[December 17, 2020 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia. Beginning in 2011, mass uprisings swept North Africa and the Middle East, spreading from the shores of Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and the Eastern Province of the Arabian Peninsula. A “second wave” of mass protests and uprisings manifested during 2019 in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The persistence of demands for popular sovereignty even in the face of re-entrenched authoritarianism, imperial intervention, and civil strife is a critical chapter in regional and global history.
In an effort to mark, interrogate, and reflect on the Arab uprisings, MESPI continues to produce resources for educators, researchers, students, and journalists to understand the last decade of political upheaval historically and in the lived present. For more, visit https://mespi.org/.
This installment presents peer-reviewed articles concerned with the Arab uprisings published in 2021 from our peer-reviewed articles database, building on our past bouquets on the region, such looking at the urprisings thorugh a spatial lens, regional/international networks and systems, and various theoretical and temporal lenses.]
The EU–Turkey deal in the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’: when intergovernmentalism cast a shadow on the EU’s normative power
By: Seda Gürkan, Ramona Coman
Published in Acta Politica Volume 56, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The aim of this article is to understand why the EU opted to conclude the ‘EU–Turkey refugee deal’ in March 2016 in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, despite the fact that the agreement deeply contradicts fundamental EU values and norms. The article seeks to explain the outcome—the conclusion of the EU–Turkey refugee deal—by analysing not only the ability of EU institutions to shape decisions, but also their motivations, ideas and preferences in justifying the EU’s actions in responding to the refugee challenge. It is argued that the deal results from ideational and power struggles between supranational (the European Parliament and the European Commission) and intergovernmental institutions (the European Council and the Council of the European Union). It is demonstrated that while the former put forward normative arguments, the latter invoked security as a main concern to avoid internal divisions between Member States. This article also reveals that such ideational and power struggles have consequences for the EU’s identity. Theoretically, the article builds on the new intergovernmentalist claims and on the normative/civilian power literature. Empirically, it explores the usage of normative justifications by EU institutions and points to inter-institutional tensions in framing the EU’s response to the refugee challenge.
Welfare solidarities in the age of mass migration: evidence from European Social Survey 2016
By: Dimitri Gugushvili, Laura Ravazzini, Michael Ochsner, Martin Lukac, Orsolya Lelkes, Marcel Fink, Peter Grand, Wim van Oorschot
Published in Acta Politica Volume 56, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Welfare opinion research has traditionally viewed migration as a potential hazard for welfare solidarity. In this article, we argue that while increased presence of foreigners can indeed make some people less supportive of public welfare provision in general or trigger opposition to migrants’ social rights, the link between migration and solidarity is not universally a negative one. Instead, many people can combine support for migration with high preferences for comprehensive social protection; others can endorse migration while they are not particularly supportive of an all-encompassing welfare state. Based on this line of reasoning we construct a taxonomy of four ideal types of welfare solidarity that are present in contemporary European welfare states. To illustrate the usefulness of this heuristic tool, we apply Latent Class Factor Analysis to European Social Survey round 8 data. We find that the majority of Europeans (56%) combine strong support for both migration and the welfare state (extended solidarity). However, exclusive solidarity is also widely spread as over a quarter of respondents (28%) oppose migration while expressing strong support for the welfare state. People who oppose migration and have relatively low preference for the welfare state (diminished solidarity) represent a small minority (5%). A little more than a tenth (11%) of Europeans endorse migration, but express relatively low support for the welfare state, which we assume to be a reflection of cosmopolitan solidarity. Despite considerable variation in the incidence of the four solidarities across countries, the preference structure is the same for all. Further, we find that at the individual level, the propensity to hold one of these types of solidarities is influenced by social trust, citizenship and country of birth, financial situation, education, and residence type. However, the extent of migration and social spending do not appear to be related with the propensity of holding either type of solidarity as the liberal’s dilemma and the welfare chauvinism theories would predict.
The gift of hospitality and the (un)welcoming of Syrian migrants in Turkey
By: HILAL ALKAN
Published in American Ethnologist Volume 48, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: As of 2020, Turkey was home to 3.6 million Syrian migrants who fled violence in their country after the uprisings of 2011. Although they are not recognized as refugees, Syrian migrants have been granted the right to self-settlement in Turkey. The Turkish state has promoted this reception as a form of hospitality and generosity. The state's elevation of hospitality has been criticized, however, for reinforcing inequalities. More broadly, the concept of hospitality itself has been scrutinized for its immediate affinity to hostility. But as revealed by ethnographic work with Istanbul's neighborhood aid networks, “hospitality” atthe grassroots level is governed by principles of the gift. In everyday interactions, it can catalyze a cycle of reciprocal returns that may lead to long-term relationships. Countering the argument that hospitality is always paired with hostility, this ethnography shows that it can also turn strangers into relatable Others.
Bordering practices
By: Marthe Achtnich
Published in American Ethnologist Volume 48, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: In Libya's context of fragmented state authority, what does it mean for sub-Saharan migrants to be legible to state and criminal actors through their bodies rather than through the law? How do they experience and navigate precarity? Examining informal bordering practices in Libya reveals a mode of migration governance that is based less on legally restricting mobility and more on allowing uncertainty to proliferate and on exploiting migrants’ lives. In this system, certain bodies become targets for policing according to their skin color, documents, and blood tests, which can lead migrants to be extorted for money and detained. Migrants cope with such informal borderwork through affective labor. This plays a vital role in shaping their mobility decisions. By linking informal bordering practices with affect and mobilities, we can recast formal, state-centered ideas about migration governance.
The Dictator's Power-Sharing Dilemma: Countering Dual Outsider Threats
By: Jack Paine
Published in American Journal of Political Science Volume 65, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Dictators face a power-sharing dilemma: Broadening elite incorporation mitigates prospects for outsider rebellions (by either elites excluded from power or the masses), but it raises the risk of insider coups. This article rethinks the theoretical foundations of the power-sharing dilemma and its consequences. My findings contrast with and provide conditionalities for a “conventional threat logic,” which argues that large outsider threats compel dictators to create broader-based regimes, despite raising coup risk. Instead, I analyze a game-theoretic model to explain why the magnitude of the elite outsider threat ambiguously affects power-sharing incentives. Dictators with weak coup-proofing institutions or who face deeply entrenched elites take the opposite actions predicted by the conventional logic. An additional outsider threat from the masses can either exacerbate or eliminate the power-sharing dilemma with elites, depending on elite affinity toward mass rule. Examining the elite-mass interaction also generates new implications for how mass threats affect the likelihood of coups and regime overthrow.
Policing the Organizational Threat in Morocco: Protest and Public Violence in Liberal Autocracies
By: Chantal E. Berman
Published in American Journal of Political Science Volume 65, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: As a prominent form of state violence against civilians, protest policing represents the type of coercion that “liberal” autocrats seek to minimize. Departing from aggregate notions of “mass threat” that dominate studies of authoritarian response to contention, this article develops an event-level model of protest policing centering the role of social movement organizations in shaping elite threat perceptions and, hence, the likelihood that protests will face state violence. More than public protest per se, I argue that liberal autocrats fear the rise of autonomous, national-level organizations capable of providing unregulated channels for citizen claim-making. Having forsworn the ability to control which networks become active as social movement organizations, liberal autocrats use protest policing to dissuade citizens from mobilizing with autonomous organizations and to protect the near-monopoly of embedded organizations over contention. I illustrate these arguments with unique protest event data from Morocco. I draw implications for the durability of liberalized regimes.
The Journey Home: Violence, Anchoring, and Refugee Decisions to Return
By: Faten Ghosn, Tiffany S. Chu, Miranda Simon, Alex Braithwaite, MichaelFrith, Joanna Jandali
Published in American Political Science Review Volume 115, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: While the UNHCR promotes voluntary repatriation as the preferred solution to refugee situations, there is little understanding of variation in refugees’ preferences regarding return. We develop a theoretical framework suggesting two mechanisms influencing refugees’ preferences. First, refugees’ lived experiences in their country of origin prior to displacement and in their new host country create a trade-off in feelings of being anchored to their origin or host country. Second, firsthand exposure to traumas of war provides some refugees with a sense of competency and self-efficacy, leading them to prefer to return home. We test these relationships with data from a survey among Syrian refugees hosted in Lebanon. We find refugees exposed to violence during the war have a sense of attachment to Syria and are most likely to prefer return. Refugees who have developed a detachment from Syria or an attachment to Lebanon are less likely to prefer return.
Reexamining the Effect of Refugees on Civil Conflict: A Global Subnational Analysis
By: Yang-Yang Zhou, Andrew Shaver
Published in American Political Science Review Volume 115, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: A large literature suggests that the presence of refugees is associated with greater risk of conflict. We argue that the positive effects of hosting refugees on local conditions have been overlooked. Using global data from 1990 to 2018 on locations of refugee communities and civil conflict at the subnational level, we find no evidence that hosting refugees increases the likelihood of new conflict, prolongs existing conflict, or raises the number of violent events or casualties. Furthermore, we explore conditions where provinces are likely to experience substantively large decreases in conflict risk due to increased development. Analysis examining nighttime lights as a measure of development, coupled with expert interviews, support our claim. To address the possibility of selection bias, we use placebo tests and matching. Our research challenges assertions that refugees are security risks. Instead, we show that in many cases, hosting refugees can encourage local development and even conflict reduction.
Grand Coalition Government: The Case of Lebanon
By: Simon Badran
Published in Arab Law Quarterly Volume 35, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: To maintain political stability and to preserve the plurality and the diversity that characterise its societies, consociational democracies require, more than other states, a grand coalition government. In this type of democracy, the grand coalition is not a model that is used in exceptional cases, as in majoritarian democracies. It is a deliberate and permanent political choice. In Lebanon, following the modifications implemented by the 1989 Ṭā’if Accord, the Constitution instituted a collegial power-sharing within the executive that implies the establishment of a grand coalition which enables the political participation of the main Lebanese religious confessions in the government. On the other hand, the formation of the Lebanese Council of ministers since the spring of 2005 has become increasingly difficult and coalitions are often less stable than in the past. These laborious negotiations for unstable governmental coalitions are especially problematic in what may be called the perversion of the constitutional procedure by leaders of the parliamentary blocs.
The Unspoken Agenda of Houthi Digital Poetry in Yemen’s Current War Crisis
By: Ammar Naji
Published in Arab Media & Society Issue 32 (2021)
Abstract: This article examines how the Houthi rebels in Yemen use tribal poetry as a propaganda platform to influence public opinion about the current war crisis in the country. By digitalizing Yemeni oral popular poetry, zamil, in the form of motivational war songs and YouTube videos, the Houthi militia group is able to attract young supporters, and publicly denounce Saudi airstrikes and the international sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. While the study unpacks the hidden agenda of Houthi digital poetry and its multiple underpinnings, it sheds light on two important findings: 1) the understudied role of Houthi media campaign the way it’s been used as a digital weapon to advance Yemen’s Shiite militia movement, 2) how the Houthi use of social media revived a Yemeni poetic tradition, zawamil (plural of zamil) to disseminate a wide populous sentiment against the Saudi-led coalition and the United Nations Security Council in this civil conflict.
The Collapse of Yemen's Sovereignty by Permanent Violence: A Means of Both Production and Consumption of Value
By: Jude Kadri
Published in Arab Studies Quarterly Volume 43, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: To defend the thesis of “permanent violence” in Yemen that leads to state failure and in the context of the structural crisis of capital (where Keynesianism has reached its structural limits), this article will look at the Yemeni war through a Marxist lens. It aims to analyze the deep sociological roots of the Yemeni war through the laws of capital as presented by Marx and to show why the Yemeni war is a goal in itself for Imperialism. Three main laws of capital are considered: (1) the general law of capital accumulation developed in Volume I of Das Kapital, (2) the law of the “transformation” of value into price as presented in Volume III of Das Kapital, and (3) the law relating to the contradiction between production and consumption (leading to a crisis of overproduction and a crisis of underconsumption) that was developed by Marx in the Grundrisse, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and by contemporary Marxist author, Istvan Mészáros. All of these laws are all tied to the Marxist “law of value” which refers to the idea that socially necessary labor time acts as the ultimate regulating force in exchange and production under Imperialism.
Political thinking performed: popular cultures as arenas of consent and resistance
By: Charles Tripp
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This contribution develops three major lines of argument. Firstly, it argues that identifying ‘popular culture’ is not simply a definitional exercise but is also purposeful and performative. Secondly, it contends that ‘popular cultures’ are always implicated in power relations in multiple ways. Finally, it maintains that using a performative lens adds to our understanding of the political dimensions of ‘popular cultures’. Taking examples chiefly from the Middle East and North Africa, it avers that studying ‘popular cultures’ highlights the links between the political and the performative, understood both as acting out (theatrical) and as bringing into being (effective). The term ‘culture(s) of the public(s)’ is used to capture the idea of the public as a plurality of active citizens, distinct from the politically charged term ‘the people’. These publics claim space as their right, experiencing agonistic encounters with the different generations, genders, classes, ethnicities that use their own repertoires to assert their claims. Thus, the cultures of the plural public can help to fashion the public self as citizen, but for that same reason can also provoke ferocious repression from those who feel most threatened by such a development.
The empire’s opposition strikes back: popular culture as creative resistance tool under Turkey’s AKP
By: Lisel Hintz
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: In the early morning of September 6, 2019, two rap videos expressing frustrations with Turkey’s socio-political condition coincidentally dropped together and quickly went viral. Although one was more overtly political, both videos crystalized the rage, grief, and hopelessness many had been feeling under the 17-year rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The dual release catalyzed a groundswell of online mobilization at a particularly tumultuous moment – one at which mass protest in the form of organized street demonstrations was effectively off the table. As this article argues, however, pushback against the AKP was alive and well in alternative spaces. From rap collaborations challenging corruption and rising rates of femicide to social media users repurposing familiar memes of TV shows with witty political critique, pop culture-themed acts of resistance signalled to others in Turkey’s fractious opposition that they were not alone. This articles addresses an interdisciplinary body of literature that examines the AKP’s deployment of entertainment media to extend its soft power abroad and cultivate a conservative society at home, but turns it around to explore how various opposition actors strike back by taking pop culture into their own hands as a tool of expression, mobilization, and subversion.
The power of nonsense: humour in Egypt’s counter/revolution
By: Jessica Winegar
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article analyzes a popular Mubarak era film series (al-Limby) and a post-uprising satirical television programme (al-Bernameg) to show how humour has a powerful capacity to create nonsense out of the ‘sense’ that authoritarian regimes attempt to impose on society. In the Mubarak years, such films presented criticism of rising economic inequalities and state oppression. Post-2011 uprising satire similarly became a primary site for criticism of state oppression and regime politics. They were examples of a redistribution of the nonsensical (drawing on Rancière) and gradual creative insurgency (drawing on Kraidy). Yet at the same time, even seemingly revolutionary humour can reproduce hegemonic ‘common sense’ that upholds broader social hierarchies, particularly those related to gender, class, and religion. Thus, this article argues that humour can be critical to both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary sense-making.
