American Anthropologist (Volume 122, Issue 2)

Researchers’ Vulnerability: The Politics of Research in Official Clinical Settings in Turkey

By: Başak Can

Abstract: Not available

American Journal of Political Science (Volume 64, Issue 3)

Can Terrorism Abroad Influence Migration Attitudes at Home?

By: Tobias Böhmelt, Vincenzo Bove, Enzo Nussio

Abstract: This article demonstrates that public opinion on migration “at home” is systematically driven by terrorism in other countries. Although there is little substantive evidence linking refugees or migrants to most recent terror attacks in Europe, news about terrorist attacks can trigger more negative views of immigrants. However, the spatial dynamics of this process are neglected in existing research. We argue that feelings of imminent danger and a more salient perception of migration threats do not stop at national borders. The empirical results based on spatial econometrics and data on all terrorist attacks in Europe for the post‐9/11 period support these claims. The effect of terrorism on migration concern is strongly present within a country but also diffuses across states in Europe. This finding improves our understanding of public opinion on migration, as well as the spillover effects of terrorism, and it highlights crucial lessons for scholars interested in the security implications of population movements.

Repression Technology: Internet Accessibility and State Violence

By: Anita R. Gohdes

Abstract: This article offers a first subnational analysis of the relationship between states' dynamic control of Internet access and their use of violent repression. I argue that where governments provide Internet access, surveillance of digital information exchange can provide intelligence that enables the use of more targeted forms of repression, in particular in areas not fully controlled by the regime. Increasing restrictions on Internet accessibility can impede opposition organization, but they limit access to information on precise targets, resulting in an increase in untargeted repression. I present new data on killings in the Syrian conflict that distinguish between targeted and untargeted events, using supervised text classification. I find that higher levels of Internet accessibility are associated with increases in targeted repression, whereas areas with limited access experience more indiscriminate campaigns of violence. The results offer important implications on how governments incorporate the selective access to communication technology into their strategies of coercion.

American Political Science Review (Volume 114, Issue 3)

Political Secularism and Muslim Integration in the West: Assessing the Effects of the French Headscarf Ban

By: Aala Abdelgadir, Vasiliki Fouka

Abstract: In response to rising immigration flows and the fear of Islamic radicalization, several Western countries have enacted policies to restrict religious expression and emphasize secularism and Western values. Despite intense public debate, there is little systematic evidence on how such policies influence the behavior of the religious minorities they target. In this paper, we use rich quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the effects of the 2004 French headscarf ban on the socioeconomic integration of French Muslim women. We find that the law reduces the secondary educational attainment of Muslim girls and affects their trajectory in the labor market and family composition in the long run. We provide evidence that the ban operates through increased perceptions of discrimination and that it strengthens both national and religious identities.

#No2Sectarianism: Experimental Approaches to Reducing Sectarian Hate Speech Online

By: Alexandra A. Siegel, Vivienne Badaan

Abstract: We use an experiment across the Arab Twittersphere and a nationally representative survey experiment in Lebanon to evaluate what types of counter-speech interventions are most effective in reducing sectarian hate speech online. We explore whether and to what extent messages priming common national identity or common religious identity, with and without elite endorsements, decrease the use of hostile anti-outgroup language. We find that elite-endorsed messages that prime common religious identity are the most consistently effective in reducing the spread of sectarian hate speech. Our results provide suggestive evidence that religious elites may play an important role as social referents—alerting individuals to social norms of acceptable behavior. By randomly assigning counter-speech treatments to actual producers of online hate speech and experimentally evaluating the effectiveness of these messages on a representative sample of citizens that might be incidentally exposed to such language, this work offers insights for researchers and policymakers on avenues for combating harmful rhetoric on and offline.

British Journal of Political Science (Volume 50, Issue 3)

What is Islamophobia? Disentangling Citizens’ Feelings Toward Ethnicity, Religion and Religiosity Using a Survey Experiment

By: Marc Helbling, Richard Traunmüller

Abstract: What citizens think about Muslim immigrants has important implications for some of the most pressing challenges facing Western democracies. To advance contemporary understanding of what ‘Islamophobia’ really is – for example, whether it is a dislike based on immigrants’ ethnic background, religious identity or specific religious behaviors – this study fielded a representative online survey experiment in the UK in summer 2015. The results suggest that Muslim immigrants are not per se viewed more negatively than Christian immigrants. Instead, the study finds evidence that citizens’ uneasiness with Muslim immigration is first and foremost the result of a rejection of fundamentalist forms of religiosity. This suggests that common explanations, which are based on simple dichotomies between liberal supporters and conservative critics of immigration, need to be re-evaluated. While the politically left and culturally liberal have more positive attitudes toward immigrants than right-leaning individuals and conservatives, they are also far more critical of religious groups. The study concludes that a large part of the current political controversy over Muslim immigration is related to this double opposition: it is less about immigrants versus natives or even Muslim versus Christians than about political liberalism versus religious fundamentalism.

Launching Revolution: Social Media and the Egyptian Uprising’s First Movers

By: Killian Clarke, Korhan Kocak

Abstract: Drawing on evidence from the 2011 Egyptian uprising, this article demonstrates how the use of two social media platforms – Facebook and Twitter – contributed to a discrete mobilizational outcome: the staging of a successful first protest in a revolutionary cascade, referred to here as ‘first-mover mobilization’. Specifically, it argues that these two platforms facilitated the staging of a large, nationwide and seemingly leaderless protest on 25 January 2011, which signaled to hesitant but sympathetic Egyptians that a revolution might be in the making. It draws on qualitative and quantitative evidence, including interviews, social media data and surveys, to analyze three mechanisms that linked these platforms to the success of the January 25 protest: (1) protester recruitment, (2) protest planning and coordination, and (3) live updating about protest logistics. The article not only contributes to debates about the role of the Internet in the Arab Spring and other recent waves of mobilization, but also demonstrates how scholarship on the Internet in politics might move toward making more discrete, empirically grounded causal claims.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (Volume 40, Issue 2)

States of Exception and Their Targets: Racialized Groups, Activists, and the Civilian Population

By: Vanessa Codaccioni

Abstract: The article deals with the history of state exception in France since the Algerian War. From this point of view, what is happening in France falls into two overlapping genealogies of exception: a colonial genealogy of exceptionalist logics, in which Algeria plays a central part; and a more metropolitan genealogy of political repression that could be traced back to the monarchy. The author thus divides her remarks into three sections. First, she addresses the double genealogy of exception in France; second, the discriminatory character of the exception; and last, the normalization of exception.

Reading Agamben from Algiers: The Racial Metonymy of Permanent Exception

By: Sarah Ghabrial

Abstract: This essay addresses the question of how colonial histories might be “written back” into genealogies of exception. Its central premise is that exception insinuates itself into and finally supplants the norm from margins (symbolic, racial, and cartographic) to centers, and so this path and its archival traces must be charted in this direction. In the first half of this essay, this question is directed through discussion of Giorgio Agamben's work on exception. The second half proposes colonial legal history, and more specifically the French-colonial period in Algeria, as terrain in which these questions could be fruitfully pursued. This discussion is primarily based on the example of the so-called Native Repressive Tribunals (1902–31), institutions of exception designed specifically for the swift trial and easy detention of Algerian Muslims. I argue that the creation of the TRIs is particularly emblematic of the racial logics through which exception is normalized and its lifespan extended in perpetuity.

Terrorism Prosecutions, Material Support, and Islamophobia

By: Wadie E. Said

Abstract: With Islamophobia rife and the government list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) telling us who is a threat, marginalized populations are being targeted and can expect a hostile and negative prosecutorial outcome. The large majority of terrorism prosecutions center on material support charges, which by their very structure concentrate on FTOs that are largely Islamist in ideology. Attaching a terrorist taint to a population based on its religious affiliation generates a kind of self-perpetuating law enforcement bias and prosecutorial outcome. Such police state tactics and assumptions only assure the adverse results of insisting that an exceptional status applies to those accused of terrorist activity or support for it. That, in the government's eyes, those individuals stem from one of the major monotheistic faiths in large part, seems to be a foregone conclusion that continues to affect the law's development in largely negative ways.

