Max Gallien
@MaxGallien
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Political Economy, Development, Informality, Tax, North Africa. Author, "Smugglers and States" (Columbia 2024). Research Fellow @IDS_UK and @ICTDTax . 💚🐧
Brighton, England
Joined July 2013
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Pinned Tweet
After a decade of working on this, it feels profoundly surreal to see the book as a phystical item. I'm grateful to everyone who helped make this happen. And for only the price of a few (London) cups of coffee, you can get your very own copy!
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One hell of a time for
#Tunisia
to put Tawhida Ben Cheikh, medical pioneer and the first Muslim woman in modern North Africa to receive a medical degree, on the 10 dinar bill.
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This mural of the Egyptian LGTBQ activist Sarah Hegazi just appeared down my street.
It's hard not to love
#Brighton
.
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Bit of happy news in these difficult days:
I successfully defended my PhD thesis last week! It's on "Smugglers and States - Illegal Trade in the Political Settlements of North Africa".
I don't talk about this a lot, but these have not always been easy years, so on top of the...
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👩🎓Women as a share of researchers, according to
@UNESCOstat
- North Africa is doing remarkably well:
🇹🇳 Tunisia: 55,4%
🇪🇬 Egypt: 44,1%
🇩🇿 Algeria: 34,8%
🇲🇦 Morocco: 33,8%
...
🇩🇪 Germany: 28%
🇫🇷 France: 27%
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You think you've seen everything...
until you see an economist trying to model people becoming foreign fighters through a "consumption-jihad tradeoff" with well-behaved indifference curves. And concluding that social spending in OECD countries causes terrorism.
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#Tunisia
is on track to one of the highest rates of female mayors globally, more than twice the rate of the US.
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I seriously cannot recommend this enough. Tragedies line by line painting a larger picture.
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subtweet orpheus
@hadestown
Couples: If the path is small you can walk single file, I promise your partner will not leave you in the 3 seconds it takes to let someone else pass at a safe distance
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The book has got a cover!
And a publication date: it'll be out Feburary 2024, and available for pre-order now!
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everyone: do we now have to look into the past of every statue? where does it stop??
#Tunisia
's roundabouts: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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My article on "Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa" is now out
@PoPpublicsphere
FirstView!
It's been a few years of work and a few too many interviews with smugglers in the desert at 40°C, so I'm thrilled it's finally out!
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Look what came in the mail!! 🤩 Officially for sale from next week.
Even better: you can all get it for free at !! Merry Christmas from
@florian_weigand
, me and 40 contributing authors! 🎄🎄🎄
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The controversial EU-
#Tunisia
agreement from July may actually be void, according to the Commission's legal council Emer Finnegan, reports the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "
#TeamEurope
" & the Commission seem to have overstepped their competencies. This has precedence... 1/
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Whether they care or not, I think UUK has underestimated the massive exodus of talent and diversity that they have just triggered.
#USSmess
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Roses are red
Your passports soon blue
Don't kick out us migrants
That are teaching for you.
#AcademicValentine
#Brexit
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Loving these maps of the oldest companies across Africa and Asia.
Shout out to
@poste_TN
🇹🇳 and Hamoud Boualem 🇩🇿!
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47% of the municipal councillors elected on Sunday in
#Tunisia
are women - easily beating the gender ratios in counties like France (40.3%), UK (33%) or Germany (27%).
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I was gonna make this a funny tweet.
But after years as a grad student being told that this kind of work wouldn't get recognised in political science... this just means the world to me.
Thank you to
@APSAMENA
, the jury and in particular to... (1/3)
We are delighted to announce that
@MaxGallien
has been selected co-winner of this year's APSA MENA Politics Section Award for Best Article in MENA Politics, for his
@PoPpublicsphere
article "Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa."
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Thrilled to say that "The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling", edited by
@florian_weigand
and me, is now available online and ENTIRELY FREE.
32 chapters. 42 contributors. 1 convenient resource.
Print will be out in December, e-book can be downloaded at
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We are very happy to announce that the Routledge Handbook of
#Smuggling
is now available as a paperback for £43!
However,
@florian_weigand
and I are even happier to say that the whole book is still available for free to download here:
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Happy to be able to say that my book "Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at its Margins" is forthcoming at
@ColumbiaUP
.
Thank you to
@abuaardvark
@caelyncobb
and everyone who helped this get here. Will tweet (a lot) more about this when it's out.
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Patterns of production, trafficking and consumption of
#Drugs
in
#North_Africa
have been shifting, as
@DrM2H
and I outline in our
@GI_TOC
report.
Cannabis, Cocaine & Pills all have their own dynamics. New policies are needed to avoid escalation.
Read here:
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We often think of smuggling as unregulated, 'under the radar' of states.
PoliSci thinks of informal institutions as personalistic, small scale & self-enforced.
I challenge both ideas in a forthcoming article in Perspectives on Politics.
Open access here:
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We have a cover! 🤩🤩🤩
The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling, with beautiful cover art by
@FernandaPainter
, fully open access, coming to a bookshelf near you later this year!