The cinema of the young Muslim Brothers: claiming a space in Egyptian pop culture
By: Catherine Cornet
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article examines Islamist engagement with popular culture in Egypt, focusing on Ikhwān Cinema a cultural intervention launched by a youth group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, following the election of Mohamed Morsi as president in June 2012. Until now, scholars have tended to ignore Islamist-produced popular culture, reflecting assumptions that Islamists are opposed to popular culture, and even culture more broadly. Yet, as this article explores, the Muslim Brotherhood has historically viewed culture as an important vehicle through which to disseminate their ideas and to attract people to the organization. The first part of the article reviews the historical position of the Muslim Brotherhood towards the arts and cinema in order to put Ikhwān Cinema into context. The second part examines the aesthetic content of Ikhwān Cinema’s video productions, specifically created for social media consumption. The third part analyses how the group continued these aesthetics following the toppling of their political leader in July 2013. Overall, the article argues that we can understand Ikhwān Cinema both as a continuation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s historical engagement with culture as well as a case of a post-Islamist trend that seeks to blend Islam with elements of global youth culture.
The palm tree and the fist. The use of popular imagery in the Tunisian protest songs of the 1970s-1980s
By: Alessia Carnevale
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The article focuses on the emergence and development of the Tunisian protest song (in Arabic al-ughniya al-multazima) in the late Bourguiba period, and investigates its role in the education, mobilization and galvanization of students, unionists and activists. An analysis of song lyrics and oral testimonies reveals the influence of Gramsci’s ideas on Tunisian leftist artists and intellectuals, who adapted concepts such as, cultural hegemony and common-sense to the local context. Furthermore, the article discusses the significance of the ‘popular’ in relation to these activists’ cultural project. Despite being mainly confined to intellectual and political circles, protest songs made wide use of peasant symbolism, rural imagery and the everyday experiences of workers, revealing the ideological project of the Left, which aspired to assert cultural hegemony over the masses. In the first part of the article I will trace the historical and political background in which this musical scene emerged. In the second and third parts I will engage, respectively, in an analysis of songs by the musical groups al-Bahth al-Musiqi from Gabes and Awlad al-Manajim from Moularès. By tracing the history of the Tunisian protest song, the article sheds light on the production of resistant cultural material under authoritarian regimes.
Returning the megaphone to the people: the Theatre of the Oppressed as artivism in the public space for a new critical citizenry in Morocco
By: Sara Borrillo
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: ‘We return the megaphone to the people’. This is how the activist Hosni al-Mukhlis describes the aim of the Theater of the Oppressed group that he founded in Casablanca in 2012. He was one of the main leaders of the 20 February Movement in 2011 and today he is involved in what he defines as 'a new social and political pedagogy through art’. Based on interviews and participant observation with Moroccan activists, this article focuses on the Theater of the Oppressed group as an example of the wave of socio-political activism involving artistic practices that emerged after the Arab uprisings in some MENA countries. The paper situates this artivism within the context of political disenchantment and social exclusion experienced in the wake of the failure of the 20 February Movement vis à vis the Moroccan authoritarian politics. The article argues that the Theater of the Oppressed can be interpreted as artivism that generates political transformations, opens critical spaces in the public sphere and promotes emancipatory trajectories for those involved in its mobilizing projects, in functioning as political praxis pursuing a renewed proximity between activists and ordinary people, as well as the creation of a new collective imagination and a critical citizenry.
Unpredictability in US foreign policy and the regional order in the Middle East: reacting vis-à-vis a volatile external security-provider
By: Jordi Quero, Andrea Dessì
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article explores the impact of the US foreign policy’s predictability, or lack thereof, vis-à-vis the Middle Easter regional order. It lays out two main arguments. Firstly, since 2003, the US has undertaken some concrete actions which have undermined former expectations of its behaviour among regional actors. By that, Washington distanced itself from open and predictable foreign policy that played a key role in maintaining the regional order, most concretely as an external security provider. US actions fostered a double-level uncertainty: amid a broader process of strategic disengagement from the region, the US’s level of intervention was not really predictable as in some occasions it adhered to its former responsibilities and opted either for direct intervention or offshore engagement, while in others it advanced in its disengagement by not intervening or doing less than expected by regional actors; additionally, in terms of the direction of its interventions, its policies fostered uncertainty as they fluctuated from some reinforcing the status to those disrupting it. Secondly, this uncertainty prompted regional actors to assume further security-oriented responsibilities, as shown by the renewed centrality of the Gulf Cooperation Council or the innovative Saudi foreign policy in Bahrain, Yemen or Qatar since 2011.
The metamorphosis of social movements into political parties. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Tunisian al-Nahda as cases for a reflection on party institutionalisation theory
By: Barbara H. E. Zollner
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: The article studies newly established parties with roots in social movements. Using the post-Spring development of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisian al-Nahda as in-depth empirical cases, the study reflects on prevalent theoretical explanations for the transitions of social movements into political parties. The paper argues that extant literature on party system institutionalization and the development of social movement organizations do not adequately explain the driving factors for the transition process of movements into parties. A focus on party systems does not take note of the dynamics of movement-party relations, while social movement theory remains steeped in conceptions of institutional evolution and ‘natural progression’ in politics. When rethinking party institutionalization, it needs to be recognized that it is a precarious process during which features of social movement activism overlap with the formalized engagement that characterizes political parties. The comparative study of the Muslim Brotherhood-led Freedom and Justice Party and the Tunisian al-Nahda Movement and its al-Nahda Party exemplifies that the degree to which leading parties emancipate themselves from the guardianship of their ‘mother-organizations’ is an essential factor for democratic state-building.
Consensus vs. dissensus over the ‘civil state’ model: a key to understanding the diverse outcomes of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia
By: Limor Lavie
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: The ‘Jasmine Revolution’ that toppled Tunisian president Zine al-‘Abidine Ben ‘Ali on 14 January 2011, and the 25 January 2011 uprising that toppled Egyptian President Husni Mubarak had similar characteristics yet different outcomes. While the Tunisian experience led to democratization and to a non-violent transfer of power, the Egyptian one led to a reversion to authoritarianism through a military coup and to bloodshed. This paper suggests that the key to understanding the diverse outcomes of the Arab Spring in these countries is the prevalence of consensus/dissensus in each society over the most suitable state model for the post-revolutionary era. The existence of an agreed-upon vision for the post-Arab Spring state in Tunisia—a vision of a ‘civil state’—and a wide controversy over such a model in Egypt was a pivotal factor influencing the level of socio-political cohesion during the transitional period, hence determining whether it is destined for success or failure. A prior agreement between Islamist and Secularist opposition groups over the civil state model spared Tunisia the turmoil that Egypt went through due to the polarization over the desired state model in the post-Mubarak era, which served as a catalyst for the 2013 soft coup against the Muslim Brothers elected president.
Solidarity theologies and the (re)definition of ethnoreligious identities: the case of the Alevis of Turkey and Alawites of Syria
By: Nukhet A. Sandal
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Alevis of Turkey and Alawites of Syria have different origins, traditions and political experience. After the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, Turkish government took a clear stand by supporting the Sunni rebels fighting the Syrian state forces. This enthusiastic support for the Sunni segments was accompanied with condemnations against Syrian Alawites and discrimination against the Alawite refugees. The civil war in Syria and the Turkish government’s response to it brought Alevis of Turkey and Alawites of Syria closer and created a solidarity based on close religious beliefs. Alevi community in Turkey provided assistance to the Alawite refugees from Syria and Alevi leaders started to create a narrative focusing on identity similarities between and common threats against the Alevis and Alawite communities. Using interviews and public statements, this article shows how the securitization of identities and discrimination can result in new units of advocacy and belonging.
Divergent opposition to sub-Saharan African and Arab migrants in Morocco’s Casablanca Region: prejudice from the pocketbook?
By: Matt Buehler, Kyung Joon Han
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Since the early 2010s, the global migrant crisis has led to the mass inflow of foreign migrants, refugees, and other displaced persons into numerous countries. Whereas some native citizens have welcomed these migrants, a large number have expressed opposition. Most theories explaining why citizens express opposition to migrants emerged from evidence collected in developed, European countries. Yet, developing, non-Western countries especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have borne the brunt of today’s migrant crisis. This study uses an original survey of 1500 citizens conducted in Morocco’s Casablanca-Settat region to explore how effectively traditional theories explain opposition to migrants amongst citizens of the MENA. Like those in many North African countries, Morocco’s migrants hail mostly from Arab countries (e.g. Syria, Iraq) or sub-Saharan African countries (e.g. Nigeria, Congo). We find the expected citizen opposition to migrants, but also that this opposition is more intense with respect to migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. While recent studies of Europe emphasize how cultural differences drive opposition to migrants, our results indicate that material issues—concerns about migrants’ negative effects on the economy and internal security—tend to motivate such attitudes in Morocco. Concerns about cultural conflicts and other immaterial differences play a smaller, secondary role.
Signaling reforms through election results: how a Moroccan opposition party demobilized protests
By: Sammy Zeyad Badran
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Elections within authoritarian contexts and social movements have been thoroughly, yet separately, studied. This article jointly analyzes these different phenomena in order to demonstrate how electoral results can affect protest demobilization. My interviews with the February 20 Movement (F20), the main organizer of mass protests in Morocco during the Arab Spring, reveals how the parliamentary victory of an opposition Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), helped lead to the F20’s eventual halt of protests. During my fieldwork, I conducted 46 semi-structured elite interviews with civil society activists, political party leaders, MPs, and independent activists throughout Morocco. This article argues that the 2011 victory of an opposition Islamist party, which had not previously been allowed to win a plurality of parliamentary seats, played a major role in quelling protests. The ushering of Islamists into power following the Arab Spring is often viewed as a threat to the state. In Morocco, however, the winning of the PJD in parliamentary elections signaled to the public that change had occurred and convinced many Moroccans that a social movement for change was no longer needed. Said differently, the state needed Islamists to win.
The Lebanese Civil War and post-conflict power sharing: continuation of conflict dynamics in post-conflict environments
By: Andrew Delatolla
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Lebanese political dynamics are often characterized by political confessionalism, neo-liberal economics, corruption, and its particularity as an Arab state with Western social orientations. Although these characterizations may seem, at times, contradictory, this article argues that they are part of a political structure that initially developed during the Civil War (1975–1990) that was sustained by Lebanon’s post-conflict power sharing agreement. This article builds on the critiques present in the developing scholarship on post-conflict power sharing, demonstrating how dynamics established as a consequence of the Civil War continued into the post-conflict period. This has led to the reproduction of sectarian boundary inflammation, limitations on democratic and civil society mobilisation, and political stagnation. The article concludes with an analysis of the 2015 Garbage Crisis as exemplary of sustained Civil War dynamics and the consequent constraints on civil society mobilisation caused by these dynamics.
The Iraqi protest movement: social mobilization amidst violence and instability
By: Irene Costantini
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: Despite the many constraints it faces, social mobilization has been a relevant yet understudied phenomenon in Iraq after regime-change. Especially since 2011, collective actions such as protests, sit-in and demonstrations have challenged the status quo, amidst cyclical high level of violence and a dysfunctional political system. By identifying a gap at the crossroad of social movement and peace and conflict studies, this article is a preliminary exercise in investigating non-violent means to promote social and political change in violent contexts. It proposes a comparison of episodes of social mobilization in Iraq and analyses them in terms of space, types of grievances, identification of the target and overall goal. The article finds that social mobilization’s main limitations in Iraq are linked to its development in reaction to contextual factors. At the same time, it also shows the potential social mobilization has to become a locus where social and political change may grow.
The AKP, party system change, and political representation by women in Turkey
By: F. Michael Wuthrich
Published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Volume 48, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: In Turkey, the number of women in the Grand National Assembly has drastically increased from 24 in 2002 to 104 as of the June election of 2018. To date, the explanations for this rise and women’s emergence and placement on candidate lists have been inadequate. This study examines these dynamics more closely to attend to the strategic decision-making by the AKP’s central party leadership. Using an original dataset, I analyse placement patterns for AKP women candidates across the country from November 2002 to June 2018. The results show that the consequences of dominant party status along with other strategic considerations have allowed the AKP to field women candidates in ways that parties preceding them could not. Their strategic placement of women as candidates is shown to have facilitated substantive gains but also highlights important limitations to the advancement of women’s access to national political power in Turkey.
Silencing Their Critics: How Government Restrictions Against Civil Society Affect International ‘Naming and Shaming’
By: Hannah Smidt, Dominic Perera, Neil J. Mitchell, Kristin M. Bakke
Published in British Journal of Political Science Volume 51, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: International ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns rely on domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) for information on local human rights conditions. To stop this flow of information, some governments restrict CSOs, for example by limiting their access to funding. Do such restrictions reduce international naming and shaming campaigns that rely on information from domestic CSOs? This article argues that on the one hand, restrictions may reduce CSOs’ ability and motives to monitor local abuses. On the other hand, these organizations may mobilize against restrictions and find new ways of delivering information on human rights violations to international publics. Using a cross-national dataset and in-depth evidence from Egypt, the study finds that low numbers of restrictions trigger shaming by international non-governmental organizations. Yet once governments impose multiple types of restrictions, it becomes harder for CSOs to adapt, resulting in fewer international shaming campaigns.
Military Aid, Regime Vulnerability and the Escalation of Political Violence
By: Andrew Boutton
Published in British Journal of Political Science Volume 51, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article offers an explanation for the failures of US military assistance programs in some countries. The author argues that the effects of military aid are conditional upon the vulnerability of the recipient regime. Power consolidation by an insecure leader often provokes violent opposition. However, because military aid strengthens the security forces of the recipient state, it generates a moral hazard that encourages exclusionary power consolidation, with the expectation that continued military aid will help manage violent blowback. Using proxies for regime vulnerability and an instrument for US military aid, the study shows that military aid increases anti-regime violence in new regimes (particularly new democracies) and in all personalist regimes. In contrast, military assistance has no effect on violence in established, non-personalist regimes. The article develops a novel theory of how regime characteristics condition responses to external military support, and identifies a distinct mechanism through which military aid increases domestic political violence.