Current Legacies of Colonial Violence and Racialization in Tunisia

By: Benoît Challand

Abstract: The article argues that the social life of racialization in Tunisia can be traced back to colonial norms and that one cannot speak of racialization in isolation of class differentials, elements that arose historically with the spread of the tandem colonialism-capitalism in North Africa. From a direct form of racialized violence leaving Muslim Tunisians on the low end of the colonial social ladder of worth, salaries, and the right to life, one moved to a more symbolic form of violence, with the south of the country quasi-racialized as less valuable than the urban coastal areas around Tunis and the Sahel in contemporary Tunisia. In a polity that reached independence more than six decades ago, one can witness the perpetuation of a north-south divide that dates back to the colonial times; but a historical reading of racialized brutality can help us recognize a distinct tradition of activism, in particular trade union activism around the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) and protests in the southern part of the country, such as the one that led to the ousting of dictator Ben Ali in 2011. Through a discussion of diachronic forms of racialization, the article suggests that Giorgio Agamben's focus on juridical issues of exception is partly misleading, for many forms of exception arise outside of the realm of emergency.

The Lex Mercatoria Maritima: An Abridgement of the Jurisprudential Principles of the Early Islamic Maritime Qirad

By: Hassan S. Khalilieh

Abstract: This essay demonstrates how maritime qirad, as conducted in the Muslim world prior to the emergence of the Italian communes, influenced the lex mercatoria maritima. It contends that the medieval Latin accomendatio (commenda) likely owes its inception to the qirad/mudaraba institution, already prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia, contrary to the commonly believed theory that it is rooted to the Byzantine chreokoinonia, comprised by article III:17 of the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos. On the eve of the European Commercial Revolution, through trade between the Christian north and the Islamic south, qirad practices and techniques were further developed from the pre-Islamic period and incorporated into Islamic legal digests, as well as transformed by non-Muslim merchants' guilds and societies. Legal principles and practices governing maritime qirad appear to have been uniform and universally accepted by jurists across the Islamic Mediterranean and beyond, as evinced by the early tenth-century CE treatise Kitab Akriyat al-Sufun, as well as earlier jurisprudential queries.

1927: How Seismology Received Islamic Theology

By: Samera Esmeir

Abstract: At the turn of the sixteenth century, Egyptian polymath Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti compiled a study about earthquakes he titled Kashf al-salsala ‘an wasf al-zalzala (Revealing the Chain of Echoes/Meaning in the Description of Earthquakes; shortened to Zalzala). Arguing that they constituted divine signs, al-Suyuti chronicled 130 earthquakes that occurred in the Muslim world. Curiously, Zalzala reemerged more than three centuries later in the modern world of colonial expansions. In the aftermath of the 1927 earthquake in Palestine, American seismologist and Stanford professor Bailey Willis would make use of Zalzala for his authoritative “Earthquakes in the Holy Land.” The chronological sections of Zalzala would become indispensable for future seismological scholarship. This article tracks Zalzala's journey into seismology. Seismology's reception of Zalzala was possible by splitting it into two parts (theological and factual), receiving the factual and bracketing the theological, and by converting Zalzala from a chronology of horrors to a catalog of normal quakes of a unified seismic earth. This splitting was at odds with Zalzala's own structure, which joined the two dimensions. Consequently, signs of divinity persisted in seismic factuality, engendering a seismological-theological hybrid. This hybrid tells of the enduring difficulty seismology faces in transforming the earthquake-disaster into a seismological object. It also tells of the persistence of wonder and the enduring relevance of ethical reflection.

Specters and Circulation of Meaning: Edebiyat-ı Cedide on Modern Literary Language

By: Monica Katiboğlu

Abstract: As an innovative literary movement marked by intensified transaction with European languages and literatures, Edebiyat-ı Cedide (“New Literature,” 1896–1901) has been conceptualized in terms of European influence. Yet paradigms of influence neglect to account for the ways in which Edebiyat-ı Cedide authors come to terms with the asymmetrical relations of power between languages as they articulate their own vision of a modern Ottoman language comparable to European languages in an earlier moment of global modernization. I argue that Edebiyat-ı Cedide's engagement with language exposes the ways in which they deal not only with the specter of the European linguistic other as a referent of superiority, but also with the specter of Arabic and Persian as intimate linguistic others. Within the broader context of Ottoman linguistic modernization of the nineteenth century, I examine the ways in which Edebiyat-ı Cedide forges a comparable language and the tensions involved therein.

A New Shahrazad: The Travel Writings of Mahmooda Rizvia between India and Iraq during World War II

By: Andrew Amstutz

Abstract: In 1945, Mahmooda Rizvia, a prominent Urdu author from Sindh, published a travel account of her journey across the Arabian Sea from British India to Iraq during World War II. In her travel account, Rizvia conceptualized the declining British Empire as a dynamic space for Muslim renewal that connected India to the Middle East. Moreover, she fashioned a singular autobiographical persona as an Urdu literary pioneer and woman traveler in the Muslim lands of the British Empire. In her writings, Rizvia focused on her distinctive observations of the ocean, the history of the Ottoman Empire, and her home province of Sindh's location as a historical nexus between South Asia and the Middle East. In contrast to the expectations of modesty and de-emphasis on the self in many Muslim women's autobiographical narratives in the colonial era, Rizvia fashioned a pious, yet unapologetically self-promotional, autobiographical persona. In conversation with recent scholarship on Muslim cosmopolitanism, women's autobiographical writing, and travel literature, this article points to the development of an influential project of Muslim cosmopolitanism in late colonial Sindh that blurred the lines between British imperialism, pan-Islamic ambitions, and nationalism during the closing days of World War II.

Novel Anxieties: An Ottoman Counter-discourse on Time and Space

By: Beyza Lorenz

Abstract: Building on recent scholarship on postcolonial theory and the history of the modern Middle East, this article analyzes the viewpoints of late nineteenth-century Ottoman novelists on the modernization projects of the Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat periods. It argues that the Ottoman novelists Ahmet Midhat, Fatma Aliye, and Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem developed a counter-discourse against rapid modernization projects in Istanbul. Through a depiction of everyday life experiences related to the latest inventions of modern technology, Ottoman novelists thematize individual anxieties on a range of topics, which included a criticism of productivity, changing gender roles for men and women, and the new order of time and space. Keeping in mind that drastic changes in technology introduced distinctive modes of experiencing time and space in the nineteenth century, this article suggests that criticism by Ottoman intellectuals can be better understood within the context of the reaction to shifting time-space schemes and the proliferation of new technologies across the globe.

Critical Studies on Terrorism (Volume 13, Issue 3)

Good radicals? Trajectories of pro-Kurdish political and militant mobilisation to the wars in Syria, Turkey and Iraq

By: Nerina Weiss

Abstract: This article explores the interrelation of volunteering, violence and ideology by studying the pro-Kurdish political and militant mobilisation to the wars in Syria, Turkey and Iraq. Focusing especially on the trajectories, motives and reflections of foreign volunteers in different Kurdish militant groups, I argue that ideology is neither a precondition nor a necessary reason for mobilisation to an armed group. In many cases, it is the other way around, as mobilisation to violence is often the source of ideological conviction.