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Currencies you can use at Tunis Airport:
- Euros
- Dollars
- Pounds
Currencies you cannot use at Tunis Airport:
- Tunisian Dinar.
Drives me mad every time.
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I wrote a chapter for “The Companion to Peace and Conflict Fieldwork”. It argues that
1) Key security decisions in the field are made by researchers, alone
2) Indiana Jones researchers and Data Gathering Robots are making us less safe
A thread summary: 1/
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Page proofs make it feel real.
Coming to a bookshop near you in early 2024.
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This poll has 600k more voters than the Tunisian parliamentary elections.
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Folks, I'll keep this up here for the next time someone uses AlArabiya as a source... This sentence alone is pure gold:
"Penn is very pro-refugee, which is aligned to the “demographic Jihad” promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, according to WordPress."
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just writing an academic piece in my native language for the first time in forever.
I'm reasonably sure the copy editor is going to have my citizenship revoked.
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Just to recap...
Left: What Switzerland is currently advising women to wear in public spaces.
Right: What Switzerland is about to make illegal to wear in public spaces.
🤦
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Months of complex statistical models and CNN announces Biden pulling ahead in Georgia by long addition
#Election2020
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What a paradigm shift looks like: among voters under 30 years, Germany's Green Party won the country's
#EUelections2019
in a landslide.
@Die_Gruenen
#Europawahl2019
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As Tunisia heads to the polls for the third time this month, worth recognising that
@ISIETN
has managed to organise a whole cascade of elections under a very tight & shifting schedule and very unusual external conditions.
That can't just be taken for granted.
#tnelec2019
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After 5 years and over 60'000 cases,
#Tunisia
's Truth and Dignity Commission is due to publish it's reports today.
Ground-breaking, resisted, politicised, keenly victim-focused, it's work has been short but historic.
A thread w/ some background & analysis articles on the IVD:
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We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for "Australia's Oldest Man Knits Tiny Sweaters For Penguins Injured In Oil Spills" . Have a good weekend everyone. 🐧🐧🐧
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"As the political scientist Max Gallien has shown, just because an economy is informal doesn’t mean it’s unregulated. For more than 30 years, the borders of Saharan states have been controlled zones of carefully choreographed illicit trade."
@LRB
*FAINTS*
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This, from
@ArabBarometer
's latest report on food insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa is genuinely chilling. These are *nationally representative averages*, not just lower income groups.
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#Tunisia
is gearing up for one of the most competitive elections in North Africa's history.
In our latest piece,
@iswerenfelsi
and I look at how recent events have shaped candidates' calculations, and how the race may affect the country.
#tnelec2019
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As we're getting closer to the inevitable flood of "The Arab Uprisings 10 years later" pieces that will ponder Bouazizi's legacy:
There are still informal workers alive in the region today. They are still struggling and fighting for their livelihoods. They are worth talking to.
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It's evident that both "
#TeamEurope
" and the Tunisian presidency are benefitting from some ambiguity about the details and practicalities of their partnership.
But the fact that the whole EU side flew down TWICE without a real press conference, full text or briefing, is farcical.
#TeamEurope
is back in Tunis.
We were here together a month ago to launch a new partnership with Tunisia.
And today, we take it forward.
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"What Do Political Scientists Study on the Middle East?" Interesting meta-analysis by
@MelaniCammett
and Isabel Kendall in the
@APSAMENA
Newsletter.
Thematically, more work on
#Gender
clearly needed, & geographically on the
#Maghreb
.
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Ben Ali's open letter to Tunisians on protecting their country and its fragile economy is the equivalent of Godzilla lecturing on urban reconstruction.
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#Tunisia
has now handed back €60mio in Covid-related budget support to the EU that were disbursed only weeks ago. The dispute about the July deal has now gone so far, it is affecting unrelated transfers -certainly marking a new low in EU-Tunisia relations
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That missing constitutional court really is the political failure that keeps giving.
#Tunisia
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Editing your own chapters is terribly dull but then there's that moment you get to delete a phrase and write "former President Bouteflika"
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Today, on the 10th anniversary of the Arab Uprisings...
my two cents really aren't that important. A thread (1/2556)
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Gonna be on Al-Jazeera in a bit trying to make sense of this - and wearing my dad's shirt because I'm visiting the family and didn't expect any coups...
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While all the academic conference and travel cancellations due to
#coronavirus
are unfortunate, they are also a great opportunity for all of us to get better at digital and virtual conferencing. Our industry's carbon footprint could use it. 💚💚💚
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As
#Egypt
has once again announced an increase in fuel prices, here's a little overview over the changes, alongside last year's increases.
#البنزين
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MENA Researchers, journalists, friends: Please don't lose sight of this story.
Researcher & UN expert
#MoncefKartas
is still being held in
#Tunisia
on unsubstantiated charges, in violation of his diplomatic immunity. This needs continued attention. Talk to your people/editors.
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President Saied rejected the first payment of the EU-
#Tunisia
deal, claiming that it does not fulfill the July agreement. Given its vagueness, resistance within the EU and Saied's recent actions, this agreement is becoming more farcical by the day...