Mobilizing From Scratch: Large-Scale Collective Action Without Preexisting Organization in the Syrian Uprising
By: Wendy Pearlman
Published in Comparative Political Studies Volume 54, Issue 10 (2021)
Abstract: Core social movement research argues that large-scale challenges to authority build upon preexisting organization and civil society resources. How do dissenters mobilize masses in repressive settings where, given curtailment of civil society, autonomous associations scarcely exist and norms discourage trust more than encourage it? Testimonials from the Syrian uprising illustrate how protest can become widespread under such conditions, yet occurs through processes different from what dominant theory expects. Activists get demonstrations off the ground by planning around awareness of their organizational deficits. Once in motion, contention propels both organization and increasing organizational sophistication. To be effective, mobilization sometimes evades or obscures established social relationships, even as it produces new forms of sociability. Bridging literatures on mass and clandestine mobilization, this research reconsiders the assumed sequential logic of movement development from organization to protest, rather than vice versa. It also shifts attention from movement antecedents toward the resourcefulness and strategy that enable mobilizing both from scratch and at grave risk.
“I Do Not Forgive!”: Hope and Refusal in Tunisia's Democratic Transition
By: Alyssa Miller
Published in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East Volume 41, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Reconciliation is a central goal of transitional justice. Yet, its importance for democratization can give reconciliation a coercive edge, pressuring victims to abandon legitimate grievances for the good of the nation to come. This article considers struggles over popular sovereignty in Tunisia's democratic transition, by examining the anticorruption campaign Manish Msamah (“I do not forgive”). Manish Msamah was formed in 2015 to defeat the Project Law on Economic and Financial Reconciliation, legislation that proposed amnesty for crony capitalists who profited from the Ben Ali dictatorship. Drawing on participant observation, media analysis, and activist interviews, the author shows how Manish Msamah debunks the ruse of consent at the heart of reconciliation, and in doing so maintains fidelity to the ideals of the 2011 Revolution. The campaign is revealed as an early participant in the “second wave” of the Arab Spring, which has refused the lure of procedural democracy in favor of deeper structural change.
Changes in Turkish Regional Policy from an Arab Perspective in the aftermath of Arab Uprisings
By: Shaimaa Magued
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This study presents Arab perspectives on changes in Turkish policy in the Middle East from 2010 until 2020. It examines how Arab countries perceive changes in Turkish regional policy after the 2010–11 uprisings. Unlike Western and Turkish literature that has highlighted identity–security combinations behind changes in Turkish regional policy, this study argues that the Arabic research literature provides a different perspective. Based on a foreign policy analysis concept of operational milieu, this study argues that Arab countries negatively perceive the changes in Turkish policy due to structural transformations in the region during and after the uprisings that paved the way for the reemergence of psychological barriers between both sides.
The Role of Armed Conflict in Developing a Subculture of Hate and its Consequences: Empirical Findings from Libya
By: Mustafa Omar Attir
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: When Libyan youth took to the streets in a populist uprising in 2011, which became known as the 17 February 2011 revolution, many Libyans thought they were on the verge of removing one of the most vicious dictators of the twentieth century, Muammar Gaddafi, and building a new democratic state. Gaddafi responded forcefully, hoping to eliminate the movement in its infancy. But clashes between Gaddafi’s forces and those who took to streets soon turned into a civil war, during which Libyan society was split into two major groups: one supporting the uprising, the other the regime. In addition to armed conflict, these warring groups regarded each other with contempt, generated slander, and accused each other of betrayal, using words and phrases in a discourse of hate speech. This vocabulary of hate manifested in demonstrations and social media. Eight months later Gaddafi was dead, and the political system he built over four decades collapsed. But the war did not stop: yesterday’s allies became enemies, competing for political and economic gains. The number of contesting groups expanded as different clans, tribes, and cities joined the fray for personal gains. Strategies and techniques first used during the Libyan uprising were applied in the civil war, and are still manifest today. Every militia has a Facebook page, owns a television station, or has access to one. These media have been widely used to spread hate speech and to widen the rift between neighbors, creating refugees and internally displaced people. At least five cities became ghost towns during the uprising. When the concept of subculture first appeared in the sociological literature, it referred to members of a group that behaved according to a set of values and norms that deviated from those of mainstream society. Reviewing the language of militia members and their supporters that is articulated in social media or on television, it becomes obvious that such language has devolved into hate speech, creating social fragmentation among Libyans. This language has created a new set of values and norms in Libya that are different from preexisting mainstream Libyan culture. The new language has created a subculture of hate, which serves to sustain and accelerate continuing divisions within Libya, while further fragmenting the social fabric of the country.
Variations among North African Military Regimes: Algeria and Egypt Compared
By: Federico Battera
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article explores the differences between two North African military regimes—Egypt and Algeria—which have been selected due to the continuity of military dominance of the political systems. Still, variations have marked their political development. In particular, the Algerian army’s approach to civilian institutions changed after a civilian president was chosen in 1999. This was not the case in Egypt after the demise of the Hosni Mubarak regime of 2011. Other important variations are to be found in the way power has been distributed among the military apparatuses themselves. In the case of Egypt, a principle of collegiality has been generally preserved within a body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which is absent in the case of Algeria, where conflicts between military opposed factions are more likely to arise in case of crisis. How differences generally impact the stability of military rule in these two cases is the main contribution of this paper.
Authoritarian Upgrading and the “Pink Wave”: Bahraini Women in Electoral Politics
By: Magdalena Karolak
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This paper analyzes the complex processes that have been shaping the increased involvement of Bahraini women in politics, especially their share in elected political offices as MPs. Looking back at the unprecedented rise of female MPs in electoral polls in 2018, this research examines the last two decades of female progress in politics and looks in depth at the contributing factors. Using the initial factors established through a literature review, it examines their relevance in the Bahraini political environment, and establishes additional factors peculiar to the kingdom. The role of women is interwoven with political liberalization reforms in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but it was also shaped by the current events, namely, the popular uprising of 2011. The uprising was ultimately contained; yet, the authoritarian upgrading that followed paradoxically created opportunities for greater women’s engagement in electoral politics. The case of Bahrain sheds light on how sectarianism, popular uprisings, and authoritarianism affect women’s position in electoral politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The Arab World: Protests, Revolutions and Choices
By: Boubaker Boukreisa
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Many researchers who believed in the “Arab Spring” are now debating the “Arab Autumn.” The two concepts are misleading because they reflect the entangled and complex reality of Arab countries at the current time. Such significant events that comprised the Arab Spring require knowledge of the influence of countries that were not directly involved in it, but which were pursuing their interests beyond their own borders. An attempt to engage with this sort of analytical framework leads to political fallacy that will contribute more to the crisis rather than solve it. Thus, it is important to understand that those who fight tyranny are not necessarily democratic themselves. What is the state of play in the Arab world today? At what stage of history is this region positioned? To answer both questions a lateral approach is needed, but this should not overlook the size of cases and their different levels.
The Role of Political Parties in Supporting the Process of Democratic Consolidation: Jordan as a Case Study
By: Sultan Naser Fares Alquraan, Haytham Adouse
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: This study identifies the role of Jordanian political parties in supporting the process of democratic consolidation and in solving the problems and challenges that block the process of democratic transformation. It used a cross-sectional design depending on statistics and analytics, whereby 497 male and female students were selected from three departments of the recruited colleges. Data were collected through a questionnaire, with a reliability score of 0.92 (Cronbach’s alpha). Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, univariate analysis, and multiple contrast tests were used to analyze the data. Findings from the study indicated that the role of Jordanian political parties in entrenching the process of democratic transformation and in solving problems and challenging procedures was partially performed. The obtained p-value of 0.00 indicates that political parties play a significant role in dealing with democratic challenges at behavioral, attitudinal, and constitutional levels.
The Images of China and Britain in the Syrian Media: A Comparison
By: Hengrui Ding, Degang Sun
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 14, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: China and Britain have contrasting images in the official and unofficial Syrian media. By analysing relevant news stories, this study reveals that China’s involvement in the Syrian crisis as covered by the Syrian media is usually limited to governmental affairs, while Britain’s involvement covered by the Syrian media, especially the “revolutionary” outlet, figures in a relatively wider range of diverse nongovernmental happenings including activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. Most importantly, the study finds that the “revolutionary” outlet Enab Baladi is apt to present Chinese involvement as negative, but presents British involvement as positive, while the government-backed news agency SANA portrays a completely positive image of China and a fundamentally negative image of Britain.
Critical junctures in terrorism studies: the Arab Spring and the new twenty-first century security environment
By: Michael J. Schumacher
Published in Critical Studies on Terrorism Volume 14, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Military Spending and Economic Growth in Turkey: A Wavelet Approach
By: Usman Khalid, Olivier Habimana
Published in Defence and Peace Economics Volume 32, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This paper employs a wavelet approach to investigate the relationship between economic growth and military spending in a time-frequency domain for the case of Turkey. Turkey presents an interesting case for analysis of military spending and economic growth, as its geopolitical position and history of insurgencies and separatist violence oblige the country to devote an unusually large share of the central government budget to national defence. Timescale regression analysis reveals that military expenditures have significant negative effects on growth in per capita GDP at business cycles of 16 years and longer. Timescale Granger causality analysis indicates that per capita GDP growth responds to movements in military expenditures at business cycles of eight years and above and that this result is very significant. Wavelet coherency analysis corroborates these findings, indicating a significant negative long-run co-movement at business cycles of 16 years and longer. Thus, the neoclassical prediction that military spending may promote growth does not hold in the case of Turkey, at least in the long run. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that, in the long run, military spending has been leading rather than lagging economic growth.
Democratic regression in comparative perspective: scope, methods, and causes
By: Larry Diamond
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Between 1974 and 2005, a majority of states became democratic for the first time in history. However, a global democratic recession began in 2006 and has persisted – and deepened – over the past 14 years. Not only have average levels of freedom (or democratic quality) been declining globally and in most parts of the world, but the pace of democratic breakdown accelerated and the number of democratic transitions declined, particularly in the past five years. Democratic regression is particularly visible among the G-20 countries and other most populous and geopolitically weighty countries, 19 of which have declined in freedom during the democratic recession, with only two improving. The principal method of democratic regression has been incremental strangulation of democracy by elected (typically populist) executives who gradually eviscerate institutional checks, political opposition, independent media, and other forces of scrutiny and resistance in civil society. Weak and declining rule of law has predisposed regimes to democratic regression, enabling ambitious rulers to hollow out political competition. But international factors have also been crucial, generating common economic and social stresses while lifting the constraints and lowering the risks autocrats face as they inaugurate or accelerate the slide into authoritarianism.
The dark side of regionalism: how regional organizations help authoritarian regimes to boost survival
By: Maria J. Debre
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The international dimension of authoritarian resilience is receiving increased attention by scholars of comparative politics and international relations alike. Research suggests that autocratic states exploit regionalism to boost domestic regime security. This article explains how membership in regional organizations can help to strengthen survival chances of autocratic incumbent elites. It argues that membership provides additional material, informational, and ideational resources to autocratic incumbents that can be used to boost domestic survival strategies vis-à-vis internal and external challengers. The article provides qualitative case-based evidence to show how autocratic incumbents in Zimbabwe, China, and Bahrain have benefited from the involvement of regional organizations during moments of political instability to strengthen legitimation, repression, co-optation, and international appeasement strategies. The article thereby provides the first encompassing explanation linking regionalism and authoritarian survival politics that is applicable across regions and different types of authoritarian regimes.
The reciprocal impact of electoral turnout on protest participation in developing countries: evidence from Iran’s 2018 uprising
By: Alireza Raisi
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Despite a rich body of scholarship in social movements and electoral studies, the interaction between electoral turnout and protest participation has been generally overlooked. This article aims to bridge this gap by examining the impact of electoral participation on the likelihood of protest activities in developing countries. Drawing from a statistical analysis of a unique set of data from Iran’s 2017 election and the following uprising, the article argues that a higher electoral turnout reduces the likelihood of protest incidence at the district level. The analysis further indicates that such turnout mediates between economic grievances and protest participation.
The “inclusion-moderation” illusion: re-framing the Islamic movement inside Israel
By: Craig Larkin, Mansour Nasasra
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: The inclusion-moderation thesis posits that radical movements can be moderated through participation in democratic pluralist politics. Repeatedly applied to Islamist movements questions remain over its conceptual ambiguity and empirical veracity. Despite such weaknesses this thesis continues to be utilized to explain the diverging trajectories of the Islamic movement within Israel – its Southern accommodationist parliamentary branch (IMSB) and its separatist Northern branch (IMNB), now officially banned by Israel. This article examines this significant yet understudied movement, as a means of challenging the reductionist reading of Arab Islamist politics in Israel while at the same time rethinking the perimeters of inclusion-moderation theory. The case suggests that Islamist strategic moderation may be a result of both state repression and political inclusion but rarely does it lead to complete ideological transformation. This research suggests the IMSB’s pragmatic evolution, owes less to Knesset participation and more to internal organizational debate, a convergence of broader Arab-Israeli positions, and a response to the failings of post Arab Spring Islamist politics. Conversely, the IMNB’s perceived radicalism, is less to do with its extreme ideology but rather its own strategic framing and Israel’s ongoing fears of the mobilizing potential of Al-Aqsa mosque.
The coercive power and democratic transition in the post-uprising Middle East and North Africa
By: Mehmet Hecan, Fouad Farhaoui
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 6 (2021)
Abstract: Time has shown that attempts to transition to democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) following the Arab Uprisings were no minor feat. In their experiments with democratization, MENA countries faced a number of challenges that remain underexplored. Even though each county’s path towards democratic transition is multifaceted and multicausal, in this article we set out to understand why attempts to transition to democracy have largely failed in post-uprising MENA with the unique exception of Tunisia. We do so by examining four post-uprising cases – Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen – from a comparative perspective focusing on the coercive power of the state. Our findings suggest that in the presence of weak state institutions that lose their monopoly over coercive means that constrain non-state actors, democratization tends to fail. Yet, even if state mechanisms are strong, challenges to democratic transitions can still persist, especially if such states house politically motivated security institutions, such as influential militaries, that favour authoritarian rule. Within the larger picture, this work also provides further inferences about the relationship between structural aspects of the state and processes of democratization.
The EU's effectiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean migration quandary: challenges to building societal resilience
By: Saime Ozcurumez
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 7 (2021)
Abstract: Under what conditions does the EU contribute to the prevention of governance breakdown and violent conflict in areas of limited statehood and contested orders by fostering societal resilience? This study seeks answers to this question by examining the EU's effectiveness in fostering societal resilience in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey while they have coped with risks emerging from cross-border mobility, mass influx, and prolonged stays of the forcibly displaced due to the Syrian crisis since 2011. The study argues that the EU has been constrained in building societal resilience. The findings suggest that the EU's effectiveness is limited by context-specific social, political, and economic risks in host countries; divergence among policy actors? often contradictory preferences; and the impact of the EU's policies in outsourcing management of forced displacement. The study concludes that the EU needs to link the implementation of its short-term pragmatic programmes that primarily enable state resilience in crisis contexts with its long-term liberal vision for fostering high level societal resilience with democratic principles and institutions.