The role of religion in Islamist radicalisation processes

By: Jeppe Fuglsang Larsen

Abstract: This article attempts to bridge the gap between social and religious explanations for Islamist radicalisation in the West by understanding the role of religion through the under-utilised perspective of sociology of religious emotions and Wiktorowicz’s concept of cognitive openness. The article draws on interviews with 23 different actors with first-hand knowledge of Islamist radicalisation, and analyses five in-depth interviews with former so-called radicals, four of whom were converts to Islam. The analysis thus has a special focus on the narratives and experiences of converts to radical Islamist worldviews. The radicalisation process of the formers was characterised by an interplay between context specific experiences and individual religiosity. There are social causes for seeking religion as it can provide an emotional meaningfulness in a state of cognitive openness connected to personal family social background, which can stretch over a long period. However, the interviews also show that religiosity affects the social: the religious emotions within radical Islamist groups create a tight-knit community of self-perceived righteous believers, tied to an emotional experience of empowerment that amplifies their radicalisation. The article concludes that the primary role of religion is to structure and direct the emotions from which so-called radical Islamists think and act within religious frameworks.

Medico-political metaphors of counter-terrorism: The case of Turkey

By: Tuncer Beyribey

Abstract: Medico-political metaphors can be defined as the organic imagining of a society (re)creating a normative distinction between identity and difference and mobilising specific types of political answers in which threats are constructed through organic language. Accordingly, society is made to resemble a body, thus creating a sense of unity, integrity and finitude, while terrorism is made to resemble a “pathology” that “infects”, weakens and ultimately destroys the healthy social body. In this narrative, “terrorists” are rendered as abnormal and external, and thus terrorism is depoliticised. It is fictionalised as a “technical” issue necessitating expert intervention, in a manner resembling the doctor-patient relationship. To date, there has been little research on the interaction between this organic understanding of society and the Turkish experience of counter-terrorism practices. Therefore, taking as its context the Syrian civil war, this article aims to analyse how medico-political metaphors in the counter-terrorism discourse of the Turkish government function as boundary-producing practices. The article critically assesses how medico-political metaphors in terrorism discourse (re)constitute a power relationship through abnormalisation, externalisation and depoliticisation, and thus contribute to Critical Terrorism Studies by highlighting how policy makers use medico-political metaphors to constitute a reality about terrorism in order to mobilise certain political responses.

A Critical Perspective on Terrorism: Case Study of Jundallah and Jeish ul-Adl in Iran

By: Fatemeh Shayan

Abstract: An extensive body of traditional terrorism research exists where the focus is on Iran as a terrorist state and a terrorism sponsor. This article explores an alternative terrorism narrative by examining the non-state actors, Jundallah and Jeish ul-Adl. The deficiency of information in the literature is addressed by applying the first and second-order critique approach of Richard Jackson’s knowledge, power and politics theoretical framework in contrast with the traditional terrorism studies approach. A first-order critique seeks to destabilise the accepted knowledge that Iran is both a terrorist state and a terrorism sponsor. This provides the grounds to study other aspects of “knowing” in relation to the second-order critique, where a critical ground outside the discourse suggests that Iranian officials have declared that the non-state terrorist actors of Jundallah and Jeish ul-Adl constitute a threat to Iran’s political stability. The outcome of the analyses here bridges the gap between the new aspect of terrorism, the non-state actors, and critical terrorism studies in order to contest the traditional discussion of terrorism in Iran. The rationale behind new terrorism varies and necessitates that new meanings and strategies be adopted in relation to Iran.

Democratization (Volume 27, Issue 5)

Peacemaking referendums: the use of direct democracy in peace processes

By: Katherine Collin

Abstract: The use of referendums to forge, ratify and enact peace agreements is on the rise. In growing numbers, peacemakers have organized referendums in order to aid peace talks and ameliorate post-settlement peacebuilding. Despite this increasingly common practice, there is little consensus on whether referendums help or hurt peace. Such votes can be uniquely powerful tools for addressing sovereignty incompatibilities driving armed conflict. However, dangerous outcomes include mass violence, intensified polarization, and the undermining peace agreement implementation. Based on 31 case studies and elite interviews conducted in Colombia, Cyprus, East Timor, Indonesia, and South Sudan, this article elaborates an analytical framework for the uses of referendums in peace processes and identifies specific benefits and risks associated with differing types. I argue that referendums can improve peacemaking and conditions for implementing negotiated settlements when they are well-designed and well-implemented.

The role of digital media in the 2011 Egyptian revolution

By: Shingo Hamanaka

Abstract: The Egyptian uprising in January 2011, widely known as the 25 January Revolution, was initially claimed to have been caused by the internet. However, the relationship between social media and participation in the anti-regime demonstrations is contested and opaque. This article explores this relationship through both a theoretical and empirical approach. More concretely, by using two survey data sets, we examine a hypothesis derived from a diffusion model of information and social movement theory. The two key findings are: (1) vanguards of the demonstrations were more active on social media than followers during the revolution, and (2) active bloggers tended to participate in demonstrations against the Mubarak regime. These findings contradict previous findings of social media’s limited effect and indicate that social media diminishes the collective action problem in anti-government protests. They also indicate that the concept of political opportunity structure is useful for understanding the revolution.

Hopes and disappointments: regime change and support for democracy after the Arab Uprisings

By: M. Tahir Kilavuz, Nathanael Gratias Sumaktoyo

Abstract: What happened to citizens’ support for democracy after the Arab Uprisings? Did the support increase, stay the same, or actually decrease after all the protests, regime changes, and reforms? Which theories of citizens’ political attitudes best explain these dynamics? Analysing two waves of the Arab Barometer surveys and employing an item-response method that offers methodological improvements compared to previous studies, this article finds that support for democracy actually decreased in countries that successfully overthrew their dictators during the Uprisings. Following the arguments that emphasize the rational evaluations of citizens, it argues that in countries that had an experience with a freer political system, such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, challenges of democratization and the poor political and economic performances of the governments left citizens disappointed. Despite the hopes that people had at the onset of the Uprisings, the disappointments generated by the unmet expectations eventually led to a decline in support for democracy.

Autocracy login: internet censorship and civil society in the digital age

By: Chun-Chih Chang, Thung-Hong Lin

Abstract: This study discusses whether the internet contributes to the rise of civil society or provides the state with a means to suppress civil society. By examining cross-sectional time-series data of 153 countries from 1995 to 2018, this study demonstrates that internet censorship is a reactive strategy used by autocracies to suppress civil society. Although rapid internet diffusion might undermine internet censorship in autocracies, since the Arab Spring, the use of censorship as a political reaction to technological diffusion and contentious politics worldwide has damaged the development of civil society. The autocratic reactive approach contributes to our understanding of information and communication technology, civil society, and authoritarianism. A more nuanced illustration of internet politics delivers a warning of technological threats to civil society.

European Journal of International Relations (Volume 26, Issue 2)

Roles, identity, and security: foreign policy contestation in monarchical Kuwait

By: Sean Yom

Abstract: The 2011–2012 Arab Spring posed an existential threat to the Gulf Cooperation Council’s six monarchies. A major response was the 2012 GCC Internal Security Pact, an innovative project to enhance cross-border repression of domestic opposition and thus bolster collective security. Yet despite its historic weakness, ongoing domestic unrest, and initial enthusiasm for the agreement, Kuwait’s monarchy did not ultimately ratify the accord. Building on theories of foreign policy roles and identity, this article presents an ideational explanation for this puzzle. The Security Pact failed because it sparked identity contestation. For many Kuwaitis, the prospect of the Sabah monarchy imposing this scheme for greater repression was incompatible with the regime’s historical role of tolerating domestic pluralism and protecting Kuwait from foreign pressures. This role conception of a tolerant protector flowed from historical understandings and collective memory and was cognitively tied to a national self-conception of “Kuwaiti-ness.” The mobilizational scope and symbolic power of this popular opposition convinced the regime to acquiesce, despite possessing the strategic incentive and resources to impose the treaty by force. The Kuwaiti case therefore exemplifies how domestic contestation over regime identities and roles can constrain foreign policy behavior, even in authoritarian states facing severe crises of insecurity.