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#Tunisia
seems on track to deliver the lowest turnout of any election in modern global history, with HALF the participation of the previous record holders (Haiti 2015 at 18%, Afghanistan 2019 with 19%)
Official ISIE turn out rate till 6 p.m. today: 8.8 %
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It's been a long, sad and confusing day in
#Tunisia
news. If you want me to try and summarise what happened, while tired and at least partly in pyjamas, I'll be on France24 in the morning.
Until then: life is fragile. Constitutional courts are a good thing.
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All I want for Christmas is a
#Tunisia
protest coverage that doesn't...
- assume all protesters have the same agenda
- uncritically print narratives of foreign financing
- use the words "economic issues" w/out detailing them
- frame all protests as a threat to 'stability'.
☃️🎄
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Visualising the real depth of vaccine inequality: only two countries in Africa have more than 40% of their population vaccinated with at least one dose. Interestingly, that's 🇹🇳Tunisia and 🇲🇦Morocco.
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@imhartshorn
@BeckerLabUSC
At your service! I'll pass it on to our committee for coming up with absurdly long words that amuse foreigners! (we do of course have a word for that committee)
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#Tunisia
is seeing one of the largest strikes in modern history today, with over 670 000 people involved.
Reporting has largely framed this as a direct conflict between Tunisia's workers and the IMF. There are however some problems with this narrative. A very short thread:
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Had my last pre-pandemic meal out with friends one year ago today, after defending my PhD.
After the solitariness of writing up I was so excited to move to a position where I'd see colleagues and students in the office every day. Boy did I jinx that.
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Should
#Morocco
not get the
#WorldCup2026
, I think they should go for
#Maghreb2030
.
#Tunisia
and
#Algeria
are supporting
@Morocco2026_EN
, multi-country bids are in style, the region's teams are going strong, and we'd have a wonderful symbol for much needed economic integration.
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Academics: in these frightening times, the focus should be on the voices of experts.
Also academics: this is how
#COVID19
relates to my 1992 paper on the political economy of toothpaste.
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There's no better illustration of the priorities of early post-independence Tunisian administrations than the fact that almost every map of Tunisia in every census (!!!) from the 60s and 70s entirely cuts off the southern quarter of the country to make it better fit on a page.
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Border economies of the Middle East: why do they matter for political economy?
In this new article for
@RIPEJournal
,
@AdeelMalikOx
and I argue that looking at peripheries can inform central themes in MENA PolEcon, from conflict to authoritarian resilience.
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It seems the "Tunisians revolt against the Brotherhood" hashtag is primarily Saudi and Emirati influencers...
🧵👇
[Thread] 1/ This is a thread on Twitter manipulation around
#Tunisia
, where the current President is accused of instigating a coup. One Arabic trend translates as "Tunisians revolt against the Brotherhood". I analysed around 12000 tweets from 6800 unique accounts
#disinformation
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I like that the ballot paper in
#EgyptElection2018
has a picture of what happens to the respective candidate if they get the majority of votes.
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Oh wonderful.
The UK government officially stating it considers PhDs in social sciences & arts worth *exactly half* their STEM equivalents.
Splendid. Because until now it's been so easy to motivate students to pursue a PhD in these subjects.
#Immigration
#UCUstrikesback
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Thrilled that
@CUP_PoliSci
has made my article on "Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa" available for free for the rest of January as part of their "Most-Influential Perspectives Articles 2019" series - link is below:
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Willing to buy a drink for whichever editor at
@MiddleEastEye
chose this picture for this headline.
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Join us tomorrow at
🇺🇸 10am EST
🇹🇳🇩🇿🇲🇦🇬🇧 3pm
🇫🇷🇩🇪🇱🇾🇪🇬 4pm
as we are discussing
#NorthAfricaDrugTrends
: production, trafficking, consumption and their effects on the region.
Registration is free, link below:
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Both
@mherbe01
and I are currently writing books on
#smuggling
and
#borders
in North Africa. We share a conclusion:
Current attempts at hardening borders is making the region less, not more secure.
Why? We explain for
@SadaJournal
:
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How do states shape smuggling routes? And why?!
@florian_weigand
and I explore six ideal-types of smuggler-state relationships and their consequences in our new article in
@SecStudies_Jrnl
- now available online and open access! 🔓🔓🔓
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One of the most common questions about
#smuggling
in North Africa is how different goods overlap.
A brief mapping of the main trade corridors highlights a remarkable diversity in goods, trajectories and drivers.
First, there is
#gasoline
: (1/3)
(source: )
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🧵🧵🧵I've got a thread for you that has been a long time in the making. It's on Africa, tobacco lobbyists, and one of the most effective policies you haven’t thought about.
Here we go...
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A sneak peek at my
#MESA2018
talk - the map below shows gasoline
#smuggling
routes in the Maghreb. But what regulates these flows? How does smuggling intersect with
#migration
?
Come join us Thu 5:30 panel 5072 as we unpack "porous borders"!
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