Dr. Joseph P. Helou is an assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs in the Department of Political and International Studies at the Lebanese American University. His research interests span the fields of governance and political economy.

More particularly, Dr. Helou is committed to placing human-centered perspectives at the heart of policy and governance debates. His work investigates how governance functions not only through formal institutions, but also through the informal systems and practices that people create—often in response to state limitations or transformations.

His work explores governance dynamics, state transformation, and the ways in which communities self-organize to build alternative systems of authority, survival, and sustainability through the adoption of practices and coping mechanisms. By granting particular focus to informal governance, he seeks to comprehend the emergence and operations of informality, in addition to how an understanding of these everyday practices can better inform formal policy making processes.

Moreover, Dr. Helou is also interested in analyzing politics in deeply divided societies, the Middle East and countries in the Global South through political-economic and interdisciplinary lenses. He engages in research projects and collaborations of an interdisciplinary nature.

SDGs Research Mapping

Dr. Joseph Helou conducts research relevant to the following SDGs:

Selected Publications

• Articles:

  1. Salaheddine, K. A., & Helou, J. P. (2025). The mediation of maritime borders between states at loggerheads: Why Lebanon’s political conditions helped broker a deal with Israel on Line 23. Mediterranean Politics, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2025.2602407
  2. Abou Zour, T. F., Diab, J. L., Helou, J. P., & Baroudi, S. E. (2025). Elite labor mobility: examining the migration of Lebanese youth to the United Arab Emirates and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Cogent Social Sciences. Vol. 11, No. 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2025.2585567
  3. Helou, J. P., & Mollica, M. (2025). “Hezbollah’s Mobilization Strategy: How Hassan Nasrallah Instrumentalized Communal Fear, Shia narratives and Incentives to Foster Support for Intervention in Syria”. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. vol. 31, No. 1. PP. 34-52. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2024.2429289
  4. Polese, A., & Helou, J. P. (2024). “Everyday Informality and Governance Dynamics in Crisis Situations and Beyond.” Third World Quarterly. Vol. 45, Iss. 17–18. PP. 2323–2333. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2024.2433137
  5. Helou, J. P. and Polese, A. (2024). “There’s Nothing More Permanent than Temporary Solutions: The Solar Panel Transition and Everyday Coping in Lebanon’s Multi-Dimensional Crisis since 2020.” Third World Quarterly. Vol. 45, Iss. 17–18. PP. 2448–68. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2024.2409280
  6. Helou, J. P. (Autumn, 2023). “Party Practices in the Context of Lebanon’s Sectarian Political System: Explaining the Unachieved Goals of the Free Patriotic Movement”. Middle East Journal (Middle East Institute). Vol. 77, No. 2. PP. 181-203. DOI: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3751/77.2.13
  7. Helou, J. P. (2023). “Lost in the Transitions of Lebanon’s Second Republic: The Political Economy of (Un)governable Institutions, Practices and Crises”. Studies of Transition States and Societies. Vol. 15, No. 1, PP. 32–47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58036/stss.v15i1.1150.
  8. Helou, J. P. and Mollica, M. (2022). “Inter-Communal Relations in the Context of a Sectarian Society: Communal Fear Spawns Everyday Practices and Coping Mechanisms among the Maronites of Lebanon”. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. Vol. 28, No. 4, PP. 393–412. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2022.2104603

  Book Chapters:

  1. Helou, J.P., Farhat, A. (2025). Transformations in State Governance: The Political Economy of Transnational Finance in the Global South. PP. 11-32. In: Kaunert, C., Léonard, S., Masys, A.J. (eds) Transnational Unconventional Organized Crime: A National and Global Security Concern. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96149-6_2
  2. Helou, J. P. (2022). State collusion or erosion during a Sovereign Debt Crisis: Market Dynamics Spawn Informal Practices in Lebanon. PP. 277–300. in “Informality, Labour Mobility and Precariousness: Supplementing the State for the Invisible and the Vulnerable”. Polese, A. (ed). International Political Economy Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-82499-0_11
  3. Helou, J. P. (2021). Lebanon’s Political Economy of Informality: Elites, Citizens and the State Shape Money(s) during the Sovereign Debt Crisis. PP. 149–176. Chapter 7 in “The Communitarian Nation-State Paradox in Lebanon”. Salamey, I. (Ed). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
  4. Helou, J. P. (2020). Fluid Concepts and Understandings Redefined: States, Porous Borders and Transnational Militant Actors in Syria. Chapter 1, PP. 13-34, In “Limited Statehood and Informal Governance in the Middle East and Africa”. Hanau Santini, R., Polese, A., and Kevlihan, R. (Eds). Durham Modern Middle East and Islamic World Series. Routledge.

  Book:

  Helou, J. P. (2020). Activism, Change and Sectarianism in the Free Patriotic Movement in Lebanon. (Series: Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean). London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-25704-0

Academic Degrees

• Ph.D. in Politics, University of Exeter, Exeter, U.K.
• Collaborative M.A. in Political Science and International Relations, University of Toronto, Toronto On., Canada.
• B.A. in Economics, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.