European Journal of Political Research (Volume 59, Issue 3)

Terrorist attacks and Europeans’ attitudes towards immigrants: An experimental approach

By: Mónica Ferrín Moreno Mancosu Teresa M. Cappiali

Abstract: Over the past several years an increasing number of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam and targeting civilians have taken place in many Western democracies, calling for more research on the impact of these exogenous events on citizens’ attitudes towards immigrants. Using a quasi‐experimental design, this study examines the short‐term effect of the Paris attacks of the night of 13 November 2015 on the attitudes towards European Union (EU) and non‐EU immigrants across 28 EU countries. Employing Eurobarometer 84.3 survey data collected in 28 European countries between 7 and 17 November 2015, the design allows the testing of individual attitudes before and after the Paris attacks and the spillover effects of this event in all European countries. It is found that the Paris attacks had a significant negative effect on attitudes towards immigrants, especially among educated and left‐wing individuals. Moreover, the negative effect was stronger in countries where the national political‐ideological climate was more positive towards immigrants. These findings are explained by theorising that first emotional reactions to the attack are the results of coping mechanisms whereby individuals are confronted with disconfirmation/confirmation of their previous beliefs: individuals who experience stronger stereotype disconfirmation are the most negatively affected by the terrorist attack. Overall, the study holds important implications for understanding the short‐term impact of terrorist attacks on public attitudes towards immigrants.

Government and Opposition (Volume 55, Issue 3)

Analysing Payoff Salience in Coalition Allocation: Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Committee Chairs

By: Matt Evans

Abstract: Research during the past six decades has found that parties joining coalition governments receive payoffs, in the form of government posts, in proportion to their coalition share. These findings, however, do not indicate which coalition partners receive payoffs that will most enable them to influence their preferred policies. This article joins recent qualitative analyses of coalition allocation and examines payoffs in terms of the salience of positions relative to the policy goals of the parties receiving them. The single-country study of eight Israeli governments from 1992 to 2015 integrates quantitative and qualitative analyses of coalition payoffs. This article contributes to coalition allocation research by expanding the scope of coalition payoffs to include junior ministers and committee chairs, and by distinguishing payoff outcomes for different party families. The results show an edge for formateur parties in obtaining policy-salient ministerial payoffs and an advantage to non-formateurs for policy-salient deputy (junior) minister positions.

Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development (Volume 41, Issue 2)

Tax Tilting and Tax Smoothing: Evidence from South Africa and Turkey     

By: Mesut Karakas, Taner Turan

Abstract: This paper examines the existence of tax smoothing hypothesis in two emerging economies: South Africa and Turkey. To test the tax smoothing hypothesis, we use the relationship between the budget surpluses and government expenditures. Before testing the hypothesis, we determine and filter the effect of tax tilting. Due to importance of seigniorage revenues in emerging economies, we add these revenues to tax receipts in order to cope with inflationary taxation. The results of our study show that tax tilting is common both in South African and Turkish fiscal policies. More importantly, our overall findings lend evidence against the existence of tax smoothing in South Africa and Turkey.

Model of Optimal Zakat Allocation by Using Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

By: Vita Sarasi, Ina Primiana, Yunizar

Abstract: An optimization model of allocation of zakat fund and recipients is developed based on the Data Envelopment Analysis - Resource Allocation Model (DEA-RAM). The quantitative method plays an important role in optimal allocation of zakat delivery programs performed by some zakat institutions; that is by reallocation of initial setting of the zakat fund and beneficiaries’ numbers. It raises the needs of improvements in their recent strategies on the programs by the institutions. Zakat institutions, even the government as regulator, should have a clear focus on the povertyempowerment-based programs in providing needed capitals for poverty empowerment. They are expected to create certain conditions in order to prevent excessive of fund allocation for the charity-based delivery programs.

Availability of General Control Procedures of the Security of Accounting Information System (AIS): Evidence from Yemen 

By: Yahya Maresh Hamid Hazaa, Jogdand D. A

Abstract: Accounting information system AIS is the most important tool on which the institutions rely so as to conduct their business. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the availability of general control procedures GCP in order to protect the security of AIS. The main objective of this study is to determine the extent of the availability of GCP of AIS security in commercial banks in Yemen. A descriptive analytical approach is used. Data is collected through a questionnaire distributed to the principals and specialists in departments of finance, information technology IT, and internal auditor in the head offices of commercial banks. Out of the distributed questionnaire, only 78 are valid and suitable for the analysis. The study finds that there is an availability of GCP depending on organizational control, security, and protection procedures in maintaining AIS. It also encourages the management of commercial banks to pay attention to a high-level of GCP in their AIS.

Tourism Revenue and Economic Growth Relation in Turkey: Evidence of Symmetrical, Asymmetrical and the Rolling Window Regressions 

By: Emirhan Yenişehirlioğlu, İzzet Taşar, Tayfur Bayat

Abstract: Tourism industry is one of the important determinants of economic growth in the Turkish economy. Tourism industry also comes into prominence as one of the key factors in economic growth due to its foreign currency inflow effect and its multiplier effect being higher compared to other industries. Previous studies show that increase in tourism revenues has a direct positive contribution to economic growth in developed and developing countries. In this study we investigated the 1995-2017 period, tourism income by the method parameter estimates relationship between economic growth in Turkey's economy. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) regression models, and bootstrap rolling window causality parameter tests were used in the empirical analysis. As a result of the empirical analysis, positive contribution to economic growth from the positive component of tourism income in symmetrical regression and asymmetric regression, asymmetric regression was found to be a negative contribution to economic growth from the negative component of tourism income. According to rolling window regression from tourism income to economic growth there is a positive effect between 2010-2015 and negative effect between 2016-2017.

Redevelopment Of The Matching Model: Decortications And Application On The Tunisian Labor Market

By: Monem Abidi

Abstract: The article proposes to build a new platform that traces more robust legibility between skilled and unskilled unemployment on the labor market, by dissecting the factors that influence the decision-making process regarding firms and employment people. This article reviews the matching model, thus specifying a new formulation, focusing on the hiring probabilities and taking into account the depreciation of diplomas. This demarcation makes it possible to compare the probabilities of hiring and leaving unemployment of these two categories according to different parameters such as the tension on the labor market and the unemployment rate of graduates. Since then, we have been synthesizing the joint behavior of unemployed people and companies. This modeling allows a better understanding of the probability of exit from unemployment, determination of wages, utilities and equilibrium. The calibration, of the decomposition that we have constructed from data relating to the Tunisian economy, allows us to understand the interactions between the different social partners in terms of tension on the labor market, as well as to weigh the impact of government profit transfer policy

Oil prices and Islamic banks performance in the OIC countries: Evidence from the Dynamic GMM approaches

By: Sutan Emir Hidayat, Muhammad Rizky Prima Sakti

Abstract: This study uses an extensive data set consisting of 81 Islamic banks from Muslim countries with historical yearly data (2006 to 2015) and examines the extent to which the oil production can affecting the performance of Islamic banks in those countries. Using the Dynamic GMM model as a baseline results, we find that only 4.2% to 4.8% of the Islamic banks profitability react directly to the change in oil prices. However, we observe that 46% to 60% of the Islamic banks profitability react indirectly to the change in oil prices through the macroeconomic factors. The results pass several robustness tests.

Journal of Institutional Economics (Volume 16, Issue 4)

Digital protectionism and national planning in the age of the internet: the case of Iran

By: Altug Yalcintas, Naseraddin Alizadeh

Abstract: What do regulations in the developing world tell us about the internet economy? In this paper, we argue that the ways in which developing nation states adjust to and legislate the internet depends upon whether they possess a national planning strategy for international data traffic. Focusing our attention on the global trade of intangible goods in Iran, we aim to demonstrate that digital protectionism causes, to varying degrees, suppression, censorship, and the violation of freedom of speech and other civil rights on the internet. Our results show that digital protectionism generated an emergence of domestic start-ups, with companies, such as Facenema and Soroush, operating in the Iranian market in the absence of global rivals such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Yet, digital protectionism and sanction-induced barriers have triggered social problems, besides the emergence of parastatals, securing the economy to an inefficient social and economic path towards digital development.

