What are the prospects for democracy in Syria? Is this the right question to ask? What do we need to better understand about Syria’s new leader, its civil society, and the challenges it faces in a new era for Syria? Join Rana Khoury, Daniel Neep, and Emily Scott for this special joint episode of the Localization in World Politics and People, Power, Politics podcasts.
Rana B. Khoury is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work explores conflict processes, civil action, and humanitarianism, particularly in the Middle East and Syria. She is the author of Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria’s War (Cornell University Press, 2025).
Daniel Neep is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He is interested in conflict and state-building, as well as processes of political, institutional, and social transformation in the Middle East, in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. He is the author of Syria: A Modern History (Basic Books, 2026).
Their contributions to the Journal of Democracy Special Section on “Syria After Assad” can be found here.
Host: Emily K. M. Scott
Producer: Temitayo I. Odeyemi and Angelina Rajic
Theme Music: Nesterouk, Courtesy of Shutterstock, Inc.
The Localization in World Politics podcast is supported by funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada “Insight Grant,” and is part of the “Norms in Motion” research project. To learn more about the “Norms in Motion” project, please follow @normsinmotion on Bluesky and/or Twitter.
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