Conceptions of authoritarianism have broadened to include all nondemocratic rule. Unnoticeably in that process, the role of religion and religious institutions has declined. Political and religious authority interact and overlap. Nathan Brown argues that rediscovering how they do so will help us refine our understanding of autocracy
Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Bologna / Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University and Fellow, Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study
Nathan received his BA in political science from the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University.
He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics as well as more general courses on comparative politics and international relations.
His current work is on religion and state.
He received the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship from George Washington University in 2015 and the Harry Harding teaching award from the Elliott School of International Affairs in 2014.
His dissertation received the Malcolm Kerr award from the Middle East Studies Association in 1987.
From 2013ā2015, Nathan was president of the Middle East Studies Association, the academic association for scholars studying the region.
In 2013, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow; four years earlier, he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
His most recent book isĀ AuthoritarianismĀ from the Inside Out (with Steven D. Schaaf, Samer Anabtawi, and Julian Waller), University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2024.
He is the author of eight other books on Egyptian politics, Islamist movements, the rule of law, and constitutionalism.
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