Journal of the American Oriental Society (Volume 140, Issue 3)

An Unrecognized Prophetic Ostracon from Ḥorvat ʿUza

By: Moise Isaac

Abstract: The uncertainty concerning the genre of the Ḥorvatʿ'Uza ostracon 1 is problematized through the lens of linguistic anthropology. Although a denotative approach to the linguistic forms in this Hebrew ostracon is well attested, less attention has been paid to the indexical meaning of specific stylistic features and their semiotic register implications. Several linguistic-ideological concepts are drawn upon to examine how the act of inscription and specialized linguistic forms align the discursive genre of the ostracon with prophecy. I seek to determine what salient discourse forms in the ostracon index the employment of habitual utterance styles of prophecy that construct context, genre, and social identity.

Infidel or Paganus? The Polysemy of kafara in the Quran

By: Juan Cole

Abstract: This article explores the meaning of the root k-f-r in the Quran, questioning the practice of translating the noun kāfir as “infidel.” It argues for a distinction between the idiomatic phrasal verb kafara bi-, which does mean to reject or disbelieve, and the simple intransitive verb kafara and its deverbal nouns, which are used in the Quran in a large number of different ways. This polysemy is explored through contextual readings of Quran passages. It is argued that the noun kāfir, unlike the verb kafara, is used only with regard to adherents of traditional polytheism and is not deployed in an unmodified way with regard to Jews and Christians. The possible influence on the Arabic kafara of Greek and Latin conceptions is also broached.

A Fresh Analysis of the Origin and Diachronic Development of “Dialectal Tanwīn” in Arabic

By: Phillip W. Stokes

Abstract: Scholars of Arabic dialects have long noted the occurrence of a morpheme in a widespread number of dialects, realized -ən or -an, frequently suffixed to morphologically indefinite nouns, especially when followed by an adjective. Separately, another morpheme, realized -un or -u, is attested with a slightly different distribution in the dialects of western Yemen. Traditionally, scholars have interpreted both morphemes as reflexes of an etymological case vowel + tanwīn (Blau 1981), traditionally labeled “dialectal tanwīn.” In this paper, I offer a new reconstruction of the origin and diachronic development of this morpheme. Throughout I integrate data and insights from comparative Semitics, as well as recently studied pre-Islamic epigraphic and textual materials, in order to break the familiar Classical Arabic / dialectal Arabic dichotomy and reframe the way in which historiography of features in the dialects is conducted.

Law & Development Review (Volume 13, Issue 2)

Legal Origin, Institutional Quality, and Islamic Finance Development: Does Shari’a Matter?

By: Rihab Grassa

Abstract: Previous studies on financial development have shown that differences in the legal origin explain differences in financial development. Using historical comparisons and cross-country regressions for 40 countries observed for the period from 2005 to 2018, our research assesses how different legal origins have affected the development of Islamic finance worldwide. More particularly, our research assesses empirically why and how the adoption of Shari’a, wholly or partially (combined with common or civil law), could explain the level of development of Islamic finance in different jurisdictions. Our primary results show that countries adopting a Shari’a legal system have a very well-developed Islamic financial system. Moreover, countries adopting a mixed legal system based on common law and Shari’a law have sufficient flexibility within their legal systems to make changes to their laws in response to the changing socioeconomic conditions, and this has helped the development of the Islamic financial industry. However, countries adopting a mixed legal system based on both civil law and Shari’a law appear less flexible in making changes to their old laws and this thwarted the development of the Islamic financial industry in these countries. Furthermore, we have found that the concentration of a Muslim population (the percentage of Muslim population) along with the level of income have both had a positive effect on the development of Islamic banking assets and on the development of Islamic banking as a whole.

Islamic Finance as a Vehicle to Promote Improved Intellectual Property Rights in the Gulf Cooperation Council

By: Nadia Naim

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to assess how Islamic finance can act as a vehicle to enhance the current intellectual property rights regime in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Islamic finance has developed within the constraints of sharia law and has been a growth sector for the GCC. This article will identify the main principles of Islamic finance that contribute to the success of Islamic finance, which can enhance intellectual property protection in the GCC. The main sharia-compliant areas to be considered are musharaka, mudaraba, murabaha, takaful, istisna, ijara, salam and sukuk. The article will outline the founding principles of Islamic finance, the governance of sharia boards, development of Islamic finance in the individual GCC states, different frameworks of sharia-compliant investment products and the impact of intellectual property rights on the varying Islamic finance investment tools. Furthermore, the article will discuss an integrated approach to intellectual property rights which learns lessons from the Islamic finance sector in relation to infrastructure, regulation and sharia compliance. The lessons learnt from Islamic finance will inform the overall framework of recommendations for an Islamic intellectual property model. The use of Islamic finance as a vehicle to promote better intellectual property rights in terms of defining a new intellectual property approach is novel. It is aimed at spearheading further research in this area, and it will form a part of the overall integrated approach proposals to intellectual property protection in the GCC and beyond.

Shari’a Law and Its Impact on the Development of Muslim and Non-Muslim Business Relations in the United Arab Emirates

By: Rehanna Nurmohamed

Abstract: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is situated near the Persian Gulf in the North Eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Established in 1971 by the late Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE forms a federation of seven Emirates consisting of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah (The Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah had officially joined the federation on the 11th of February 1972.), and Fujairah. Because of its diversity and cosmopolitan nature, the country has always been a crossroad and prime location for people and trade. As Islam and Islamic principles have influenced Gulf societies in the very core of its existence, the Islamic way of conduct in trade relations and dispute resolutions are an element of paramount significance. This Article explores the role of Shari’a Law and its impact on the economic development of Muslim and non-Muslim business relations in the UAE and in particular in the Emirate of Dubai. The law and development from an Islamic perspective introduces a new vision on the theories of law and development by addressing the influence of Shari’a Law in economic development. In international trade relations and dispute resolution mechanisms such as formal contract enforcements in the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) and the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC) the plurality of laws leads to the adoption of Shari’a Law over the Civil and Common Law regimes.

Anti-Money Laundering Regulation and Practice of Islamic Banks in the United Arab Emirates: A Case Study

By: Ajay Kumar

Abstract: Banks are key institutions in the economic development of a country, but they are prone to money laundering (ML) as well. Such incidents could lead to sanctions and loss of reputation. To mitigate such risks, banks are required to follow Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations. Presently, there are no separate or specific AML regulatory requirements for Islamic banks (IBs). Apart from regulations, understanding practices also help explicate compliance to laws (spirit), by those who apply it. Since the AML practices of IBs have not been systematically analysed, we look at their practices (the United Arab Emirates) to understand whether they have adopted specific AML processes. Owing to the lack of literature on such practices, a survey was carried out using a standard questionnaire. The questionnaire was supplied to the AML/compliance departments, and the results are based on a sample size of three banks. The survey results show that the IBs adopt Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) to check laundering. Crucially, questions pertaining to the AML risk arising from the potential vested interest/s (theoretical) that the IBs themselves are likely to have in the venture remain unanswered.

Oriens (Volume 48, Issue 1-2)

Mereology in Kalām: A New Reading of the Proof from Accidents for Creation

By: Ayman Shihadeh

Abstract: The objective of this article is twofold. First, it investigates mereology in medieval Islamic theology, particularly the theologians’ claim that the whole is identical to its parts and accordingly that at least some attributes common to the parts must by extension be attributed of the whole. This claim was refuted by philosophers and, from the eleventh century onwards, an increasing number of theologians. Second, it offers a new interpretation of the standard theological proof from accidents for creation ex nihilo, to which this problem was central. A wide range of early, classical and later theological and philosophical sources are consulted.