Elections, legitimacy, and compliance in authoritarian regimes: evidence from the Arab world
By: Scott Williamson
Published in Democratization Volume 28, Issue 8 (2021)
Abstract: Elections have been theorized to bolster compliance with authoritarian regimes by strengthening their coercive capacity, their ability to co-opt, and their legitimacy. While a growing body of research supports the coercive and co-optive functions of these elections, there is little systematic empirical evidence regarding elections? contributions to the legitimacy of autocrats. This article draws on survey data from eight authoritarian countries in the Arab world to show that respondents who perceive elections as freer and fairer are more likely to express acceptance of the regime's right to govern and less likely to participate in political protests, even when they disapprove of the regime's performance. In addition, a survey experiment implemented in Egypt and Morocco provides causal evidence that perceptions of electoral quality impact legitimacy beliefs and expressed willingness to protest. The findings indicate the importance of studying how authoritarian institutions influence popular beliefs about the legitimacy of autocratic rulers.
Preventive medicine: domestic repression and foreign revolutionary states
By: Christopher Linebarger
Published in Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict Volume 14, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Do governments repress in order to defend themselves against the threat posed by the geographic proximity of victorious rebel forces? I theorize that the victory of rebel forces in armed conflict, and the subsequent creation of a revolutionary regime, provides a model for mobilization to would-be rebels and that this, in turn, leads government authorities to deploy domestic repression in order to defend themselves. This relationship is conditional upon the international assertiveness of revolutionary regimes, as well as their geographic proximity to the threatened state. Revolutionary regimes that provide assistance to foreign rebels are regarded as more threatening by status-quo states, as are those that are geographically proximate. I undertake a data analysis of state-year patterns of repression and find significant support for my theoretical expectations. My findings have implications for the study of counter-revolution, supporting the notion that state repression is, in part, a function of international threat.
Inside job: Migration and distributive politics in the European Union
By: Merih Angin, Albana Shehaj, Adrian J. Shin
Published in Economics & Politics Volume 33, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Migration has become a top policy priority of the European Union (EU) in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis. Given the significant ramifications of non-European immigration for its member states, the EU has implemented a variety of policies to minimize popular backlashes within the borders of its wealthiest member states, which are also popular final destinations for migrants. In this article, we show that the EU offers financial incentives to its migrant-transit member countries in exchange for holding migrants traveling from the Middle East and North Africa region within their territories. We use a subnational dataset on Southern Italy to examine the effects of migrant arrivals by boat on the amount of the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund received by each autonomous region between 2006 and 2018. In addition, we provide a cross-national analysis of EU expenditures using data on unauthorized border crossings into the EU between 2009 and 2018. We find robust empirical support for the argument that the EU channels more funds to jurisdictions located on the major migrant-transit routes.
No more Iraqs: analysing use of force decisions during the Obama administration
By: Kelly A. McHugh
Published in Global Change, Peace & Security Volume 33, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: In this article, I focus on a subset of Obama’s foreign policy views, namely his beliefs about the appropriate circumstances under which the United States should engage in armed conflict. I argue that the Iraq war served as a formative event in the development of Obama’s worldview. He derived distinct lessons from this policy failure, leading him to articulate a restrictive set of conditions that should be met before the United States considered intervening in the internal politics of another nation, absent a direct threat to national security. I undertake a detailed examination of two case studies – the administration’s debates leading to the 2011 intervention in Libya and the decision not to intervene in Syria in 2013 – and demonstrate how the lessons of Iraq shaped Obama’s policy choices at critical junctures in the deliberations.
Autocracies and the Control of Societal Organizations
By: Marie-Eve Reny
Published in Government and Opposition Volume 56, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Authoritarian regimes seek to prevent formal and informal organizations in society from engaging in mobilized dissent. What strategies do they use to do so, and what explains their choices? I posit that state actors in autocracies use four mechanisms to control societal organizations: repression, coercion, cooptation and containment. How they control these organizations depends on whether they think they might undermine political stability. Two factors inform that assessment. First is whether state actors think societal organizations’ interests are reconcilable with regime resilience. Second is whether groups are in national or international networks that are either cohesive or incohesive. While the irreconcilability of interests influences state actors’ perceptions of groups as subversive, network cohesion shapes organizations’ capacity for large-scale mobilization.
Bahrain's transnational Arab Spring: repression, oil and human rights activism
By: Jessie Moritz
Published in International Affairs Volume 97, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Studies of the Middle East following the Arab Spring have concluded that ‘repression works’, especially in the oil- and gas-rich countries of the Gulf. Drawing on primary materials collected during fieldwork trips to Bahrain, the United States and Britain, this article nuances the ‘repression effect’ by tracing the emergence of a transnational Bahraini opposition, mapping the relationships and joint activities between domestic and exiled Bahraini groups, international NGOs and western policy-makers. It finds that even in the context of domestic repression and continuing ideological divides within Bahrain's opposition, transnational networks have not only sustained opposition organizations, but also maintained access to foreign policy-makers, producing repeated criticisms of the Bahraini regime and legal challenges to ruling elites who visit western states. The successes of this advocacy are modest: while it has not drastically reshaped the domestic state–society relationship, it has created significant costs for the Bahraini regime and damaged Bahrain's international brand. As a result, state and opposition networks now compete for influence over western policy-makers: international ‘arenas of advocacy’—such as the UK parliament, US Congress, UNHRC and European Parliament—have now become ‘arenas of contestation’, as state and opposition narratives of Bahraini politics, filtered through western policy-makers, play out during debates over foreign policy towards Bahrain. The article positions transnational activism as a direct outcome of the ‘repression effect’, highlighting ongoing contests for influence between state and society occurring in international and transnational spaces, even as the domestic scope for opposition mobilization remains highly restricted.
Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East: power projection and post-ideological politics
By: Katerina Dalacoura
Published in International Affairs Volume 97, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Power projection, security, pragmatic considerations and a disparate mix of national interests and narrower party-political objectives have driven the foreign policy of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Middle East since it came to power in 2002. Ideological concerns, consisting of a fluid blend of Islamist, neo-Ottoman and ‘civilizationalist’ ideas, mingled with a hefty dose of Turkish nationalism, have played a variable, auxiliary but none the less significant role. The Arab uprisings of 2011 opened up opportunities for the AKP to pursue its ideological objectives and they became more central to its policies, if only in some areas or clusters of relationships. However, they receded after 2015, when a confluence of domestic and regional factors caused the onset of a transactional, ‘post-ideological’ phase. The article places the Middle East in the wider context of Turkish foreign policy, both historically and in comparison with other regions, arguing in the process that categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’ are of limited value for its proper understanding and interpretation. It then divides it into four sub-regions, distinct in geographical and issue terms: Syria and Iraq (the ‘near abroad’), the wider Arab world, Israel–Palestine, and Iran. It analyses Turkish foreign policy towards them in sequence, illustrating the ways in which power-political considerations have predominated in all, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees, over the past five years.
How ‘making the world in its own liberal image’ made the West less liberal
By: Benjamin Miller
Published in International Affairs Volume 97, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: How did the attempt to make the world more liberal end up making the West less liberal? Following the end of the Cold War the US tried to promote liberalism in various parts of the world. This promotion took place under the liberal belief in its universality. A few of these attempts succeeded, most notably the integration of China into the global economy. Many other liberalizing endeavours failed, notably democracy-promotion in China, Russia and the Middle East. Yet, both the successes and the failures resulted in the rise of illiberal elements in the West as reflected in Brexit and Trumpism. The article shows how the outcomes of the attempts at liberalization—both the failures and the successes—generated these populist forces. The Chinese economic success took place at least partly because of the US-led integration of China into the international order. Yet, this success produced adverse economic effects in the West. Such outcomes led to the rise of economic populism. The American liberal interventions in the Middle East affected the rise of terrorism and of Muslim migration to the West. These developments influenced the rise of cultural populism in the West, which advances resentment of foreigners, migrants and minorities.
Rebel command and control, time, and rebel group splits
By: Minnie M. Joo, Bumba Mukherjee
Published in International Interactions Volume 47, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Fractious splits of rebel groups debilitate the military capacity of these organizations which increases their vulnerability to anti-rebel operations. Despite the risks of disunity and the battlefield advantages of remaining cohesive, our new global sample of rebel groups (1980–2014) reveals that two-fifths of these (but not the remaining) groups have split into distinct, competing factions. Why and when do some rebel groups split, while other groups remain cohesive? Unlike previous research on rebel fragmentation, we argue that the extent of centralization of the rebel groups command-and-control structure together with the group’s “age” influences the propensity of rebel group splits. The organizational features of rebel groups with high command-and-control centralization lead to internal blame-game politics when these groups age, which encourages the supreme leader to amass power and curtail the other leaders’ decision-making authority. This induces the alienated leaders to split the parent rebel organization to form a new rebel group. In contrast, the organizational structure of moderate and weakly centralized rebel groups promotes mutual interdependence among leaders as well as between these leaders and sub-commanders over time. This reduces the likelihood of splits of these groups. Results from our new rebel-group-year data provide robust statistical support for these predictions.
Rivalry, ethnicity, and asylum admissions worldwide
By: Lamis Abdelaaty
Published in International Interactions Volume 47, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Why do countries welcome some refugees and treat others poorly? Existing explanations suggest that the assistance refugees receive is a reflection of countries’ wealth or compassion. However, statistical analysis of a global dataset on asylum admissions shows that states’ approaches to refugees are shaped by foreign policy and ethnic politics. States admit refugees from adversaries in order to weaken those regimes, but they are reluctant to accept refugees from friendly states. At the same time, policymakers favor refugee groups who share their ethnic identity. Aside from addressing a puzzling real-world phenomenon, this article adds insights to the literature on the politics of migration and asylum.
Crowding out the field: External Support to Insurgents and the Intensity of Inter-rebel Fighting in Civil Wars
By: Arthur Stein, Marc-Olivier Cantin
Published in International Interactions Volume 47, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: How does external support to insurgents influence the likelihood that the latter will get involved in violent clashes against other rebel groups? In this article, we outline a theoretical framework which contends that, in multiparty civil wars, rebels sponsored by foreign states are more likely to participate in high-intensity inter-rebel conflicts than rebels receiving no support from external states. We argue that this is because external support creates strategic incentives for insurgent leaders to target other rebel contenders in order to signal resolve to their sponsors and to crowd out the battlefield ahead of the post-conflict period. External support, moreover, tends to activate potent socio-psychological mechanisms among rank-and-file combatants that may remove restraints on the use of violence against other rebel fighters. Using data on inter-rebel conflicts from 1989 to 2018, we test these hypotheses with a set of large-N regressions and find strong support for our theory. Further analyzes inductively reveal that our statistical results are likely, to some extent, to be driven by the prevalence of religious insurgencies in contemporary conflicts. Religious insurgencies display organizational features that could reinforce vertical strategic incentives and horizontal socio-psychological dynamics, thereby increasing their involvement in inter-rebel fighting. To further probe the ‘meso-foundations’ of inter-rebel fighting following rebel sponsorship, we then provide qualitative evidence on the Syrian Civil War. Our article contributes to scholarship by highlighting the consequences of external support on conflict processes beyond the insurgent-incumbent dyad.
The Evolution of Tunisian Salafism after the Revolution: From La Maddhabiyya to Salafi-Malikism
By: Fabio Merone, Théo Blanc, Ester Sigillò
Published in International Journal of Middle East Studies Volume 53, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: What shape does Salafism take in Tunisia after the ban of the Salafi-Jihadi group Ansar al-Shari‘a and the wave of securitization carried out by national authorities? This article argues that a constraining legal context put Salafism's doctrinal rigidity in tension with its survival and ultimately prompted a residual current of Salafi actors to accommodate their stance toward Malikism, the prevalent school (madhhab) in the country. This adaptation is at odds with contemporary Salafism, which traditionally dismisses all four law schools (lā madhabiyya), rejects their blind imitation (taqlῑd), and claims the superiority of the Qur'an, hadith, and consensus of the salaf (pious predecessors) over jurisprudence (fiqh). To account for this puzzle, this article scrutinizes the historical development of Salafism and the evolution of its stance toward Malikism across three generational waves. It notably shows how religious securitization associated with the promotion of a “moderate” Islam pushed Salafi actors to redefine their ideology to preserve their preaching and teaching activities. We call Salafi-Malikism the outcome of this adaptive strategy. Drawing on the Tunisian case, we argue that, despite its purist claims, Salafism is not an immutable religious current, but can take different trajectories to survive in constraining environments.
Regaining Control? The Political Impact of Policy Responses to Refugee Crises
By: Omer Solodoch
Published in International Organization Volume 75, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: In response to the political turmoil surrounding the recent refugee crisis, destination countries swiftly implemented new immigration and asylum policies. Are such countercrisis policies effective in mitigating political instability by reducing anti-immigrant backlash and support for radical-right parties? The present study exploits two surveys that were coincidentally fielded during significant policy changes, sampling respondents right before and immediately after the change. I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the short-term causal effect of the policy change on public opinion within a narrow window of the sampling period. The findings show that both Swedish border controls and the EU–Turkey agreement significantly reduced public opposition to immigration in Sweden and Germany, respectively. In Germany, support for the AfD party also decreased following the new policy. Public opinion time trends suggest that the policy effects were short lived in Sweden but durable in Germany. These effects are similar across different levels of proximity to the border and are accompanied by increasing political trust and a sense of government control over the situation. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of border controls on international public opinion, as well as for assessing the electoral effect of policy responses to global refugee crises.
Autocratic welfare programs, economic perceptions, and support for the dictator: Evidence from African autocracies
By: Kangwook Han
Published in International Political Science Review Volume 42, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: While numerous studies have explored the foundations of autocratic stability by focusing on macroeconomic variables, the micro-foundations of autocratic support have largely been overlooked. Using Afrobarometer survey data from 22 African autocracies, I examine how dictators stabilize their rule even during economic recessions. I find that the provision of welfare benefits alleviates the adverse impact of negative economic perceptions on support for the dictator. Citizens are likely to continue supporting the dictator as long as the government keeps providing universal welfare benefits. The results remain robust to different model specifications that account for alternative explanations and validity concerns associated with autocratic survey data.
