Kristin Fabbe is an assistant professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, where she has taught the course of the same name in the MBA required curriculum since joining the faculty. She also teaches in several executive education programs, including the Agribusiness Seminar and SELPME (Senior Executive Leadership Management Program, Middle East). Her primary expertise is in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Middle East and southeastern Europe.
Kristin is a faculty affiliate at the Middle East Initiative at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center, at the Harvard Center for Middle East Studies, and the Harvard Center for European Studies. She also sits on the steering committee of the AlWaleed Islamic Studies Program and is an Associate Editor at the Review of Middle East Studies.
In her research, Professor Fabbe seeks to understand the relationship between state-driven development strategies and identity politics. Her first book, Disciples of the State: Religion and State-Building in the Former Ottoman World (Cambridge University Press, 2019) examines the role of religious elites, institutions, and attachments in modernization initiatives in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. She is currently researching a second major project that studies how societies respond to crises, particularly economic shocks, severe austerity measures, and large demographic changes. In her other work Kristin examines legacies of violence, post-conflict reconciliation, refugees and forced-migration, and state-business relations. Towards this end she has conducted and consulted on a number of large surveys and field projects in the MENA including Iraq, Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. This work has been published in numerous academic journals. Her opinion pieces on regional issues have been published in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
Professor Fabbe received her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also holds an MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in history from Lewis and Clark College. Before joining HBS, she was an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, the Middle East and Balkans became the site of contestation and cooperation between the traditional forces of religion and the emergent machine of the sovereign state. Yet such strategic interaction rarely yielded a decisive victory for either the secular state or for religion. By tracing how state-builders engaged religious institutions, elites, and attachments, this book problematizes the divergent religion-state power configurations that have developed. There are two central arguments. First, states carved out more sovereign space in places like Greece and Turkey, where religious elites were integral to early centralizing reform processes. Second, region-wide structural constraints on the types of linkages that states were able to build with religion have generated long-term repercussions. Fatefully, both state policies that seek to facilitate equality through the recognition of religious difference and state policies that seek to eradicate such difference have contributed to failures of liberal democratic consolidation.
Civilians who have fled violent conflict and settled in neighboring countries are integral to processes of civil war termination. Contingent on their attitudes, they can either back peaceful settlements or support warring groups and continued fighting. Attitudes toward peaceful settlement are expected to be especially obdurate for civilians who have been exposed to violence. In a survey of 1,120 Syrian refugees in Turkey conducted in 2016, we use experiments to examine attitudes towards two critical phases of conflict termination—a ceasefire and a peace agreement. We examine the rigidity/flexibility of refugees’ attitudes to see if subtle changes in how wartime losses are framed or in who endorses a peace process can shift willingness to compromise with the incumbent Assad regime. Our results show, first, that refugees are far more likely to agree to a ceasefire proposed by a civilian as opposed to one proposed by armed actors from either the Syrian government or the opposition. Second, simply describing the refugee community’s wartime experience as suffering rather than sacrifice substantially increases willingness to compromise with the regime to bring about peace. This effect remains strong among those who experienced greater violence. Together, these results show that even among a highly pro-opposition population that has experienced severe violence, willingness to settle and make peace are remarkably flexible and dependent upon these cues.
Finding suitable settlements to civil wars, then proceeding to reconcile and reintegrate civilian communities to realize such settlements and avoid future conflict, poses many seemingly insurmountable challenges. The Syrian conflict is a case in point. Not only has a settlement proved elusive, but little is known about how the millions of civilian refugees who have fled the war feel about postconflict reconciliation and the future of their country. We use an original survey of 1,384 Syrian refugees conducted in Turkey in 2016 to draw attention to how refugees view the politics of postconflict reconciliation and reconstruction. We find that refugees desire peace in Syria more than anything else, yet they also desire harsh punishments for the perpetrators of violence, especially against civilians, from all sides of the conflict, which is likely to complicate any process of reconciliation.
The outcome of Turkey's June 2011 elections temporarily quelled—though by no means entirely put to rest—growing concern over the creeping autocratic tendencies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). To ensure that democracy remains durable, the AKP must now clearly demonstrate that it is willing to shun heavy-handed tactics and instead engage the opposition in a genuine dialog regarding important matters of constitutional change, especially those related to individual rights and identity issues. A slide toward autocracy has been an all-too-common pitfall in Turkish politics over the years. Should it so choose, the AKP is well poised to break the cycle at this critical juncture in Turkish politics.