Iʿtibārī Concepts in Suhrawardī: The Case of Substance

By: Jari Kaukua

Abstract: Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191) famously criticised the central concepts of Avicennian metaphysics as merely mind-dependent (or iʿtibārī) notions. This paper aims to show that despite his critique, Suhrawardī held that these concepts are meaningful, indeed necessary for human cognition. By the same token, it is argued that their re-emergence in Suhrawardī’s ishrāqī metaphysics is not a matter of incoherence. Although the paper’s findings can be generalised to hold of all iʿtibārī concepts, mutatis mutandis, our focus is on the concept of substance, mainly because of the importance of the concept of ‘dusky substance’ in ishrāqī metaphysics.

Beyond Atoms and Accidents: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and the New Ontology of Postclassical Kalām

By: Bilal Ibrahim

Abstract: This article explores a novel approach to the analysis of the external world in postclassical Ashʿarite kalām. While discussions of physical reality and its fundamental constituents in the classical period of Islamic thought turned chiefly on the opposing views of kalām atomism and Aristotelian hylomorphism, in the postclassical period kalām thinkers in the Ashʿarite tradition forge a new frame of inquiry. Beginning most earnestly with the philosophical works of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, a critical approach is developed addressing received views in ontology, including the relation of substance to accident, the status of Aristotelian form and matter, and part-to-whole relations. Drawing on Rāzī’s al-Mulakhkhaṣ and al-Mabāḥith, kalām thinkers develop several concepts to distinguish arbitrary or mind-dependent (iʿtibārī) composites (‘man-plus-stone’) from non-arbitrary composites (e.g., tree, paste, and house). Most notably, they adopt a substance-plus-accident ontology in opposition to the Aristotelian hylomorphism of falsafa. The mutakallimūn will conceive of composites as possessing ‘real unity’ (ḥaqīqa muttaḥida) while dispensing with the explanatory and causal role of Aristotelian substantial forms.

“From the One, Only One Proceeds”: The Post-Classical Reception of a Key Principle of Avicenna’s Metaphysics

By: Wahid M. Amin

Abstract: The separated intellects play a crucial but notoriously controversial role within the Neoplatonic systems of al-Fārābī and Avicenna. While both thinkers provide an array of proofs to support the existence of such immaterial substances, the most enduring of these is based on a metaphysical rule of Avicenna’s metaphysics known as the “rule of one” (qāʿidat al-wāḥid): that from the One, only one proceeds (lā yaṣdur ʿan l-wāḥid illā l-wāḥid). The following paper explores the various ways in which Avicenna defended this principle and traces their reception in the post-classical period, thereby showing how vigorously the question of emanation was debated among scholars of the later medieval period.

The Influence of the Avicennan Theory of Science on Philosophical Sufism: The Concept of the Divine Science in Qūnawī and Fanārī

By: Yusuf Daşdemir

Abstract: This article discusses the application of the Avicennan theory of demonstrative science on taṣawwuf, or the Divine Science (al-ʿilm al-ilāhī), by members of the Akbarian tradition, particularly Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) stepson and most influential disciple, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 1274), and his commentators, among whom the most prominent was Mullā Muḥammad b. Ḥamza al-Fanārī (d. 1431). It aims to find out what kind of relationship was developed between Avicennan logic and Sufism by the two members of the Akbarian school in the post-classical Islamic thought. It also seeks to show that the convergence between different currents of Islamic thought—Sufism and philosophy in this case—led to some adaptation problems and internal inconsistencies for these currents.

Ṣadrā’s Use of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya in the Asfār

By: Cécile Bonmariage

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show that, in several chapters of the Asfār, Ṣadrā’s use of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Mabāhith al-mashriqiyya is far more extensive than what a superficial reading, focusing only on explicit quotations, might indicate, and to explore what knowing this can bring to our reading of Ṣadrā’s text. It analyzes what Ṣadrā does with his source and examines a few examples to illustrate why it matters to know.

An Avicennian Engagement with and Appropriation of Mullā Ṣadrā Šīrāzī (d. 1045/1636): The Case of Mahdī Narāqī (d. 1209/1795)

By: Sajjad H. Rizvi

Abstract: Recent scholarship on Avicenna and Avicennism has tended to focus on the spread and dissemination of his ideas in the early centuries. However, the later readings and contestations of Avicennism especially from the Safavid period onwards have been broadly neglected. In this paper on the most important philosopher of eighteenth-century Iran, Mahdī Narāqī, I provide a case study of the enduring significance of Avicennism, but one which has been transformed by Mullā Ṣadrā’s critical reading of Avicenna. Narāqī demonstrates how Avicenna had been transformed and how the metaphysical debates between Avicennism and Mullā Ṣadrā had led to new synthetical positions.

Perspectives on Politics (Volume 18, Issue 2)

Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa

By: Max Gallien

Abstract: Contemporary writing on North African borderlands invokes the idea of a general, unregulated porosity through which small-scale informal traders of food or textiles move alongside drug smugglers and terrorists. I challenge that conception, demonstrating that the vast majority of smuggling activity is in fact highly regulated through a dense network of informal institutions that determine the costs, quantity, and types of goods that can pass through certain nodes, typically segmenting licit from illicit goods.
While informal, the institutions regulating this trade are largely impersonal and contain third-party enforcement, hence providing a direct empirical challenge to common characterisations of informal institutions in political science. I argue that revisiting the characteristics associated with informal institutions, and understanding them as contingent on their political environment, can provide a new starting point for studying institutions, the politics of informality, state capacity, and the regulation of illegal economies.

Hard-to-Survey Populations and Respondent-Driven Sampling: Expanding the Political Science Toolbox

By: Rana B. Khoury

Abstract: Survey research can generate knowledge that is central to the study of collective action, public opinion, and political participation. Unfortunately, many populations—from undocumented migrants to right-wing activists and oligarchs—are hidden, lack sampling frames, or are otherwise hard to survey. An approach to hard-to-survey populations commonly taken by researchers in other disciplines is largely missing from the toolbox of political science methods: respondent-driven sampling (RDS). By leveraging relations of trust, RDS accesses hard-to-survey populations; it also promotes representativeness, systematizes data collection, and, notably, supports population inference. In approximating probability sampling, RDS makes strong assumptions. Yet if strengthened by an integrative multimethod research design, it can shed light on otherwise concealed—and critical—political preferences and behaviors among many populations of interest. Through describing one of the first applications of RDS in political science, this article provides empirically grounded guidance via a study of activist refugees from Syria. Refugees are prototypical hard-to-survey populations, and mobilized ones are even more so; yet the study demonstrates that RDS can provide a systematic and representative account of a vulnerable population engaged in major political phenomena.

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance (Volume 16, Issue 2)

Is the Elimination of Food Subsidies the Right Policy to Address Lebanon’s Public Finance Crisis?

By: Paul Makdissi, Mohamad Seif Edine

Abstract: In this paper, we use a positional dominance approach to assess the desirability of eliminating food subsidies in Lebanon. The analysis is based on aggregate information from the 2004 to 2005 National Survey of Households Living Conditions. We use this aggregate information on expenditure patterns to reconstruct rough estimates of s-concentration curves and efficiency-cost ratio sets. Evidences suggest that the Lebanese government should probably find other avenues to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Does Bank Profitability Stimulate Economic Growth in the Arab Region?

By: Omar Ghazy Aziz

Abstract: This study empirically investigates the impact of bank profitability, as a complementary measure of financial development, on growth in the Arab countries between 1985 and 2016. Using a generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation to test the impact of the bank profitability on growth, this study utilises two variables in the econometric model which are return on assets and return on equity. This study reveals that both variables of bank profitability are positive and significant. This confirms that the bank profitability, beside other financial development variables, has positive impact on the growth. This study points out some important implications based on this result.