Regional sanctions as peer review: The African Union against Egypt (2013) and Sudan (2019)
By: Elin Hellquist
Published in International Political Science Review Volume 42, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: This article offers a novel argument about regional sanctions as in-group peer review, drawing on an analogy from the world of academic publishing. Through their leaning on community-derived authority, equality before the peer, and constructive criticism, regional sanctions have a previously overlooked legitimacy advantage over out-group sanctions used by external actors. The article probes the empirical bearing of this argument for African Union (AU) sanctions against Egypt (2013) and Sudan (2019). Even in these contentious democratic crises, perceptions of sanctions in African media broadly support the theoretical intuition of regional sanctions as a form of peer review. It is, however, far from obvious that peer review leads to successful enforcement of democratic norms beyond urgent crisis. Pragmatic and resolution-oriented, AU sanctions aim at avoiding anarchy rather than at achieving flawless democracy.
(Un)Democratic change and use of social sanctions for domestic politics: Council of Europe monitoring in Turkey
By: Digdem Soyaltin-Colella
Published in International Political Science Review Volume 42, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Monitoring is the formal instrument through which the Council of Europe imposes social sanctions on its member countries by publicly exposing their wrongdoings. As a soft governance tool, monitoring is argued to have a limited impact on state policies. Yet, in Turkey, Council of Europe monitoring worked to promote pro-democratic change and then backfired through the escalation of authoritarian practices. This article shows that being subjected to Council of Europe monitoring can lead to democratic change if and when its sanctioning requirements fit the political agenda of the incumbents and empower them against domestic opponents. In the case of misfit, the political costs of aligning with the Regional Organisations’ sanctions increase for governments at home. Yet, as the Turkish case indicates, the outcome has not been inertia but rather the reverse as the government used the Council of Europe’s social sanctions to legitimise its undemocratic measures until it regained power in internal political struggles.
Legitimation, regime survival, and shifting alliances in the Arab League: Explaining sanction politics during the Arab Spring
By: Maria Josepha Debre
Published in International Political Science Review Volume 42, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: The Arab Spring marks a puzzling shift in the sanction politics of the Arab League: for the first time, the Arab League suspended member states for matters of internal affairs by majority vote. This article argues that survival politics can explain the changing sanction politics of the Arab League. To re-legitimize rule during this unprecedented moment, member states selectively supported some protest movements to signal their understanding of public demands for change without committing to domestic reform. Contrasting case studies of the Arab League’s suspension of Libya and Syria and its simultaneous support for military intervention against protestors in Bahrain illustrate how concerns for regime legitimation and a short-lived alliance between Saudi Arabia and Qatar contributed to the sanctioning decisions. The Arab League can thus be considered a case of negative democracy protection, where regional sanctions are employed to selectively preserve authoritarian rule.
Digital Humanitarianism and the Visual Politics of the Refugee Camp: (Un)Seeing Control
By: Delf Rothe, Christiane Fröhlich, Juan Miguel Rodriguez Lopez
Published in International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Digital visual technologies have become an important tool of humanitarian governance. They allow the monitoring of crises from afar, making it possible to detect human rights violations and refugee movements, despite a crisis area being inaccessible. However, the political effects of such “digital humanitarianism” are understudied. This article aims to amend this gap by analyzing which forms of seeing, showing, and governing refugee camps are enabled by digital technologies. To this end, the article combines scholarship on the politics of the refugee camp with the emerging body of work on digital humanitarianism. It proposes the notion of a “visual assemblage of the refugee camp” to conceptualize the increasing adoption of visual technologies in refugee camp governance. Using the two paradigmatic cases of Zaatari and Azraq, two refugee camps for displaced Syrians in Jordan, the text outlines how this visual assemblage enacts the refugee camp in different ways—thus bringing about different versions of the camp. The case study reveals three such enactments of the refugee camp—as a technology of care and control; as a political space; and, as a governmental laboratory—and discusses how these interact and clash in everyday camp life.
“We Can Do This”: Merkel, Migration and the Fantasy of Control
By: Maja Zehfuss
Published in International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: At the height of the so-called 2015 refugee crisis, Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is thought to have opened the country's borders to a million refugees. She was celebrated as an international leader and the refugees’ savior, while the country was seen as having a welcome culture. Retrospectively, however, her refugee policy is construed as a mistake. Both interpretations agree that Merkel opened the border. Deploying a detailed reading of events, this article asks what political imaginary is invoked through this representation and what its consequences are. It draws out how paying attention to temporality reveals the racialization involved in producing the problem. First, the article sets out the centrality of Merkel and the border opening to accounts of the events, drawing out the temporality of events and its implications. Second, it asks what it means to say that the border was opened, complicating this representation. Finally, it shows how the focus on the border opening invoked a political imaginary marked by a fantasy of control that obscures its own exclusions. Recognizing bordering as about control over the temporality of community alerts us to how the impossible desire to control the future racializes those seeking refuge.
Families First? The Mobilization of Family Norms in Refugee Resettlement
By: Natalie Welfens, Saskia Bonjour
Published in International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: European resettlement programs prioritize the admission of refugee families. While this is seen as the “natural” thing to do, we argue that the mobilization of family norms is crucially political: in everyday bordering practices, interpretations of family norms are decisive for who is admitted to Europe. We study the selection of Syrian refugees in Turkey for humanitarian admission to Germany, which involves national governments, UNHCR, and NGOs. Fusing practice-theoretical approaches to humanitarianism and mobility governance on the one hand, with gender and sexuality scholarship on nationalism, empire, and migration on the other, we show how family norms configure discretionary power in transnational migration governance. First, family norms shape how power is exercised over refugees in vulnerability and assimilability assessments. Vulnerability assessments hinge on whether a family counts as protective and supportive, or deficient and threatening. Assimilability assessments scrutinize whether refugees do family “right”: in a way that will not disturb resettlement countries’ national (gender) order. Second, the mobilization of family norms reflects power disparities between actors. International and non-governmental actors strive to recognize plural family forms, but are disciplined into applying resettlement states’ more constraining family norms, thereby participating in the (re)production of the borders and boundaries of Europe.
Protest and Regime Change: Different Experiences of the Arab Uprisings and the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election Protests
By: Kamran Rabiei
Published in International Studies Volume 57, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
‘Losing Leverage’ in the Neighbourhood: A Cognitive Frame Analysis of the European Union Migration Policy
By: Jyri J. Jäntti, Benjamin Klasche
Published in International Studies Volume 58, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: The European Union (EU)–Turkey deal consolidated a shift in the EU’s migration policy. The deal is the culmination of the dominance of the security frame and depicts the continuous externalization of the EU’s responsibility of asylum protection and burden sharing. The strengthening of the security frame has weakened the humanitarian norms that previously dictated EU’s behaviour. This has led to the EU losing some of its comparative advantages in negotiations. Simultaneously, the instrumentalization of the value of asylum, paired with an increased number of asylum seekers, has given negotiation leverage to the neighbouring countries turned service providers. These changes in perception and norms have created a power shift, at the disadvantage of the EU, creating a more leveled playing field for negotiations between the parties. This article tracks the historical shifts in the global refugee regime to explain how today’s situation was created. Hereby, the existence of two competing cognitive frames—humanitarian and security—is assumed, tracked and analysed. While looking at the EU–Turkey deal, the article shows that the EU has started treating refugees as a security problem rather than a humanitarian issue, breaking the normative fabric of the refugee regime in the process. The article also displays how Turkey was able to capitalise on this new reality and engage with negotiations of other neighbouring countries of EU that point towards a change of dynamics in the global refugee regime.
What Are the Challenges to Peace? A Workshop on Conflict Analysis to Understand Middle East Politics
By: Ángela Suárez-Collado, Javier Sierra
Published in International Studies Perspectives Volume 22, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: This article presents an innovative teaching and learning method based on collaborative and inquiry-based learning implemented in a Middle East Politics course. It consists of a series of online workshops in which students work in teams to analyze three different current conflicts in the region: Libya, Syria, and the Israeli-Palestinian. The aim of this method was twofold: on the one hand, to create a reflexive setting to help students acquire the most comprehensive possible knowledge about the conflict's causes and dynamics, the concerns and priorities of the main actors involved or affected by the conflict, and major obstacles to its resolution; on the other hand, to enhance a set of key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes, which are essential skills in Political Science and other related areas such as International Studies. This study shows that teaching and learning methodologies based on collaborative and inquiry-based learning are suitable tools to facilitate the understanding of multifaceted, complex realities and to generate new perspectives and views on unfamiliar contexts. This research also suggests that facilitating the active involvement of students in their self-learning can contribute to successful online teaching and to foster the acquisition of key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes.
Foreign Fighters and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
By: Austin C Doctor
Published in International Studies Quarterly Volume 65, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Do foreign fighters increase the prevalence of rebel-inflicted sexual violence? Evidence from recent armed conflicts indicates that this may be the case. However, little is known regarding the generalizability and nature of this relationship. This article argues that foreign fighters present local insurgencies with both strategic benefits—i.e., a reduced dependency on local civilians for material support—and organizational challenges—i.e., threats to intra-group cohesion. In combination, these factors increase local rebel commanders’ willingness to institute policies and oversee practices of sexual violence. I test this theory with a mixed methods research design. In the first stage, I estimate a series of ordinal logistic regression models with a sample of 143 rebel groups active from 1989 to 2011. In the second stage, I investigate further with a case study of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Together, the results demonstrate that when foreign fighters are present in the rank and file, a rebel group is likely to perpetrate more prevalent levels of sexual violence. In addition to explaining group-level differences in rebel-inflicted sexual violence, this study demonstrates how local rebel commanders adjust their internal management strategies to the presence of foreign recruits.
Enemies in the Shadows: On the Origins and Survival of Clandestine Clients
By: Andrew Boutton, Thomas M Dolan
Published in International Studies Quarterly Volume 65, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: States often use covert operations to undermine their adversaries. This strategy involves, among other methods, intelligence organizations directing and supporting the operations of covert networks residing within the target state. This was a common occurrence during the Cold War, but covert clients also operate in modern conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere. This paper introduces and defines covert clients as a distinct and novel concept. We then use original data on more than 250 clandestine networks within the French Resistance to investigate the determinants of covert client success and failure. We find that clients founded by foreign operatives inserted into the target state fail at significantly higher rates than those that establish themselves organically within the target state, although this effect diminishes among stronger groups. We corroborate these findings with a case study of the Prosper network to demonstrate how clandestine group origins influence their local knowledge, incentives, and security practices. This study uses original data to provide novel insights into clandestine group survival by linking survival to group origins. In demonstrating the potential utility of focusing on the conduct of covert operations, we also contribute to a rapidly growing international relations literature on how states project power through covert action.
Sharing Saddles: Oligarchs and Officers on Horseback in Egypt and Tunisia
By: Drew Holland Kinney
Published in International Studies Quarterly Volume 65, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Research on the military's removal from politics overemphasizes the attitudes and interests of officers. Civilians are portrayed as incapable of confronting refractory men with guns. This essay compares regime transitions in Egypt (2011–2013) and Tunisia (2011–2014) to show that unified civilian elites strengthen and polarized elites undermine civilian control of the armed forces. Research for the cases is based on interviews with Egyptian and Tunisian businesspersons, party members, and civil society activists; the International Consortium of Investigation Journalists's tax-offshoring database; loan disbursements from the IMF and World Bank; and secondary sources in Arabic, French, and English. The cases reveal novel insights about the military's removal from politics in fledgling democracies. Pleasing Egypt's officers did not shield President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood from a coup in July 2013 because Morsi and the Brotherhood threatened the wealth and power of civilian politicians and oligarchs. In Tunisia, Islamist and non-Islamist political and economic elites pushed democratization for fear of another Ben “Ali-style kleptocracy. Even during crisis in 2013, united civilian elites contained opposition calls for army intervention. The study's findings suggest that democratizers are not at the mercy of soldiers, but rather civilian leaders have the power to sideline their armies.
The Intractability of Islamist Insurgencies: Islamist Rebels and the Recurrence of Civil War
By: Desirée Nilsson, Isak Svensson
Published in International Studies Quarterly Volume 65, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: There is a large research field focusing on the recurrence of civil wars, yet this literature has omitted to seriously consider religious dimensions and ideational features of armed conflicts. To address this gap, we provide the first global study exploring whether, and why, Islamist civil wars—armed conflicts fought over self-proclaimed Islamist aspirations—are more or less likely to recur compared to other conflicts. We argue that civil wars fought over Islamist claims are more likely to relapse because the ideational features of these conflicts increase the uncertainty regarding the capabilities of the warring actors in terms of the extent and nature of transnational support that may be forthcoming, for rebels as well as the government. In line with our argument, we find that Islamist civil wars are significantly less likely to be terminated and more likely to recur once ended. Thus, our results demonstrate that Islamist civil wars represent a particular challenge with regard to the goal of achieving durable peace.
Global Autocracies: Strategies of Transnational Repression, Legitimation, and Co-Optation in World Politics
By: Gerasimos Tsourapas
Published in International Studies Review Volume 23, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: How, when, and why does a state take repressive action against individuals residing outside its territorial jurisdiction? Beyond state-led domestic forms of control over citizens living within their legal borders, autocracies also seek to target those abroad—from African states’ sponsoring violence against exiled dissidents to Central Asian republics’ extraditions of political émigrés, and from the adoption of spyware software to monitor digital activism across Latin America to enforced disappearances of East Asian expatriates. Despite growing global interconnectedness, the field of international studies currently lacks an adequate comparative framework for analyzing how autocracies adapt to growing cross-border mobility. I argue that the rise of global migration flows has contributed to the emergence of “transnational authoritarianism,” as autocracies aim to both maximize material gains from citizens’ “exit” and minimize political risks by controlling their “voice” abroad. I demonstrate that governments develop strategies of transnational repression, legitimation, and co-optation that transcend state borders, as well as co-operation with a range of non-state actors. Bringing work on the international politics of migration in conversation with the literature on authoritarianism, I provide illustrative examples drawn from a range of transnational authoritarian practices by the fifty countries categorized as “Not Free” by Freedom House in 2019, covering much of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. I sketch an emerging field of international studies research around the novel means that autocracies employ to exercise power over populations abroad, while shedding light on the evolving nature of global authoritarianism.
Students for Freedom and Equality: The Inevitable Return of the Left in Post-Revolutionary Iran
By: Peyman Vahabzadeh
Published in Iranian Studies Volume 54, Issue 5-6 (2021)
Abstract: The emergence and rapid but short-lived presence of Students for Freedom and Equality (SFE; in Persian: Daneshjuyan-e Azadikhah va Barabaritalab or DAB) across major Iranian campuses and their fateful 4 December 2007 protest rally on the campus of the University of Tehran speaks of the return of leftist student activism to Iranian campuses after almost two decades of absence or invisibility within the context of post-revolutionary Iran. SFE was an umbrella democratic organization: its activists came from a plurality of social and political backgrounds and adhered to diverse leftist ideas. But in the context of pro-Reform Movement student activism in Iranian post-secondary institutions in the late 1990s and in 2000s, for a short time the SFE tried to hegemonize student activism and challenge the various pro-government tendencies in university campuses. Before state repression forced the SFE out of operation in 2007, Students for Freedom and Equality brought to campuses candid discussions of social justice issues, critique of Iran’s neoliberal economic policies, and challenges to censorship and lack of freedom.
