2013-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Matt Buehler
Dr. Matt Buehler holds degrees in government from the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D. and M.A.) and Willamette University (B.A.). In Fall 2014, he began a tenure-track position at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Political Science. Dr. Buehler’s research area is comparative politics with expertise in the Middle East. He has been traveling to the region since 2006, completing over three years of fieldwork and Arabic training in North Africa, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. His main research interests include democratization, authoritarianism, the Arab Spring, Islamist movements, North African political parties, and Moroccan politics.
While posted at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Dr. Buehler aimed to complete his book project, entitled “the Social Base of Divide-and-Rule: Left-Islamist Opposition Alliances in North Africa’s Arab Spring.” This project examines the success and failure of opposition coordination between Islamists and leftists, drawing on original interviews, archival research, and statistical data from Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania. Work from this project has been published in the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence and Middle East Law and Governance. Dr. Buehler’s publications can be downloaded below:
- “The Threat to ‘Un-Moderate’: Moroccan Islamists and the Arab Spring,” Journal of Middle East Law and Governance 5(2003): 1 27
- “Safety-Valve Elections and the Arab Spring: The Weakening (and Resurgence) of Morocco’s Islamist Opposition Party,” Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence 25 (2013), 137-156.