pursuing ambitious targets for a transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While the latter’s distributed nature offers a possibility for more democratic, inclusive and independent (energy) politics, transregionally connected authoritarian elites attempt to transform it into concentrated forms of political and economic power.
2022
Beiträge zu Konferenzen
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Ukraine@War monitor
2022
Beiträge zu Konferenzen
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Infrastructural power at global frontiers: prospects for conflict and peace
2022
Beiträge zu Konferenzen
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin / Dr. Cinzia Bianco / Prof. Dr. Natalie Koch / Dr. Rainer Quitzow / Prof. Dr. Eckart Woertz
Gulf hydrogen horizons
This webinar examines the recent interest in hydrogen energy among political and economic leaders in the oil and gas producing states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The region has seen many new “post-oil” energy investments over the past decade, but hydrogen energy has recently spiked in interest among Gulf oil and gas producers – especially among the state-owned hydrocarbon giants in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The event begins with a presentation from Prof.
2022
Beiträge zu Konferenzen
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
19 Minuten bei 19 Grad
2022
Berichte, Studien, Policy Paper, Workingpaper
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin / Prof. Eckart Woertz
How can triangular cooperation (TC) between the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the European Union (EU) contribute to energy transitions and development in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region? This report analyses the opportunities and risks of this cooperation constellation in several key sectors and countries.
2022
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
ORIENT
In order to support democratic ideals of socio-economic justice, public participation and representation, established efforts at "democracy promotion" in the MENA must be abandoned. The promotion of procedural democracy has proven to be reconcilable with socio-economic authoritarianisms and presents no challenge to authoritarian power structures.
2022
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin / Delphine Weil-Accardo
La "société civile" dans l'action transnationale au concret
2022
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin / Dr. Julia Gurol
International Quarterly for Asian Studies (IQAS)
10.11588/iqas.2022.2.14220
From collaboration on infrastructural megaprojects to vaccine development and digital surveillance techniques: Arab Gulf–Chinese relations in times of COVID-19 are complex and multi-layered. Nonetheless, established regime-centric, analytical approaches often fail to see this complexity by almost exclusively focusing on questions of collaboration between authoritarian regimes. Such approaches not only ignore the diversity of involved actors and the inherently transregional nature of contemporary authoritarian power, but also bear the risk of reproducing binary notions of authoritarianism vs.
2022
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin / Camille Abescat / Emma Empociello / Simon Mangon
Noria Research
Jordan has long been one of the highest recipients of US and European “democracy promotion” funding. Severe crackdowns on domestic opposition forces in 2020 and during the royal feud in April 2021, however, have revealed just how flimsy the regime’s commitments to democracy remain, and the extent to which the often celebrated stability of the country remains premised on coercion and oppression.
In his book Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Benjamin Schuetze investigates what external “democracy promoters” actually do in Jordan.
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin / Prof. Dana El Kurd
Democracy and Autocracy - The International Aftermath of the Arab Spring
The United States features prominently in the authors’ exchange between Dana El Kurd and Benjamin Schuetze. Dana El Kurd’s book, Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine,
is a study of international involvement in Palestinian politics after the Oslo Accords. She demonstrates
how the U.S. supported local elites whose interests diverged from those of the population. This led to
increased authoritarianism and the polarization and demobilization of Palestinian society.
2021
Monographie (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Appearing against the backdrop of Jordan's remarkable levels of authoritarian stability and accounting for Jordan being one of the highest recipients of US and European 'democracy promotion' funding, Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism examines what external 'democracy promoters' actually do when they promote democracy.
2021
Berichte, Studien, Policy Paper, Workingpaper
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
قدم هذا التقرير نظرة عامة على منشورات مختارة حول العلاقة بين السياسة والطاقة. ثم ناقش بعض
الطرق التي تعمل بها التقنيات والبنى التحتية المختلفة، وطرق التمويل، وأشكال المعرفة في التأثيرات
الاجتماعية والاقتصادية للطاقة الشمسية. أخيراً، قدمت أمثلة مختارة، من أجل إظهار اعتماد الطاقة
الشمسية على السياق.
2021
Berichte, Studien, Policy Paper, Workingpaper
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
This report discusses the socio-economic effects of solar energy in the Middle East and North Africa. It provides an overview over select literature on the energy-politics nexus and then discusses some of the ways in which different technologies and infrastructures, modes of financing, and forms of knowledge mediate solar energy’s socio-economic effects. Finally, it presents select empirical snapshots, in order to demonstrate solar energy’s context-dependence.
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Benjamin Schütze
International Studies Quarterly
https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa083
How to rethink authoritarian power in ways that better account for authoritarian connections beyond nation-state boundaries? By reconceptualizing the context in which to analyze authoritarian power, we bring to light transregional authoritarian connections between the secondary port cities Aqaba/Jordan and Buenaventura/Colombia.
2021
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
fifteeneightyfour, the blog of Cambridge University Press
While Jordan is one of the main targets of US and European attempts at ‘democracy promotion’, it also demonstrates a remarkably stable authoritarian system. Existing literature on ‘democracy promotion’ however mostly fails to see a connection between authoritarian reinforcement and external efforts at moral intervention. The dominant approaches to the study of ‘democracy promotion’ widely suffer from a narrow focus on developing policy recommendations and/or from a lack of empirical research.
2020
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Jadaliyya
Brief summary and presentation of 'Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and European Policy in Jordan' (CUP, 2019).
2020
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Jadaliyya, Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI)
External attempts at “democracy promotion” are one of the defining features of global liberalism. A core principle guiding this Essential Reading is that the topic at hand needs to be unequivocally situated against the backdrop of a critical analysis of liberal thought. A main shortcoming of much of the mainstream literature on “democracy promotion” is the tendency to ignore related fundamental questions.
2020
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Benjamin Schütze
International Studies Quarterly
10.1093/isq/sqaa083
How to rethink authoritarian power in ways that better account for authoritarian connections beyond nation-state boundaries? By reconceptualizing the context in which to analyze authoritarian power, we bring to light transregional authoritarian connections between the secondary port cities Aqaba/Jordan and Buenaventura/Colombia.
2020
Monographie (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Appearing against the backdrop of Jordan's remarkable levels of authoritarian stability and accounting for Jordan being one of the highest recipients of US and European 'democracy promotion' funding, Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism examines what external 'democracy promoters' actually do when they promote democracy.
2019
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
iz3w
2019
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Schütze, Dr. Benjamin
Jadaliyya
Jordan currently ranks among the highest recipients of US foreign aid worldwide, both in absolute terms and particularly so on a per capita basis. Besides military and economic support, Jordan has over the past years also been the target of a whole plethora of US democracy-promotion interventions. As a result, there are probably only a few Jordanian state institutions that have not in one way or another been the target of external attempts at some form of capacity building and institutional engineering.
2018