“Operation Good Neighbor”—Israel and the Rise and Fall of the “Southern Syria Region” (SSR)
By: Eyal Zisser
Published in Israel Studies Volume 26, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The article examines the strategic calculations, assessments and dynamics behind Israel's decision to establish the so called “Southern Syria Region” (SSR) as an undeclared security zone on the Syrian Golan Heights with the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. The article likewise considers Israel's policy vis-à-vis various rebel groups and other actors in the SSR and ultimately, what led Israel to end its intervention once the Syrian army returned to the area.
Negotiating civic space in Lebanon: The potential of non-sectarian movements
By: Sára Vértes, Chris van der Borgh, Antoine Buyse
Published in Journal of Civil Society Volume 17, Issue 3-4 (2021)
Abstract: Shrinking civic space is a global trend in governance impeding citizens’ enjoyment of the fundamental freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly. While deeply affected by this phenomenon, civil society organizations and collectives in Lebanon have cultivated a series of non-sectarian opposition movements that warrant an assessment of how these may contribute to reconciling deeply divided identities. The authors examine the specific challenges imposed on civil society in Lebanon’s hybrid democratic setting, where power and resources are allocated along confession-based cleavages. Additionally, they discuss the strategies through which Lebanese civil society collectives push back against government pressures and defend, as well as expand, their available room for manoeuvre. The strategies of two recent opposition movements are analysed: (i) the coalition ‘Kollouna Watani’, a crossover into politics for the 2018 Lebanese elections by actors originally associated with civil society organizations, and (ii) the mass protest movement starting in October 2019. The findings highlight these non-sectarian movements’ potential to promote cooperation among the fragmented realms of civil society, as well as the hardships of challenging well-established elites and their interests via formal politicization. In doing so, they also show the potential and agency of civil society to counter the phenomenon of shrinking civic space.
How Authoritarians Win When They Lose
By: ultan Tepe, Ayça Alemdaroğlu
Published in Journal of Democracy Volume 32, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: What happens when authoritarian populist parties lose elections despite a tilted playing field? Postelection capture might be their new tool: Confronted with losses in the 2016 and 2019 local elections, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) set about undoing the results by dismissing over 150 democratically elected mayors—mostly in predominantly Kurdish cities—and replaced them with state-appointed trustees or kayyums. These political captures expand the AKP’s patronage networks through what we call forced clientelism and further polarization, thereby undermining the formation of a stronger prodemocratic coalition.
Why Sudan Succeeded Where Algeria Failed
By: Sharan Grewal
Published in Journal of Democracy Volume 32, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: In April 2019, mass uprisings in Algeria and Sudan toppled their longtime dictators. Yet the two countries’ paths soon diverged. Protesters in Sudan secured a pact with the regime’s remnants and embarked on a democratic transition. Protesters in Algeria, however, rallied until May 2021 but could not compel a regime transition. This divergence stems from: 1) the level of organization among protesters; 2) the degree of unity of the regime’s security forces; and 3) the extent of international mediation. A comparison of Algeria and Sudan points to the importance of pacted transitions and sheds new light on the factors that facilitate such pacts.
Determining Factors of Inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Selected Muslim Countries
By: Muhammad Ubaidillah Al Mustofa, Raditya Sukmana, Sri Herianingrum, , Ririn Tri Ratnasari, Imron Mawardi, Siti Zulaikha
Published in Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development Volume 42, Issue 3-4 (2021)
Abstract: This study analyzed the impact of country risk, regulatory quality, and selected macroeconomic factors on the inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into selected Muslim countries. A quantitative study was applied using the panel regression method on data of 13 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries from 2002 to 2019. The developed panel regression models evaluated the country risk, institutional quality, and selected macroeconomic factors which included the country’s inflation level, exchange rate, economic output, and political system. These factors are deemed important in many Muslim countries which are known to be associated with poor institutional quality and high exposure to risks due to a multitude of factors such as political instability, wars, and poor management of natural resources. The composite score of the International Country Risk Guide was applied to analyze the impact of country risk on the inflows of FDI and to provide managerial relevancies for different stakeholders. The results showed that in general, Muslim countries tend to have a moderate level of country risk exposure and a low level of institutional quality. As investors prefer to invest in countries with low exposure to risks, the institutional quality must be enhanced to play a vital role in enhancing the flow of foreign investments. Countries with higher economic output have more opportunities to receive higher investment flows.
Lalla Essaydi’s Bullets and Bullets Revisited: Aesthetic and Epistemic Violence in a Globalized Art World
By: Naïma Hachad
Published in Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Volume 17, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: In Bullets and Bullets Revisited (2009–14) the Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi invites the onlooker to reflect on the power dynamics of image production and consumption in a globalizing visual culture. As in the artist’s previous series, the photographs present Moroccan women in interior spaces and poses made familiar to an international audience by nineteenth-century European paintings. However, Essaydi trades Orientalism’s apparent realism and colorful decors for a monochromatic gold color scheme that originates from thousands of bullet casings she has meticulously sewn together to fabricate ceilings, walls, floors, furniture, jewelry, and clothes for her models. This article underscores how Essaydi’s use of a readable symbol of violence allows her to take part in and act on representational traditions that have shaped the perception of Arab Muslim women and the Middle East. Her violent aesthetics further account for curatorial and marketing practices that neutralize the subversive content of art by women originating in North Africa and the Middle East. Often shown in exhibitions featuring similar images and associating women with the veil, weapons, and scenes of destruction, Essaydi’s photographs are uncritically linked to events and situations as varied as the Arab uprisings, violence in the Palestinian territories, and the wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Instead of illuminating complex sociopolitical issues and reshaping dominant discourses, they become part of a homogenizing visual archive that sustains ways of seeing and producing the Middle East—as inherently violent and culturally backward—that are rooted in imperial imaginaries and political ideologies.
The “Barbaric” Dabke: Masculinity, Dance, and Autocracy in Contemporary Syrian Cultural Production
By: Shayna Silverstein
Published in Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Volume 17, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This essay analyzes how dance, gender, and state power function together as a significant node of critique in recent cultural production that addresses authoritarianism in Syria. Identifying the symbolic trope of dabke, a popular dance ubiquitous in Syrian life, selected films, literature, and choreography, this essay argues that the discussed works dislodge dabke from its feminized association with authenticity, folk culture, and nationhood to instead represent dabke as a form of hegemonic masculinity that perpetuates sovereignty, patriarchy, and autocracy. Through the rendering of embodied acts of dabke performance, hegemonic and resilient modes of masculinity are equated with spectacles of violence attached to the state, repressive tactics by the police state, and performative complicity with the regime. This essay argues that sovereign and autocratic forms of power are not universal abstractions but are embedded in the gendered structures of the society in which such power is performed.
Syrian Men’s Disability and Their Masculine Trajectories in the Context of Displacement in Jordan and Turkey
By: Aitemad Muhanna-matar
Published in Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Volume 17, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article analyzes the relationship between men’s physical disability and the trajectories of negotiating masculinities in the context of Syrian refugee displacement in Jordan and Turkey. The article draws its analysis from the personal narratives of five displaced Syrian refugee men who sustained injuries during the war in Syria. It explores how Syrian refugee men with disabilities remake their masculine bodies and selves to create a new version of masculinity that responds to the changes in their socioeconomic circumstances and bodies. The article argues that the disabled Syrian refugee men went through multiple and contradictory masculine trajectories that intersect with multiple identities and different types of disability. Disabled Syrian refugee men’s emergent masculine embodiments created a version of masculinity that, although it adhered to the patriarchal family values of connectivity and intimacy, does not in its practice legitimate domination within the family and in the Syrian refugee community.
Talks before the talks: Effects of pre-negotiation on reaching peace agreements in intrastate armed conflicts, 2005–15
By: Lindsey Doyle, Lukas Hegele
Published in Journal of Peace Research Volume 58, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Pre-negotiation is widely accepted as a means to convince intrastate conflict parties to negotiate formally; however, research has not yet established a causal link between early efforts to bring warring parties together and the outcome of any negotiated settlement. This gap begs the question: To what extent do activities during the pre-negotiation phase contribute to the signing of a peace agreement? Theory on interstate conflict suggests that pre-negotiation reduces risk, thereby convincing conflict parties that they have more to gain from negotiating than from fighting. However, in conflicts between governments and non-state armed actors, this article argues that reciprocity paves the way for reaching peace agreements. This article introduces a new dataset on pre-negotiation including nearly all intrastate armed conflicts between 2005 and 2015. Confirming previous findings, mediation is significantly and positively correlated with reaching a type of peace agreement; conflicts over government are more likely to end in a negotiated agreement than conflicts over territory or both government and territory. In contrast to existing qualitative research, this study finds little evidence that pre-negotiation increases the likelihood that conflict dyads sign peace agreements. Future quantitative research on this topic requires more nuanced measures of the conditions under which conflict parties shift from unilateral to joint decisionmaking.
Gendered preferences: How women’s inclusion in society shapes negotiation occurrence in intrastate conflicts
By: Robert Ulrich Nagel
Published in Journal of Peace Research Volume 58, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: To what extent do gender relations in society influence the likelihood of negotiations during intrastate disputes? A substantial body of literature recognizes gendered inequalities as integral to understanding conflict, yet they have received little attention in systematic studies of conflict management. I argue that patriarchal gender relations that reflect a preference for masculinity over femininity influence states’ propensity to negotiate with rebels. I draw on the concept of practices to explain how gender relations shape government preferences for negotiations. Specifically, I contend that practices of excluding women from fully participating in public life institutionalize violence as the preferred way of managing conflict. The implication is that countries with more patriarchal gender relations are less likely to engage in negotiations during intrastate conflicts. I test this argument on all civil conflict dyads between 1975 and 2014. The analyses show that countries that marginalize women’s participation in public life are significantly less likely to engage in negotiations. The results provide strong support for my theoretical argument and offer systematic evidence in support of core claims of the feminist peace theory.
Arms for education? External support and rebel social services
By: Reyko Huang, Patricia L Sullivan
Published in Journal of Peace Research Volume 58, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: How does foreign support for rebel groups affect rebel governance of civilians during armed conflict? Existing studies primarily examine the local and domestic politics of rebel rule, leaving the effects of foreign intervention on rebel governance underexplored. Focusing on rebel provision of social services, this study considers two competing arguments. The first suggests that foreign sponsorship reduces rebels’ need to rely on local civilians for resources and hence decreases rebels’ incentives to provide services. The second anticipates that by augmenting rebels’ resources and military capabilities, foreign support increases their capacity to provide welfare services. These competing logics suggest that different types of foreign support have divergent effects on rebel social service provision. The article tests this theory using cross-sectional time-series data on external support for rebel groups and rebel governance for the post-1945 period. It finds that rebel groups that receive external funding, weapons or training are significantly more likely to provide education and health services to civilians. In contrast, direct military intervention to assist insurgent forces has no effect on rebel service provision. This article is among the first to systematically study the impact of external support and third-party intervention on rebel social service provision during civil war and holds implications for civilian welfare in contested territories.
Impeding fatal violence through third-party diplomacy: The effect of mediation on conflict intensity
By: Constantin Ruhe
Published in Journal of Peace Research Volume 58, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Existing research provides no systematic insights into if and how mediation impedes battle-related deaths. Therefore, this article presents a temporally disaggregated analysis and assesses the effect of mediation on monthly fatal violence. The article predicts that adversaries evaluate opponents’ trustworthiness from both fighting and negotiation behavior. It argues that reducing fighting intensity during negotiations is a sign of cooperation, which can be negotiated by mediators to build trust. Over the course of mediation, the content of negotiations provides information about how genuinely a conflict party is interested in conflict resolution. Only if mediation achieves negotiation of core incompatibilities will conflict parties be willing to reduce fighting intensity. Under these conditions, information revealed in a mediation process can build trust and substantively reduce violence. An empirical analysis of all African conflicts between 1993 and 2007 supports this prediction and shows that on average mediation is followed by substantive and lasting reductions in fatal violence, if mediation discusses the conflict’s main incompatibility. In contrast, mediation on other topics is associated with a small, fleeting reduction in violence. Data of battle-related fatalities in Syria during negotiations as well as qualitative evidence further support the theoretical mechanism and the model prediction. The study concludes that mediation can reduce conflict intensity substantively, if it achieves exchange between conflict parties on the main conflict issues.
Contesting narratives of repression: Experimental evidence from Sisi’s Egypt
By: Scott Williamson, Mashail Malik
Published in Journal of Peace Research Volume 58, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: Authoritarian regimes frequently attempt to justify repression by accusing their opponents of violent behavior. Are such claims successful at persuading the public to accept state-sponsored violence, and can these claims be contested effectively by human rights organizations seeking to publicize evidence contradicting the regime’s narrative? To evaluate these questions, we conducted a survey experiment in Egypt using Facebook advertisements to recruit respondents safely. The experiment evaluates the persuasiveness of competing information provided by a human rights organization and the Egyptian security forces in shaping attitudes toward an incident of state-sponsored violence in which security forces killed several leaders of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood. We find evidence for the ability of Egyptian security forces to increase support for this repression when they control the narrative about why violence was used. However, we also find that the effects of this propaganda disappear when paired with information from Human Rights Watch that counters the security forces’ justifications. These findings provide experimental evidence that propaganda can help authoritarian regimes to increase public support for repression, but they also indicate that human rights organizations can play some role in mitigating this support when they succeed at disseminating countervalent information in these contexts.
Feels like home: Effect of transnational identities on attitudes towards foreign countries
By: Efe Tokdemir
Published in Journal of Peace Research Volume 58, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: How do people react to foreign actors’ involvement in a conflict in a third party? Many studies have explored how individuals react to their country’s foreign policy choices, as well as how they react to the policies targeting their countries. Yet, we know less about how they form their attitudes regarding the policies not directly aiming at their own countries, and hence, their well-being. Building on intergroup relations and employing a social psychological approach, this article argues that identity serves as a heuristic through which individuals evaluate foreign actors, and their policies targeting in- and out-group members living abroad. Conducting a survey experiment in Turkey, I test my claims in the context of the Syrian Civil War. The findings of the experiments reveal that transnational identity ties have an impact on attitude formation: Turks and Kurds express positive/negative attitudes towards the USA and Russia conditional on whether their involvement to the conflict favor/disfavor their in-group/out-group across the border. Broadly speaking, the results show that domestic cleavages are of importance in predicting the public’s reaction to the developments in international politics, which implies a necessity of taking domestic politics in designing soft power promotion and public diplomacy strategies for many global and regional powers in attempting to win hearts and minds abroad.
