For Faculty
Matthew Buehler
Senior Fellow, Global Security and Trade
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
PhD, Political Science, University of Texas
Fields of Interest: Comparative Politics; Middle East
Phone: 865-974-7051 • Email: mbuehle2@utk.edu
Dr. Matt Buehler is an associate professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and also a global security and trade fellow at the Center. Dr. Buehler is a specialist of comparative politics and international relations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Since 2006, he has frequently traveled to the Arab world and completed over three years of fieldwork and Arabic training in North Africa, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. In 2017, Buehler served as a research fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Middle East Initiative in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Previously, he was a fellow at Georgetown University in Qatar’s Center for International and Regional Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Buehler is the author of Why Alliances Fail: Islamist and Leftist Coalitions in North Africa, which explores the conditions under which stable, enduring coalitions are built to contest authoritarian regimes, marshaling evidence from pacts between North Africa’s Islamists and leftists. Why Alliances Fail received the 2019 Southeast Regional Middle East & Islamic Studies book prize, which “recognizes outstanding scholarship in Middle Eastern or Islamic studies in any academic discipline in the social sciences or humanities from any time period.” The book has been reviewed in Perspectives on Politics, Politics and Religion, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and several other journals.
Primarily a scholar of North African politics and society, Buehler’s research has focused on the topics of democratization, authoritarianism, Islamist parties, public opinion research, nuclear nonproliferation, and migration. Buehler’s research has appeared in generalist political science journals, like International Studies Quarterly and Political Research Quarterly, and also journals specialized in Middle East politics. He is one of the three editors of the peer-reviewed journal Mediterranean Politics, and also is a co-editor of an Edinburgh University Press book series, Edinburgh Studies on the Maghreb. Dr. Buehler also serves as the Vice Chair of the American Political Science Association’s Middle East and North Africa politics section.
In 2018, Buehler received an Early Career Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award from the University of Tennessee, an award given annually to two junior faculty members across all disciplines in the College of Arts & Sciences.
