Public Opinion in MENA: Trade-offs Across Governance, Foreign Policy, and Security

This workshop is co-sponsored with The Middle East Council on Global Affairs, the Arab Barometer, and Princeton University.

The point of contact for this workshop for questions and inquiries is Dr. Yasmina Abouzzohour.

Workshop Concept:

Public opinion in the Middle East and North Africa plays a central role in how citizens make sense of change and signal what they are willing to accept from policies and governments. As decision-makers across the region pursue economic reforms, navigate shifting alliances, and respond to environmental and security pressures, public attitudes reveal how policies are judged—by whom, on what terms, and with what consequences. This workshop places those attitudes at the core of comparative inquiry across three domains that citizens experience simultaneously: governance, international relations, and security, where public opinion registers how citizens assess policy trade-offs in real time.

In governance, everyday judgments hinge on visible decisions—such as energy and food pricing, taxation and fees, targeted transfers, employment policies, and service delivery—and are shaped by perceptions of fairness, clarity about who gains and who pays, and performance against prior commitments. In international relations, citizens assess whether foreign policy realignments, sanctions and their relief, and cross-border economic projects enhance life chances or compromise valued principles, evaluating the credibility of promised benefits and the transparency of costs in terms of prices, jobs, mobility, and national standing. In security, perceptions of immediate threat can raise tolerance for inconvenience or fiscal reallocation, while views on defense priorities, policing, borders, demobilization, reintegration, and the handling of displacement reveal how people balance safety, rights, and costs.

Bringing the three domains together reflects how policy is encountered as measures are announced and implemented. Governments seldom move one lever in isolation; citizens compare policies across different areas as they are announced and implemented. A revenue measure linked to a clearly explained program that people can see and understand may be perceived differently from the same measure launched alone. An external agreement that delivers tangible jobs or price relief can alter views of domestic reform, while a diplomatic crisis can make even well-designed measures harder to accept. Security events can either create space for change or close it off.

A region-wide lens is essential. North African food and fuel sensitivities, levies and fees in large urban labor markets, sanctions and mobility constraints in the Levant, and economic transition and labor-market reforms across the Gulf create different starting points for opinion. Yet common mechanisms recur: trust in institutions that collect and spend, perceptions of procedural and distributive fairness, the credibility of implementation and delivery, and the salience of risk. The same policy can be judged necessary in one context and extractive in another because information environments, recent experience, and reference prices differ. Comparing findings with shared concepts allows those differences to be interpreted rather than dismissed as noise.

Suggested Topics

The workshop invites analyses that employ public opinion to explore governance, international relations, and security in the MENA region as individual or intersecting themes. We are especially interested in research that examines attitudes towards policy measures and how these attitudes change as information, credibility, and lived experiences evolve. Submissions may focus on a single country, compare countries, or take a cross-regional view. We are open to research designs that employ traditional survey data as well as proxies for public opinion, such as social media data and experiments.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

Governance

• Economic reform and public consent: responses to personal income and value-added taxes

• Subsidy redesign and protection: narratives that make fuel, electricity, water, and commodity reform credible

• Climate adaptation and energy transition: attitudes towards climate change, climate priorities, and desired adaptation

• Digital state and service legitimacy: national and subnational differences in the reception of reforms and how localized delivery narrows gaps

International Relations

• Alignment and hedging: how shifts in relations with major powers and regional actors are interpreted

• Normalization and distribution of benefits: how citizens balance moral commitments with arguments about market access, mobility, and investment

• Regional cooperation and everyday gains: household-level judgments of energy interconnections, water sharing, transport corridors, and public-health surveillance

• Crisis diplomacy: how citizens recalibrate expectations during acute conflicts or humanitarian emergencies

Security

• Conflict and mobility: perceptions of refugees, migrants, and host communities during events in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and Libya

• De-escalation, reconstruction, and human security: how conflict impacts people’s willingness to accept difficult compromises related to security, relief, livelihoods, and reconciliation

• Critical infrastructure and disaster readiness: public expectations of grid reliability, water security, transport safety, and emergency response during crises

• Defense priorities and social investment: evaluations of trade-offs between defense allocations and social spending when both have near-term consequences

1. Peer-Reviewed Journal Special Issue (optional). The chairs will explore proposing a thematic special issue in a peer-reviewed journal. All submissions will follow the journal’s standard review process.
2. Research Notes (MEC pipeline). Participants may submit short research notes on governance, international relations, and security in the Middle East to the Middle East Council on Global Affairs’ publication pipeline. Editorial guidelines and timelines will be shared with presenters.