Are OECD Countries in a Rule of Law Recession?
By: Jose R. Balmori de la Miyar
Published in Law and Development Review Volume 14, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This paper examines whether there is a rule of law recession among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This formal inquiry is motivated by the recent findings of a democratic recession across several countries with a long tradition of democratic values. I conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses using the rule of law index from the World Justice Project, as well as different government and academic reports. Results show that, by and large, there is no rule of law recession among OECD member countries. Findings indicate that 12 out of the 28 OECD member countries analyzed in this paper continue to expand their level of adherence to the rule of law during the period 2014–2020. In fact, just as many OECD member countries have stable scores in their respective rule of law index. In contrast, only Turkey, Hungary, Korea, and Poland exhibit a rule of law recession.
Migration, Poverty, the Role of State, (International) Law and Development in the Industrialised Countries of Europe
By: Brian-Vincent Ikejiaku
Published in Law and Development Review Volume 14, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The current radical strategies by which there is, on one hand, an increasing European assistance to developing poor countries of Africa/Middle East and on the other hand, tightened border-security within Europe as a means to reduce migration from the South; may worsen the state of poverty in Europe, particularly on the immigrants and impact on the workforce in Europe with implication on development. Though, these strategies may sound radically appealing, they are however, unlikely to reduce migration flows to Europe. While there is still a “wide development gap” between the poor countries of Africa/Middle East and industrialised countries of Europe, migration will often increase, at least in the next two-three decades. Radical border security in Europe will expose the migrants to human trafficking in different form and manifestation contrary to Article 3 UN Protocol on Trafficking in Person. The paper examines the role of the State and Law and development, in addressing the issues of poverty and migration within the industrialised countries of Europe. The research argues that there is the likelihood that poverty and human right issues will increase in Europe in the near-future, if the State/EU fails to play their role, by changing their policy direction and repositioning themselves by improving their Law and development stance. The research employs the human rights-based approach, interdisciplinary and critical-analytical perspective within the framework of international Law and development. It employs qualitative empirical evidence from developed countries of Europe and poor developing countries for analysis.
Allow me this one time to speak as a Shi’i: The sectarian taboo, music videos and the securitization of sectarian identity politics in Hezbollah’s legitimation of its military involvement in Syria
By: Helle Malmvig
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The rise of sectarianism in the Middle East has predominantly been explained by realist or soft constructivist approaches. This article offers an alternative poststructuralist reading, analysing sectarianism as a specific, yet ambiguous ethno-religious discourse in which the ‘sectarian taboo’ continues to restrain aggressive forms of sectarian enunciations. Drawing on rare first-hand material and interviews, it is shown how sectarian referents both are securitized, deferred and invoked in Hezbollah’s political discourse legitimizing its warfare in Syria. However, it also suggests that we need to look beyond official discourses, and into the world of popular culture, where religious mythology and music diffuse the boundary between the real and the simulated. In the end, sectarianism may reveal a common post-modern condition of longing for authenticity and solid ground.
The voice of the people? Echoes and quotations in the revolutionary slogans in Egypt
By: Zoé Carle
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Revolutions are moments of epiphany of the people: they manifest themselves ‘physically’ in the street, in demonstrations, stand-ins, sit-ins, but above all symbolically, to demand a transfer of sovereignty. The manifestation of this symbolic ‘authority’ is also a phenomenon of discourse, of which revolutionary slogans are the main tool. This paper aims to show how slogans can be perceived as an ambiguous form of speech, imitating the language of authority but drawing on emotion to achieve what can be defined as a coup in the language, picturing a consensual vision of the people as a united body. Through quotation and reuse, authority is sometimes built and sometimes undone in the circulation of slogans. This paper aims to show how the fantasized category of ‘the people’ reveals itself as a legitimate but fragile voice, since the effectiveness of revolutionary slogans cannot exceed a very limited moment of consensus and cannot give a stable definition of ‘the people’.
Legitimizing child martyrdom? The emergence of a new political subjectivity in revolutionary Egypt
By: Chiara Diana
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The 25 January 2011 revolution in Egypt was the stage upon which both the people and new political subjectivities made their appearance, under the slogan ‘we, the people’. Regardless of social class, gender, or age, the Egyptian people were affected by the revolutionary events as they experienced a revolution of the self. Using the theoretical framework of childhood studies and adapting a macro-structural approach, this paper explores how the process of memorialization of children killed during the protests and clashes of 2011–2012 ascribes them the status of martyrs of the revolution, like adults. In so doing, the paper intends to demonstrate that the recognized child martyrdom proves that children represent a new political subjectivity group which has emerged in the Egyptian revolutionary context.
Representing the people in the street or in the ballot box? The revolutionary coalition campaign during the 2011 Egyptian elections
By: Clément Steuer
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The results of the 2011–12 Egyptian elections highlight the gap that exists between the ‘emotional’ and the ‘rational’ conceptions of the people and its representation. If the revolutionary moment had allowed some organizations to temporarily gain legitimacy to speak in the name of the people, these organizations have been ill-equipped to compete within the existing structure of the social cleavages. This article examines the electoral system, the lack of resources at the disposal of the revolutionaries, the polarization of the political field around the religious issue, and the difficulties involved in conciliating between the electoral campaign and street activism.
Kurdish politics in post-2011 Syria: From fragmentation to hegemony
By: Güneş Murat Tezcür, Helin Yıldız
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The PYD has emerged as the predominant Kurdish political party in Syria soon after the outbreak of the civil war. Why and how did the PYD, established only in 2003, eclipse other Kurdish groups? This article addresses this historical puzzle and argues that conventional arguments that explain the rise of the PYD primarily as a function of its coercive practices with the complicity of the Assad regime are incomplete. Deriving insights from studies focusing on transnational dynamics of civil wars, this article argues that PYD’s transborder linkages that provided the organization with crucial advantages over its co-ethnic rival organizations were central to its success. The empirical research involves several original empirical data sources including (a) biographical information of more than a thousand Syrians who joined the PKK since the late 1970s, and (b) biographical information of 785 individuals from Turkey who fought with the PYD since 2013.
From prison to parliament: Victimhood, identity, and electoral support
By: Kimberly G. Guiler
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Are voters more likely to support candidates who are victims of political persecution? I draw on an original survey with embedded experiments deployed in Turkey ahead of the June 2015 General Election to advance a theory linking political victimhood to an electoral advantage. The results suggest that voters primed with information about a candidate’s political imprisonment, on average, report higher ideological affinity with the candidate. In addition, respondents who identify as co-victims are more likely to say they would vote for a candidate who was imprisoned. These findings are significant and hold regardless of which party the candidate belongs to. Respondents presented with a candidate from the incumbent Justice and Development Party also report higher levels of trust and closeness with the candidate who was imprisoned. This pattern is consistent for voters with low trust in the Justice and Development Party leadership and low levels of religiosity, demonstrating that a history of persecution can broaden candidates’ support.
Working class youth transitions as a litmus test for change: labour crisis and social conflict in Arab Mediterranean countries
By: Maria Cristina Paciello, Daniela Pioppi
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: The article reconceptualizes the issue of youth precariousness and unemployment by taking empirical data from five Arab Mediterranean countries, namely Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Occupied Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. It demonstrates that youth worsening labour conditions point not only to the problems of a specific age-cohort in entering the labour market but also to a much larger process of change that can be best understood as the creation of a new working class which is by far more precarious and fragmented than the post-independence one.The reaction to the profound reconfiguration of labour relations is intense, as the unparalleled labour-related protests in the region demonstrate. However, current dynamics of mobilization reveal many tensions between wage, secure workers, and precarious unemployed youth, as well as between secure-workers themselves due to growing fragmentation of the working class, but also to repressive and divide et impera strategies carried out by regimes.
Youth socio-economic and political grievances: Bringing the ‘Political’ back into understanding contestation in the MENA
By: Nadine Sika
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Based on the quantitative and qualitative fieldwork of the POWER2YOUTH (P2Y) project in six MENA countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, Occupied Palestinian Territories) this article analyses the relation between young people’s economic grievances, their satisfaction with their regimes’ governance and the extent to which they are politically mobilized. What is the relation between socio-economic and political grievances and contestation in the MENA? This article demonstrates the importance of bringing politics back into understanding contestation and mobilization in the MENA. It challenges the general narrative that contends that economic grievances, especially unemployment, are the main drivers for public discontent and contestation. It demonstrates that socio-economic grievances develop into political grievances and that the amalgam of both socio-economic and political grievances is linked to young peoples’ tendencies to protest against their respective regimes.
Rethinking justice beyond human rights. Anti-colonialism and intersectionality in the politics of the Palestinian Youth Movement
By: Lynn Welchman, Elena Zambelli, Ruba Salih
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article discusses the politics of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) – a contemporary social movement operating across a number of Arab and western countries. Unlike analysis on the Arab Uprisings which focused on the national dimension of youth activism, we explore how the PYM politics fosters and upholds an explicitly transnational anti-colonial and intersectional solidarity framework, which foregrounds a radical critique of conventional notions of self-determination based on state-framed human rights discourses and international law paradigms. The struggle becomes instead framed as an issue of justice, freedom and liberation from interlocking forms and hierarchies of oppression.
Using the clustering method for a heterogeneous reading of Lebanese youth
By: Mona Harb, Sami Atallah, Mohamad Diab
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: How to better study youth in ways that can capture their complex subjectivities? While qualitative methodologies succeed rather well at unpacking youth’s holistic selfhoods, quantitative tools are often more rigid at apprehending their multifaceted lives. Some tools such as multiple correspondence analysis do allow for a more nuanced and thorough understanding, and are particularly opportune in contexts where the studied group is heterogeneous in terms of social class and sectarian origin – such as the Lebanese case. Building on these attempts at quantitatively measuring youth’s multidimensional attributes, this paper analyzes a survey of Lebanese youth conducted in 2015 within the framework of the Power2Youth (P2Y) study to generate an intricate reading of young people, using the k-means clustering method. We use this technique to generate five youth groups: i) potential migrants, ii) secular youth, iii) school-to-job youth, iv) conservative students, and v) maturing youth. The paper discusses how each cluster relates to politics and religiosity, as well as to views on women’s roles and rights, highlighting the high variability within and across clusters. We conclude with reflections on how the clustering method may be useful to furthering research agendas and quantitative methodologies examining youth’s attitudes to political change in post-colonial contexts.
Looking South: What can Youth Studies in the Global North learn from research on youth and policy in the Middle East and North African countries?
By: Robert MacDonald, Hannah King
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Connell’s ‘Southern Theory’ calls for intellectuals in the ‘Global North’ ‘to start learning in new ways, and in new relationships’ with and from scholars in the ‘Global South’ in order to better understand the subjects of our research. This, exactly, is the motivation of this paper. In working with, and drawing, on a large, comparative research programme about young people and youth policy in some of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries (the POWER2YOUTH research project), we explore what can be learned for sociologically-oriented Youth Studies in the ‘Global North’ through collaborative research in the ‘Global South’. The paper brings together research and theory from different disciplines/fields as well as from different regions/states so as to consider how we might better research and theorize about ‘youth’ (as a socially constructed life-phase) and about the empirical realities of young people’s lives (as they play out in social, political, cultural and economic contexts). Consequently, the paper discusses five themes or issues that we see as important for Youth Studies in the ‘Global North’: the variation in dominant state/social constructions of ‘youth’; the plurality of social divisions amongst youth; the different meanings of insecurity for young people; the flaws in human capital-based youth policies; and the significance of informal and non-standard work for young people. In conclusion, we summarize our arguments and underscore the value of a political economy perspective in Youth Studies.
Go local, go global: Studying popular protests in the MENA post-2011
By: Irene Weipert-Fenner
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: The Arab Uprisings led to an increased interest in studying protests in the MENA region. The article examines this literature, provides suggestions for further research and reflects how the study of MENA protests can contribute to a cross-regional research agenda. It looks at rationalist-structuralist approaches, on studies in the framework of social movement theory, and political economy approaches. The article suggests combining the latter with SMT in broader concepts such as the ‘incorporation crisis’, originally developed for Latin America, allowing for more cross-regional comparisons. Finally, it discusses the latest methodological developments for collecting data on protests in the MENA post-2011.
The Arab uprisings and the return of repression
By: Maria Josua, Mirjam Edel
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: The Arab uprisings of 2011 led to a reassessment of comparative politics research on authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab region made its way from area studies into mainstream comparative politics, and research foci have shifted towards civil-military relations and repression. Ten years later, we observe higher levels of repression across the region, reflecting a diversity of repressive trends. Advocating comprehensive research on this variation, we review recent literature that tackles various dimensions of repression in Arab autocracies. In addition to disaggregating forms and targets of repression, we call for its justifications, agents and transnational dimensions to be considered next to the implications of digital technologies of coercion. We also reflect on how repression affects the possibility of doing research and how we can investigate the proposed dimensions of repression.
Observing (the debate on) sectarianism: On conceptualizing, grasping and explaining sectarian politics in a new Middle East
By: Morten Valbjørn
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: To what extent has the study of sectarianism in the Middle East made any progress in the first decade after the Arab uprisings? Based on an analysis of three aspects of the study of sectarianism – on how to conceptualize, grasp and explain sectarianism – the article shows that the sectarianism debate hardly has provided much certainty, agreement or any firm conclusions. However, the study of sectarianism has progressed in terms of greater conceptual, methodological and theoretical sophistication. Thereby, the study of sectarianism resembles a broader trend in Middle East Studies towards moving beyond the classic ‘trenches’ in the Area Studies Controversy.
Alliance politics in the post-2011 Middle East: Advancing theoretical and empirical perspectives
By: May Darwich
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: Alliances in the post-2011 Middle East are characterized by anomalous shifts and upsurge of new actors leading to theoretical and empirical puzzles. This article argues that unravelling these patterns requires grappling with in-depth knowledge of regional politics and a serious engagement with the broader IR literature. Through this dual exploration, the article explores how the literature on alliance cohesion within IR could inform anomalous alliance dynamics in the post-2011 regional order. It also reveals how regional developments in the post-2011 Middle East, such as the pursuit of alliance by non-state actors, present avenues for theoretical innovations.
