Research Fields

As geopolitical and economic transformations accelerate across the Middle East, a new policy paper titled “Jordan and the Middle East: A Forward-Looking Strategic Vision” by senior researcher Ali Hijazi highlights the profound shifts reshaping the regional order through logistics corridors, energy networks, and cross-border supply chains. The paper argues that regional competition is no longer limited to traditional political influence.…

Islamic circles – or what may be described as the “committed public sphere”[1] – have undergone significant transformations in recent years, particularly amid growing discussions surrounding the “decline” or “waning” of political Islam and the retreat of Salafi movements after the Arab Spring. Yet, despite widespread discourse about the crisis of these currents, this has not necessarily meant the disappearance…

A policy paper launched by the Politics and Society Institute (PSI) has revealed significant structural gaps in Jordan’s inclusive education system for persons with disabilities, most notably the fact that only 10% of students with disabilities are enrolled in formal education. The paper also highlighted the absence of a comprehensive and disaggregated national database, the limited role of municipalities in ensuring…

The Lebanese-Israeli negotiations have entered, after the third round, an entirely different phase from anything Lebanon has experienced since the April 1996 Understanding and the arrangements that followed the July 2006 war. The issue is no longer confined to localized security arrangements or the management of limited confrontations along the southern border. Instead, it has become part of a broader…

Military strikes are designed to achieve specific security objectives, but they also generate profound social meanings. The insights captured in the Politics and Society Institute’s report on Syrian digital discourse following the May 2026 Jordanian strikes on southern Syria reveal that the meaning constructed by the Syrian public extended far beyond Amman’s declared objectives. Syrians did not focus on drug…

The report tracked 18,000 interactions between May 2 and 10, 2026. 46.2% of the discourse was classified as neutral, compared to 30.9% supportive of the strikes and 22.9% opposed. The “neutral” segment was not fully neutral; Syrian accounts repeatedly reshared narratives linking the strikes to smuggling networks and al-Hajari’s militias without visible pushback — which the report reads as implicit…

Despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetoric about pressing ahead with a project of Israeli regional dominance, alongside political discourse centered on reshaping the Middle East and transforming Israel’s security doctrine from defense to regional influence, it is becoming increasingly clear that important reassessments are now taking place within Israel regarding the lessons drawn from the wars it has fought since October 7,…

On April 18th, 2026, “Jabhat Al Amal Al Islami” party announced its intention to rename itself as “Al Ummah” Party. When the government approved the change a few days later, what drew attention was not what the party changed, but what it chose to keep: the green color held its place at the core of the party’s visual identity, the…

Introduction: Why Has Intelligence Become an Instrument of Regional Power? The Middle East is no longer governed, as it was during the twentieth century, solely through the balance of conventional armies, the size of military arsenals, or formal diplomatic alliances. The deeper transformation witnessed across the region over the past two decades lies in the shift of the center of…

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s visit to Syria comes at a complex transitional moment in the region, not only because it represents the first visit of this level since the major transformations Syria has undergone, but also because it reflects the fact that Lebanese-Syrian relations are no longer merely in a formative phase. Rather, they have already entered a stage…