Author Archive

Ferdinand Eibl

Ferdinand Eibl is a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre, currently working in a research project entitled ‘The comparative political economy of the MENA region.’ Led by Steffen Hertog, the project aims to place MENA-specific political economy issues in a wider comparative perspective. In his research, Ferdinand focuses specifically on the areas of distributive politics, social policies, and crony capitalism in the Middle East and North Africa. More recently, he has started to work on civil-military relations and coups, and the electoral sociology of Islamism. He holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies and a PhD in Politics from the University of Oxford.

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A Review of Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach, by Ben Ansell and David Samuels In this dense and absorbing review, Professor Ben Ansell explains how past and current models have failed to capture the paradox that development may lead to greater income inequality. He explores the roles of actors and structures in his own approach to the study of this relationship and casts a critical light on the plight of those who live in poverty despite democratization. Turning to the other end of the income spectrum, he discusses the global trend towards capital mobility and how it relates and affects different political systems. Overall, Inequality and Democratization raises a number of critical and highly relevant questions concerning the relationship between …