Mieczysław Boduszyński, Kristin Fabbe and Christopher Lamont
After the "Arab Spring" and the initial democratic reforms in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), why has democratic progress remained so elusive in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? In recent years, that question has preoccupied numerous scholars, commentators, and policy makers. Behind most of their analyses, we believe, lurks an assumption that secular parties are intrinsically better stewards of constitutional liberalism than their Islamist counterparts. Yet have non-Islamist parties really been superior agents of democratic change? We test this by surveying secular parties in three countries: Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey. In order to assess each party's liberal credentials, we analyze each along four key dimensions: 1) history of exclusivist and statist positions, 2) ties to the military, 3) past political behavior, and 4) internal party democracy.
Through a comparative study of state consolidation processes and the acceptance of religious tolerance in Greece and Turkey, this piece shows that there is often a direct link between strategies of state building, the creation of state identities, and contemporary acceptance of pluralistic norms regarding religious tolerance. Tracing early examples through to the present, the paper demonstrates that state elites privileged religious categories over potential alternatives in the state consolidation process. I argue that, as a result, religious identity markers have assumed a privileged and almost 'untouchable' position in both the Greek and Turkish national narratives, making issues of religious tolerance and pluralism sensitive focal points in contemporary debates over
Europeanizing reforms and religion-state relations in times of crisis.
Situated between Europe and Asia, Turkey occupies a critical geostrategic position in the world. This unique geography, no doubt, has much to do with the complexities and continuities that have characterized the country’s political development. Turkey is anchored to Europe, both through a vast network of trade linkages, its membership in NATO, and its bid for European Union membership. So too is it enmeshed in the politics of the greater Middle East by virtue of its proximity to and involvement in conflict zones in Syria and Iraq, as well as its dependence on Iranian energy resources. As this chapter describes, since the birth of the Republic, striking this balance has proved challenging, and so too have the dynamics of Turkey’s domestic politics, which are marked by a strong tradition of executive rule punctuated by fleeting stints of democratic deepening and political liberalization.
Fabbe, Kristin. "The Republic of Turkey." Chap. 14 in Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa: Development, Democracy, and Dictatorship. 9th ed. Edited by Sean Yom. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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Kristin Fabbe, Űmit Őzlale and Efe Murat Balikçioğlu
This chapter argues that the rise of “Islamic capitalism” and the country’s so-called “conservative bourgeoisie” owes much to the pragmatism and agility of Islamic actors who are quick to seize upon new economic and political opportunities by leveraging religious identity markers, religious discourse, and religious networks. By revealing their pragmatic approach to introducing the idea of Islamic capitalism in Turkey, and especially their efforts to distinguish it from capitalism more generally, the chapter sheds light on how religious and cultural values both shape and are shaped by the economic imperatives of participation in the global economic system. We find that Islamist political actors and pious business elites have molded business culture in ways that are mutually beneficial, selectively drawing upon ethical norms and religious networks in an adaptive fashion. Over the last fifty years, as they constantly shift and adapt Islamic values to justify economic positions and policymaking, the country’s political Islamists and the emergent pious bourgeoisie alike have consistently sought to increase their power and influence vis-à-vis the coastal big-business elite and their traditional political allies.
The Routledge Handbook of Turkish Politics pulls together contributions from many of the world’s leading scholars on different aspects of Turkey. Turkey today is going through possibly the most turbulent period in its history, with major consequences both nationally and internationally. The country looks dramatically different from the Republic founded by Atatürk in 1923. The pace of change has been rapid and fundamental, with core interlinked changes in ruling institutions, political culture, political economy, and society.
Citation:
Fabbe, Kristin, and Efe M. Balıkçıoğlu. "Political Islam." Chap. 4 in The Routledge Handbook of Turkish Politics, edited by Alpaslan Özerdem and Matthew Whiting. Routledge, 2019.
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Kristin Fabbe, Allison Spencer Hartnett and Steve L. Monroe
Why do regimes allow some low-income business owners to avoid taxes by operating informally? Electoral incentives are central to prevailing explanations of governments’ forbearance of informal enterprise. Yet many unelected regimes host large informal economies. This article examines forbearance in non-democracies. We argue that unelected regimes forbear their supporters’ informal businesses. We test this argument in Jordan. Using survey data of over 3,800 micro and small enterprises (MSEs), we find that informal businesses are more likely to operate in districts with higher rates of public sector employment, the crown jewel of the Jordanian regime’s patronage. Interviews with over 60 of the surveyed firm owners across four strategically paired districts illustrate that business owners covet forbearance and that kinship ties to public sector employees limit forbearance to regime supporters. Communities that attract higher rates of public sector employment forfeit higher levels of fiscal revenue by permitting informality. This complementarity between public sector employment and forbearance amplifies inequalities between regime supporters and opponents in non-democracies.
Fabbe, Kristin, and Natalie Kindred. "Almarai Company: Milk and Modernization in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-064, February 2019.