Is there a Kuznets Curve in the Arab Region? An Empirical Investigation

By: Adham Sayed

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical study of the Kuznets curve in Arab countries using a dataset from 12 Arab countries over the period between 1990 and 2015. The analysis is carried out by employing a panel data method, mainly the fixed-effect and interactive fixed-effect models, which take into account the economic integration of countries, and the frequent political, financial and social shocks. Our results show that the Kuznets curve does not characterize economic development in the Arab region and that trade, urbanization and education positively impact income inequality.

World Politics (Volume 72, Issue 3)

Networks, Informal Governance, and Ethnic Violence in a Syrian City

By: Kevin Mazur

Abstract: In cross-national studies, ethnic exclusion is robustly associated with the onset of violent challenge to incumbent regimes. But significant variation remains at the subnational level—not all members of an excluded ethnic group join in challenge. This article accounts for intra-ethnic group variation in terms of the network properties of local communities, nested within ethnic groups, and the informal ties that regimes forge to some segments of the ethnically excluded population. Mobilization within an excluded ethnic group is most likely among local communities where members are densely linked to one another and lack network access to state-controlled resources. Drawing on a case study of the Syrian city of Homs in the 2011 uprising, this article demonstrates how the Syrian regime’s strategies of managing the Sunni population of Homs shaped patterns of challenge. On the one hand, the state’s toleration of spontaneous settlements on the city’s periphery helped to reproduce dense network ties. On the other hand, the regime’s informal bargains with customary leaders instrumentalized those ties to manage local populations. These bargains could not withstand the regime’s use of violence against challengers, which meant that these same local networks became crucial factors in impelling and sustaining costly antiregime mobilization.

Acta Politica (Volume 55, Issue 3)

A cosmopolitan–communitarian cleavage around the world? Evidence from ideological polarization and party–voter linkages

By: Oliver Strijbis, Joschua Helmer, Pieter de Wilde

Abstract: Can structural conflict over globalization be observed outside Western Europe? When does such a cosmopolitan–communitarian cleavage emerge? These questions are highly relevant as similar conflicts over open borders seem to take place in various countries. To answer these questions, we analyze electoral competition on issues related to globalization such as migration and international integration in Germany, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, and the U.S. We investigate ideological polarization on these two issues at the level of both voters and parties, as well as their linkage through structural and issue voting. At the level of the voters, we analyze preferences on the two issue dimensions with data from the World Values Survey. In order to arrive at valid measures of parties’ policy positions on the same dimensions, we combine data from electoral manifestos, public claims data, and expert surveys. Finally, we link voters’ structural positions and issue preferences with parties’ policy positions through a series of ordered logistic regressions. Our comparative analysis reveals that in our sample a cosmopolitan–communitarian cleavage can be observed only among the affluent immigration countries. We discuss potential explanations for this finding.

Electoral Studies (Volume 66)

Partisanship, media and the objective economy: Sources of individual-level economic assessments

By: Alper H. Yagci, Cem Oyvat

Abstract: Economic voting studies have repeatedly shown that voter's assessment of incumbent economic performance is important for the vote decision. However, there is little work explaining how individuals form their economic assessments. Utilizing individual-level data from Turkey, we find that variation in retrospective assessments can actually be predicted by individual income growth rates over the previous year, and the association is stronger for pocketbook assessments. Nonetheless, partisanship and media are important sources of bias, especially for sociotropic assessments. Controlled for partisanship, viewers of pro-government media are more likely to think that the national economy has done better than their own household over the last year, and also more likely to believe that the economy would fare worse if the incumbent is replaced. The findings testify both to the capacity of the individuals to anchor their assessments to personal experience, and to the media's ability to weaken this anchor.

Global Media Journal (Volume 18, Issues 34 & 35)

Social Penetration of Egyptian Youth on Social Networking Sites between Conscious and Unconscious

By: Fedaa Mohamed, Amal El Sayed Draz

Abstract: It is known that Facebook and Instagram users can set their privacy settings to determine their levels of disclosure. That means that the users are the ones who decide the penetration level for themselves on those social networking sites (SNS). This study seeks to test whether those SNS can penetrate their users unconsciously and with their agreement at the same time or not. Through a qualitative study of highly engaged Facebook and Instagram users, this paper defines a new concept of SNS penetration, and claim that it happens forcefully and in an unconscious way. Focus groups will be conducted to answer the major research questions and a thematic analysis will be conducted on the focus groups to determine the topics discussed by the participants. The data will be analyzed within the frameworks of Social Penetration theory and Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory. Four main challenges will be tested as the study samples which are 10 Year Challenge, Kiki Challenge, The Ice Bucket Challenge and the Face App Age.

Role of Public Relations in Crisis Management with the Coronavirus Crisis as an Example: A Case Study on the UAE

By: Amed Kamil

Abstract: Public relations is a social phenomenon that has existed along with mankind in every society. It develops with the development of societies as a result of the social interaction among individuals, organizations, and bodies. Undoubtedly, society and the complexity of human relations in various fields have made people realize that these relationships are worthy of study, research, and investigation. The current world is filled with crises related to the many changes that have occurred in the areas of politics, economics, population, and environment. These changes have affected the social and organizational aspects of human life. The major challenge facing individuals and organizations are the changes in nature, size, and factors of movement, which have creating difficulties and problems and causing breakdowns in values, beliefs, and properties. Therefore, facing crises and raising awareness is necessary to avoid further material and moral losses. The research aims to shed light on the procedures followed by the UAE to manage the coronavirus crisis, which other governments can benefit from to manage the crisis in their countries.

International Affairs (Volume 96, Issue 4)

Drone imagery in Islamic State propaganda: flying like a state

By: Emil Archambault, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage

Abstract: This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018. Analysing the three principal uses of drone imagery by ISIS—images of drone strikes, images of other attacks and observation—we argue that ISIS's use of drones distinguishes itself from other state and non-state uses of drones primarily by its communicative and symbolic value. While ISIS’ use of drone strikes takes place in a tactical rather than strategic setting, its employment of drones to film VBIED attacks allows them to achieve a strategic effect. After outlining ISIS’ use of drones for combat air support and to film ground (particularly VBIED) attacks, we argue, drawing on political geography, that ISIS employs drones in propaganda to stake and reinforce a claim to sovereign control of territory, performed through the flying of aircraft. The use of drone imagery, we argue, taps into long-standing visual and discursive strategies which associate vertical hierarchy and flying with mastery and control, allowing ISIS to display attributes of aerial sovereignty. This article, through an analysis of ISIS drone propaganda, provides a rare insight into non-state actors’ perception of drones and the communicative value of drone images, in addition to suggesting further avenues for the incorporation of political–geographical studies of verticality into the study of political violence and rhetoric.

International Political Sociology (Volume 14, Issue 2)

Genocide in Sudan as Colonial Ecology

By: Louise Wise

Abstract: This article presents a novel theoretical and empirical account of the genesis and constitution of genocide in Sudan. To do so, it brings developments in critical genocide studies, notably the colonial and international “turns” and renewed attention to the scholarship of Lemkin, into dialogue with theoretical arguments about processual ontologies, complexity theory, and assemblage thinking. The latter provide a conceptual vocabulary to rethink the kind of ontological phenomenon that genocide constitutes. Rather than a discrete outcome or temporally and geographically bounded “event,” genocide in Sudan is seen as a heterogeneous, process-based, systemic entity. Challenging conventional genocide models generally and dominant narratives about Sudan specifically, the article argues that genocide in Sudan should be conceptualized as an historical internal frontier-based pattern that is constituted by three intersecting colonial forms: postcolonialism, internal colonialism, and neocolonialism. In doing so, it suggests a new way of thinking about the genocide-colonialism nexus. Tracing these three colonialisms, genocide appears not as an aberrant breakdown, violent outburst, or top-down ideological “master plan.” Neither is it a single, linearly unfolding process. Rather, it is emergent from a colonial ecology, its logic and potentiality imbricated with, and incipient within, a temporally and geographically expansive web of actors, processes, structures, relations, discourses, practices, and global forces.

