About

Pete W. Moore is the M.A. Hanna Associate Professor of Politics. Hanna was a 19th century businessman and political kingmaker in Cleveland, Ohio. He once remarked, “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.” 

Fittingly, Dr. Moore is a political economist working on issues of comparative politics, critical security, and conflict in the modern Middle East. He has held academic positions at universities in Canada and the Middle East, and in 2021-22 he was the Visiting Kuwait Chair at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po. He has won research and public education funding from the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation, the Cleveland Foundation, and the British Council. He has served on the editorial board of The Middle East Report and co-founded the Northeast Ohio Consortium for Middle East Studies. He currently serves on the Committee for Academic Freedom at the Middle East Studies Association and is a director of research at the project Security in Context. 

Dr. Moore’s current research examines the domestic and regional political economies of militarization and the fiscal politics of security. This research focuses on understanding how financial flows and global pressures shape domestic institutions and politics in the Arab states. As part of this work, Dr. Moore has conducted field research in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Gulf States. His work has been published in Middle East Report, Comparative Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, The Middle East Journal, and Middle East Law and Governance. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled, “Jordan’s Long War: State Building and War Economies.” 

In the Department of Political Science, Dr. Moore teaches undergraduate courses on Middle Eastern and African politics, international politics, and contentious politics. In the Doctor of Business Administration program at the Weatherhead School of Management, he teaches graduate courses on global political economy and collective action. He is the faculty advisor for the Case Model United Nations Team and helped create the CWRU/Cleveland Council on World Affairs High School Model UN held on campus twice a year. As a founder of the Northeast Ohio Consortium for Middle East Studies, Dr. Moore worked with other local faculty to host educational events and scholarly discussions on Middle East politics at public venues throughout the Cleveland area, including the City Club of Cleveland, the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, the Happy Dog Takes on the World, and Ideastream PBS.    

Dr. Moore is a native of Atlanta, Georgia and received his B.A. from the Virginia Military Institute, an M.A. from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from McGill University, Montreal. 

Selected Publications

“Reconceptualizing Security and Political Economy in the Modern Middle East,” Special 

Roundtable Issue, (editor with Sean Yom) Middle East Law and Governance, Forthcoming 2024

“Dialectics of Hope and Despair in the Arab Uprisings,” (with Atef Said) Middle East Report Winter 2021.

“A Political Economy History of Jordan’s Intelligence Directorate: Authoritarian State Building and Fiscal Crisis,” Middle East Journal 73 (2) Summer 2019

“The Fiscal Politics of Rebellious Grievance in the Arab World: Egypt and Jordan in Comparative Perspective,” The Journal of Development Studies 53 (10) 2017.

Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World, (with Rex Brynen, Bassel Salloukh, and Joelle Zahar), Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012.

“Beyond Boom and Bust: External Rents, Durable Authoritarianism, and Institutional Adaptation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” (co-author Anne Peters), Studies in Comparative International Development, 44 (2), 2009

“Struggles under Authoritarianism: Regimes, states, and professional associations in the Arab World,” (co-author Bassel F. Salloukh) International Journal of Middle East Studies, February 2007

“The War Economy of Iraq,” (co-author Christopher Parker) Middle East Report, Summer 2007

Doing Business in the Middle East: Politics and Economic Crisis in Jordan and Kuwait, Cambridge University Press, 2004.