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Alberto Cavallo, Kristin Fabbe, Mattias Fibiger, Jeremy Friedman, Reshmaan Hussam, Vincent Pons and Matthew Weinzierl
The purpose of this technical note is to explain the BGIE Twenty, an “idea-kit” that serves as the intellectual backbone of the BGIE course. Each year, the BGIE professors decide on the twenty ideas that we believe are the most important for students to study in pursuit of the course’s objective. As scholars of economics, history, and political science, we bring an interdisciplinary approach to constructing and revising the BGIE Twenty, and we intend for it to have pedagogical and intellectual impact beyond our classrooms. The ideas in the BGIE Twenty provide starting points for analysis, not simple answers, and the BGIE Twenty is a living list that responds to changes in the world and our understanding of it. Each element of the BGIE Twenty is highlighted during at least one case discussion, and suggested supplemental readings (plus separate technical notes for all elements) are provided to facilitate deeper study by interested students. Thus, when students complete the BGIE course, they have engaged with a curated selection of ideas that their faculty have found most valuable in analyzing how the world works.
Cavallo, Alberto, Kristin Fabbe, Mattias Fibiger, Jeremy Friedman, Reshmaan Hussam, Vincent Pons, and Matthew Weinzierl. "The BGIE Twenty (2019 version)." Harvard Business School Technical Note 718-032, December 2017. (Revised November 2018.)
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This note provides a brief overview of the history of Saudi Arabia as well as the economic and political context in 2018. The note is an essential supplement to the case “Almarai Company: Milk and Modernization in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” HBS No. 719-020, but is also appropriate for other relevant cases.
Kristin Fabbe, Safwan Al-Amin, Esel Cekin and Natalie Kindred
With SAR 14 billion ($3.7 billion) in 2017 revenues, Almarai was Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy producer, distributor, and marketer, with a large portfolio of branded dairy products, juices, bakery goods, and infant formula and a sales presence across the Gulf region, Jordan, and Egypt. Almarai employed some 42,000 people across its operations, from its massive dairy farms to its processing plants to its vast sales and distribution operation that reached over 100,000 outlets. Notwithstanding its diverse portfolio, the core of Almarai’s business was (1) sales of branded fresh/chilled dairy products, (2) in Saudi Arabia, (3) distributed through the traditional retail channel made up of thousands of small neighborhood shops called bakalas. In October 2018, all three of these focal points were under pressure. Under the economic-restructuring programs of Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, new taxes and subsidy cuts were squeezing household budgets. Concurrently, changes to other government policies were causing expatriates—who made up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population and were a key consumer of Almarai’s dairy products—to leave the country in droves. This case finds Almarai’s management team, led by soon-to-retire CEO Georges Schorderet, debating how the company can defend and grow its position in Saudi Arabia while also finding new sources of future growth (e.g., bringing its production model to new markets with fragmented dairy sectors or entering new product categories such as fish or ice cream). The decision of how to move forward will be based on an assessment of Almarai’s strengths, how they can be best used to drive future growth, and how relevant they will remain in a market that is changing so dramatically. The note “Saudi Arabia: A Brief Background" (HBS 719-043) is essential supplementary reading for this case.
Kristin Fabbe, Forest Reinhardt, Natalie Kindred and Alpana Thapar
This case explores the strategy of OCP Group, the 95% state-owned Moroccan firm charged with managing the North African country’s vast reserves of phosphate. Phosphate was one of the most vital macronutrients for plant health, along with nitrogen and potassium, and Morocco had about 75% of known worldwide reserves. In 2017, under the leadership of Dr. Mostafa Terrab, OCP was halfway through a $20 billion industrial transformation program aimed at increasing its industrial capacity, improving cost efficiencies, and boosting long-term competitiveness. The program involved moving OCP beyond mining and exporting raw phosphate rock—its traditional focus, which it performed at a relatively low cost—towards greater production of phosphoric acid and finished fertilizer products. In the next phase of the program, OCP planned to ramp up its focus on fertilizer production, especially for markets in Africa, where fertilizer was historically underutilized. Terrab and his team saw an opportunity to nurture and meet fertilizer demand by creating products tailored to the needs of African farmers. This case provides background on Morocco, the fertilizer industry, and OCP Group’s past, current, and envisioned strategy and operations. With this context, students are invited to consider how aggressively OCP Group should pursue downstream integration (and specifically its Africa strategy), as well as how OCP can best leverage its competitive advantages and utilize Morocco’s phosphate reserves to its—and Morocco’s—benefit.
Fabbe, Kristin, Forest Reinhardt, Natalie Kindred, and Alpana Thapar. "OCP Group." Harvard Business School Case 718-002, December 2017. (Revised December 2018.)
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Fabbe, Kristin. "Turkey's Secularization in Reverse?" In Rethinking Nation and Nationalism. No. 14, 17–19. POMEPS Studies. Washington, D.C.: Project on Middle East Political Science, 2015.
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