Things and Terms: Relations Between Materiality, Language, and Politics in Post-revolutionary Iran

By: Kusha Sefat

Abstract: Departing from the canons of the cultural and material turns, this paper emphasizes the shortcomings that each body of work has shown in addressing political transformations. So doing, it argues that shifting relations between materiality and language occasion different kinds of politics. Specifically, the paper offers a new interpretation of one of the most critical epochs in the political history of modern Iran, by illustrating that the confluence of the material and linguistic worlds in the Islamic Republic during the 1980s, brought about a distinct political field in which relations between words and their material referents became fixed at the level of multitudes. This blocked public processes of performativity and resignification of signs in ways that might have threatened the centrality of the revolutionary leader, Imam Khomeini. What developed was a social milieu in which Khomeini never faced the possibility of defeat in politics.

International Politics (Volume 57, Issue 4)

How Mosul fell: the role of coup-proofing in the 2014 partial collapse of the Iraqi security forces

By: Quint Hoekstra

Abstract: The Islamic State’s capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014 was a seismic event. How can this be explained? This article answers this question by turning to the literature on anti-coup d’état measures and its side effects. It argues that, to prevent a military coup, Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki engaged in extensive ‘coup-proofing’ methods such as purging rivals, ethnic staking, creating a parallel security force, and increasing intra-government surveillance. These measures were highly effective in preventing a possible military putsch but did greatly reduce the Iraqi troops’ capacity and willingness to fight. Ethnic stacking in particular resulted in mass troop desertions when the Islamic State advanced in 2014. In advancing this argument, this article not only helps us better understand the dramatic fall of Mosul, but may also assist states to strengthen other international assistance programmes for governments fighting domestic insurgencies.

International Relations (Volume 34, Issue 2)

IR in the Middle East: foreign policy analysis in theoretical approaches

By: May Darwich, Juliet Kaarbo

Abstract: Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politics orientation in IRME. We argue that this scholarship ignores work in foreign policy analysis (FPA) with its psychological-oriented and agent-based dimensions and that this constitutes a missed opportunity for the study of the region. The article offers suggestions for incorporating FPA research into IRME and argues that an FPA perspective offers an alternative and complementary approach to the eclectic frameworks predominant in the scholarship on IRME.

International Studies Perspectives (Volume 21, Issue 3)

Role-Play Simulations and Changing Perceptions of the Other: Model UN, Model Arab League, and Student Views of the Muslim World

By: Vaughn Parnell Shannon

Abstract: Role-play simulation can both enhance knowledge and favorably affect perceptions of others in global politics. This article tests these hypotheses in two quasi-experimental pretest/post-test surveys of student perceptions of Muslims, Arabs, and the countries of the Middle East. Students engaging in Model UN and Model Arab League simulations representing Arab and Muslim countries demonstrated improved knowledge of the countries they represented and, more importantly, positive changes in perceptions of Muslims and the Muslim countries they represented. A control group demonstrated no such change in images of the Muslims, Arabs, and countries of the Middle East. This preliminary study shows the potential importance of role-play simulations in fostering cross-national and cross-cultural understanding in the fraught relationship between the Middle East and the West.

International Studies Quarterly (Volume 64, Issue 2)

Rebel Group Attrition and Reversion to Violence: Micro-Level Evidence from Syria

By: Vera Mironova, Karam Alhamad, Sam Whitt

Abstract: Why might former rebel combatants ever revert to fighting? The purpose of this research note is to inform the scholarly community on rebel incentives to remobilize for violence, a topic which has been underexplored in the literature, using evidence from an ongoing conflict: the case of volunteer ex-combatants in the Syrian civil war. In late 2014 to early 2015, we conducted surveys with 196 ex-fighters who served with different rebel group brigades linked to the Free Syrian Army as well as moderate Islamist and jihadist groups. Interviews were conducted in Gaziantep, Turkey, a common destination for combatants exiting the battlefield in rebel-held territory in northern Syria. We find that ex-fighters who are ideologically committed to the defeat of the Assad regime and/or the establishment of an Islamic state are most likely to want to return to combat. However, rebel group organizational deficiencies and strategies keep many highly motivated fighters away. Our results illustrate how rebel fighters might quickly remobilize when disciplined, well-organized rebel groups emerge on the scene, as evidenced by the rapid ascent of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Who Wants to Be a Suicide Bomber? Evidence from Islamic State Recruits

By: Andrea Michelle Morris

Abstract: Suicide attackers are frequently educated and economically well-off. These findings are widely taken as evidence that highly competent individuals predominately volunteer to conduct suicide operations. I evaluate this theory using a novel dataset on the personnel records of members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The dataset contains information on the characteristics of individuals who volunteer for suicide attacks as opposed to normal combat missions. The results reject the self-selection hypothesis, as education and religious knowledge are negatively associated with volunteering for suicide attacks. Instead, the findings are consistent with an alternative explanation for why high-quality individuals commit suicide attacks: leaders of terrorist organizations carefully screen recruits and select high-quality individuals to commit these attacks. The results highlight the importance of leader demand rather than soldier supply of suicide bombers.

Illiberal Norm Diffusion: How Do Governments Learn to Restrict Nongovernmental Organizations?

By: Marlies Glasius, Jelmer Schalk, Meta De Lange

Abstract: Recent decades have witnessed a global cascade of restrictive and repressive measures against nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). We theorize that state learning from observing the regional environment, rather than NGO growth per se or domestic unrest, explains this rapid diffusion of restrictions. We develop and test two hypotheses: (1) states adopt NGO restrictions in response to nonarmed bottom-up threats in their regional environment (“learning from threats”); (2) states adopt NGO restrictions through imitation of the legislative behavior of other states in their regional environment (“learning from examples”). Using an original dataset on NGO restrictions in ninety-six countries over a period of twenty-five years (1992–2016), we test these hypotheses by means of negative binomial regression and survival analyses, using spatially weighted techniques. We find very limited evidence for learning from threats, but consistent evidence for learning from examples. We corroborate this finding through close textual comparison of laws adopted in the Middle East and Africa, showing legal provisions being taken over almost verbatim from one law into another. In our conclusion, we spell out the implications for the quality of democracy and for theories of transition to a postliberal order, as well as for policy-makers, lawyers, and civil-society practitioners.

Journal of Democracy (Volume 31, Issue 3)

Authoritarian Survival: Iran's Republic of Repression

By: Misagh Parsa

Abstract: Although democracy spread throughout the world during the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of countries remain highly authoritarian. To understand authoritarianism's survival, analysts must examine the nature of these regimes, the social movements that rise to challenge them, and the likelihood that transformation will be revolutionary. This article argues that the persistence of the Iran's theocracy stems from a confluence of factors: repression of all independent political organizations; the instigation of external conflicts to provoke internal cohesion; shifting ideological claims and outright deception; and the absence of an alternative, unifying revolutionary contender or coalition, not to mention the ideological and political splits that divide the opposition.

The European Journal of Development Research (Volume 32, Issue 3)

Labor Productivity and Economic Growth in a Hydrocarbon-Dependent Economy: The Algerian Case, 1984–2015

By: Serge Rey, Sofiane Hazem

Abstract: This paper addresses the empirical question of whether productivity can help explain the economic growth dynamics in Algeria over the period from 1984 to 2015. The first aim of this article is to measure the productivity for both the economy as a whole and for different sectors. Then, original estimates of the capital stock are made using the permanent inventory method, which enables the evolutions of the total factor productivity to be inferred. On the basis of these estimates, it is shown that, while the Algerian economy as a whole performed fairly well in terms of economic growth, this was more the result of an increase in production factors, i.e., labor force, than of labor productivity growth, which was very limited. This partly reflects the weak performance of the hydrocarbons sector, which has experienced a decline in labor productivity since the early 2000s, while other sectors such as agriculture have experienced strong productivity gains.