University of Nebraska – Lincoln History Professor James D. Le Sueur’s article “Postcolonial Time Disorder” was featured in Foreign Affairs this week.
Le Sueur, who is also a UNP author and series editor, discusses the era of when Hosni Mubarak first took power. At that time, Le Sueur writes, leaders in the postcolonial world saw a strong, repressive state as a necessary way to secure national liberty.
With that era over, Le Sueur asks the question: Will the region's other autocrats now meet similar fates?
He dives into the situation in Egypt and the Middle East and describes the Postcolonial Time Disorder as subscribing to an out-of-date philosophy of governance, according to which authoritarianism is the only cure for external or internal political challenges.
UNP blog 