The Middle East in global modernity: Analytic polycentrism, historic entanglements and a rejuvenated area studies debate
By: Stephan Stetter
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 26, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: I argue that theories of global modernity/world society offer a promising inter-disciplinary approach for theorizing the Middle East. They provide a conceptual umbrella for a rejuvenated Area Studies debate. I turn first to earlier (inter-disciplinary) debates of that kind and then discuss how a rejuvenated debate can reach for new shores: I address the Middle East Area Studies Controversy, and then Fred Halliday’s distinction between ‘analytic universalism’ and ‘historic particularism’. Focusing on the interstices between Area Studies and International Relations (IR), I suggest that scholarship on the Arab uprisings offers insights on how to transcend this distinction by shifting to ‘analytic polycentrism’ and ‘historic entanglements’. I identify the unpredictability of power relations and local/global horizons as central, and often marginalized perspectives brought to the fore in post-Arab uprising scholarship. I then discuss how these insights can be linked to innovative (inter-disciplinary) debates in IR that draw from historical-sociological theories of global modernity and world society, especially how the concepts of emergence and evolution as well as differentiation and subjectivity – central pillars of world society theories – can be made of use for the study of the Middle East’s place in global modernity and global IR generally speaking.
Beginnings, Continuities and Revivals: An Inventory of the New Arab Left and an Ongoing Arab Left Tradition
By: Michaelle Browers
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article examines some of the first translations of Gramsci into Arabic by young, New Left figures associated with a short-lived group called “Socialist Lebanon.” Thinking à la Edward Said about the undertaking of translations of ideas from one context to another and one language to another as a potentially productive act of beginning, I argue that these first translations, undertaken as part of a revolutionary praxis of young, militant intellectuals, not only reveal some of the limitations and possibilities in the development of a Gramscian analysis of Lebanese politics. Rather, their efforts were central to the formation of a New Arab Left and the strands of those beginnings not only are detected in the later work of several of these activist-translators, even after they had moved beyond militant politics, but also remain visible in later revolutionary praxis in the region. By foregrounding the way in which each subsequent “Gramsci boom” (in the 1990s and after 2010) exists in relationship to an ongoing revolutionary praxis that reads and translates the Arab Left anew, I also seek to provide evidence of what Michele Filippini refers to in this issue as an “Arab provincialization” of Gramscian thought and what I prefer to highlight as a continuous tradition of Arab Left revolutionary praxis.
Mahdi Amel: On Colonialism, Sectarianism and Hegemony
By: Hicham Safieddine
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article explores how the Arab Marxist, Mahdi Amel (1936–1987), conceptualized hegemony in a colonial and sectarian context. I explore Amel’s articulation of ideology as class struggle in relation to Gramsci and other leftist intellectuals of his generation. My aim is to expand our understanding of how hegemony is transformed when it travels into anti-colonial, Arab Marxist thought in general and its Lebanese communist variant in particular. The first part of the article looks at Amel’s articulation of Arab bourgeois hegemony under colonialism and its manifestation in political rather than civil society. The second part details Amel’s theorization of sectarian bourgeois hegemony in Lebanon. In Amel’s thought, the relationship between class, sect and state, which I explore, gave rise to a chronic and sectarian hegemonic crisis that has haunted the Lebanese bourgeoisie from the time of independence until the present.
Hegemony, Domination, Corruption and Fraud in the Arab Region
By: Gilbert Achcar
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Starting from a critique of the core thesis in Nazih Ayubi’s Over-stating the Arab State (1995) that Arab states are “feeble” because they lack “hegemony” in the Gramscian sense, this article postulates that rule based on coercion alone is not sustainable beyond exceptional periods. It shows how Arab regimes have been deploying the whole range of hegemonic tools, including buying consent (corruption) and artificially inflating it (fraud). Whereas Ayubi expressed the view that “feebleness” was both a reason and a further cause behind the Arab regimes’ inability to implement the neoliberal restructuring of their economies, this article maintains that it is an erosion in the hegemonic aptitude of regional governments due to the socioeconomic consequences of their implementation of neoliberal recipes that set the scene for the revolutionary shockwave of the Arab Spring. The article also shows how Arab regimes have reacted to the shockwave by an intensified resort to their traditional tools combined with the Hobbesian covenant on the backdrop of regional civil wars. Yet, as recent upheavals in Sudan and Algeria show, there also are limits to this legitimation stratagem.
Molecular Transformations: Reading the Arab Uprisings with and beyond Gramsci
By: Alessandra Marchi
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The increasing interest in Antonio Gramsci’s thought constitutes an important source of inspiration in the study of the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in the post-2011 Arab uprisings period. The popularity of the Italian Marxist thinker is to be found in the original applications and uses of Gramscian categories, which have given rise to a growing secondary literature, especially outside Italy and Europe, beyond Gramsci’s immediate background and beyond the context of his own historical and political analysis. The revolutionary moment of 2011, the crisis of hegemony, and thus the crisis of ‘the State as a whole’ (stato integrale), is present in different ways in Arab countries, where many groups within civil society live, work, compete and protest tirelessly. This article draws attention to the less explored Gramscian concept of the “molecular” and argues for the importance of reading molecular, even fragmented, ways to resist the manufacturing of consent and the dominant hegemony during revolutionary moments, such as the pre- and post-2011 periods. The concept of the ‘molecular’ (molecolare) is fundamental to shedding light on the potentially transformative implications of everyday contentious actions and helps us to scrutinise what kind of hegemony is possible in Arab-Mediterranean countries today. Furthermore, Gramsci enables us to confront multiple, singular experiences of ‘others’ – which already are shaping contemporary history in different world regions while being intertwined with global history. This article shows how the theoretical, methodological and political potential of Gramscian interpretations is vital to – and can be enriched and renewed by – a promising, ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue.
Revolutionary Weakness in Gramscian Perspective: the Arab Middle East and North Africa since 2011
By: John Chalcraft
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article sets out a Gramscian perspective on revolutionary weakness in the MENA. It aims not at a top-down analysis of how activists were crushed, but at a bottom-up analysis evaluating activist activity. Drawing on a reading of Gramsci, fieldwork in Egypt, and recent research on MENA protest, it adopts a Gramscian concept of transformative activity and applies it to the MENA since 2011. It argues that the basic elements of transformative activity in Gramsci include subaltern social groups, conceptions of the world, collective will, organisation, strategy/tactics, and historical bloc. It argues that transformative activity involves the organic articulation of these distinct moments in a complex, differentiated unity. On the basis of this view, the article shows how sense can be made of revolutionary weakness in the MENA since 2011 through a critical analysis of problems in the organic articulation of revolutionary mobilisation.
The Mythological Machine in the Great Civil War (2001–2021): Oikos and Polis in Nation-Making
By: Billie Jeanne Brownlee, Maziyar Ghiabi
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The article revisits ‘sectarianism’ as an epistemic venue within the context of a Great Civil War in the Middle East (2001-2021), a label that includes the overarching narratives of political life in the aftermath of 9/11 up to the aftermath of the so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ By introducing the notion of the ‘mythological machine,’ it argues that ‘sectarianism’ is a myth, something that does not exist in real terms, but which has real world effects. The mythological machine is a device that produces epiphanies and myths; it is a gnoseological process, which has cultural, social and political effects through the generation of mythological facts and, as a machine, it does so through both guiding and automatized mechanisms. Through this interpretive shift, the article proceeds through several theoretical steps using a variety of cases from across West Asia and North Africa, contextualizing them within global political events. Firstly, the article argues that it is ‘civil war,’ shaped by the work of the mythological machine that governs state-society relations and transnational politics in the Middle East. Then, the article discusses how the mythological machine incorporates a semantic othering via mythological thinking, speak and practice that shapes the perception and experience of civil wars. To conclude, the article discusses how the mythological machine displaces people’s status in the context of civil wars leading to the emergence of new forms of belonging and nation-making. Ultimately, the mythological machine creates what Giorgio Agamben defines as a state without people, a condition exhausting the value of citizenship and the political.
The Political Economy of Nationality-Based Labor Inclusion Strategies: A Case Study of the Jordan Compact
By: Shaddin Almasri
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: In a setting of protracted refugee crises, donor responses increasingly have taken on experimental development approaches. One such aid experiment is that of the Jordan Compact, drafted in February 2016. This aimed to turn the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan into a development opportunity, by fostering job creation and harvesting skills of displaced populations. This brought with it attention from donors in the form of political interest and, more importantly, funding, to stimulate the local economy and labor markets. However, the implementation of this plan was problematic: It focused only on stimulating jobs for Syrians and Jordanians, with little attention given to existing labor market dynamics and other employed nationality groups. Using a qualitative approach informed by both desk research and key informant interviews, this article shows that the policies undertaken have formed a nationality-based prioritization strategy that sought to improve Syrian labor market access over that of other non-Jordanians. The Compact did little to address genuine job creation or social protection, focusing on boosting permit numbers while worsening non-Syrian migrant and refugee access to protection in formal work.
Comparing the Role of the Military in Iran’s and Egypt’s Revolutions
By: Alireza Salehnia
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article analyzes the states of Iran and Egypt before the eruption of revolutionary processes in those countries in 1979 and 2011 respectively. Its aim is to delineate the different roles of the armies as the last lethal and organized bastions of dictatorships during those revolutions. In Egypt, the army successfully protected the Egyptian state from a complete downfall, while in Iran, the army became completely disorganized and shattered. It argues that the extreme personal rule of Iran’s shah [king] within a neo-sultanic framework and his extreme depoliticization of the army rendered it unable to act independently during a revolutionary process. In contrast, the distribution of power between the army and presidential palace within an institutionalized dual military state enabled the army to play a much more definitive role during the revolutionary process in Egypt. Consequently, unlike in 1979 Iran, the army in 2011 Egypt not only saved the pre-revolutionary military dictatorship but restored it in a much more brutal way.
Remembering Nubia’s Past: Space, Generations and Memorial Practices
By: Mayada Madbouly
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: This article investigates how Nubian actors establish different memorial practices to transmit their culture and heritage in contemporary Egypt. The aim is to shed light on the heterogeneity of the Nubian community, thereby avoiding the dichotomy of the state official narrative versus a homogenized Nubian narrative. By mobilizing the sociology of collective memory and the sociology of social movements, this article aims to advance more reflection on the complexity of the remembering process. In order to explore how the memorial and cultural practices evolved in the last decade, I first present a historical background to explain to what the Nubian collective memory refers. By presenting critical discussions, I suggest using the space of the Nubian past because it enables us to understand better the dynamics and the diversity of the engaged actors. I highlight the generational factor, in the second part of this article, by illustrating how Nubian Youth are renewing their logics of action.
IMF’s Social Protection between Rhetoric and Action: The Case of Egypt
By: Osama Diab, Salma Ihab Hindy
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: A substantial body of literature has been produced about the IMF’s drift away from neoliberal orthodoxy in the aftermath of the 2007/08 global financial crisis. This article assesses the degree to which the IMF’s post-crisis change in discourse toward adding more emphasis on social protection was put into action in Egypt’s 2016 economic reform program. Beyond a noticeable discursive change, our research found that there was very little—if any—practical change. First, we demonstrate how the social component of the program was much smaller than the neoliberal or ‘business-as-usual’ component, not only as a share of program measures but also in terms of their magnitude. Second, we found that even this small component had a very similar equivalent in the last major program between the IMF and Egypt in 1991, thus rendering it less novel, and therefore casting doubt on the IMF’s claims of change.
10 Years On: New Contextual Factors in the Study of Islamism
By: Lucia Ardovini, Erika Biagini
Published in Middle East Critique Volume 30, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Although the popular protests that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 were short-lived, their long-term consequences are still resonating through the region a decade after their outbreak. Islamist movements have been affected in different ways by the drastic change in the political, social and geographical contexts in which they historically operated, highlighting the need for a renewed examination of these changed circumstances. Based on the case study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, we argue that three key factors need to be accounted for when studying Islamist movements in the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings. These are the dimension of exile; the increased role played by women and youth; and the emergence of cross-generational and cross-ideological alliances. The article analyzes these three factors through a comparative study of responses by Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Sisterhood members to repression across Egypt, Turkey and the UK.
The Muslim Brotherhood: Libya as the Last Resort for the Continued Existence of the Global Movement
By: Haala Hweio
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The fall of the first Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and the ban of the movement in Egypt in 2013 increased the pressure on the Brotherhood’s branch in Libya to fulfill the group’s dreams of power. Libya now remains a potential chance for the group to realize its political ambitions of control and power. The desperation of the group pushed it to take extreme measures that contradict, on many occasions, the group’s declared principles of peaceful and gradual bottom-up change. The group uses all possible means to gain complete political control over Libya, which contributes to prolonging the conflict in the country.
Of Conflict and Collapse: Rethinking State Formation in Post-Gaddafi Libya
By: Emadeddin Badi
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This paper explores the relationships between the Libyan state and society, and the ways in which these dynamics affected the subsequent civil wars in 2011 and onwards. Beyond the commonly-studied impact of oil and state rentierism, this paper demonstrates that the enduring centralization of the state, Gaddafi’s dystopian governance system, the socio-economic and political cultures pre-2011, and the interplay between local systems of legitimacy and central authority have played an underappreciated role in the contemporary Libyan landscape. The continuities and discontinuities of order that defined and characterized the Libyan state before and after 2011 are thus dissected. An exploration of the appositeness of Eurocentric theories of statehood to the Libyan landscape unveils the pillars of legitimacy that defined Libyan statehood pre-Gaddafi. This sheds light both on how the Gaddafi regime sought to control society by often manipulating these pillars and on the ways in which Libyan society either directly and indirectly resisted his rule or rested in complacency. This covert resistance, which turned overt, widespread, and violent in 2011, paved the way for a discursive mutation of “tribalism.” This notion morphed from one of a group behavioral binding mechanism tied to blood lineage into one underpinned by notions of solidarity that override kinship. This analysis in turn elucidates the precarity of the Libyan state and explains the subsequent turmoil in the country post-2011, characterized notably by the emergence of armed non-state actors. A key discontinuity identified is in the realm of foreign influencers that have exploited long-standing domestic grievances and weaponized Libya’s traditional pillars of legitimacy, thus tearing at its society’s social fabric.
Youth as Agenda-Setters between Donors and Beneficiaries: The Limited Role of Libyan Youth after 2011
By: Chiara Loschi
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Based on interviews with young Libyan professionals carried out between 2017 and 2018, this paper examines their role as agenda-setters in international organizations operating in their country since 2011. The growing foreign demand for local expertise after the fall of the old regime was met mostly by the young activists who had helped organize the 2011 uprisings. For foreign organizations, Libyan youth have come to embody brokers, fixers, go-betweens, and persons-in-between, becoming key supporting actors in international project implementation. Despite the opportunities seemingly afforded by the collapse of the old regime, this paper shows that Libyan youth, torn between desires for political change and professional advancement, have struggled to influence the agendas of international organizations, leading to feelings of disenfranchisement. The transformative capacity of international projects is thus often limited by this new class of young, globalized elites who are disengaged from the local needs and realities facing Libyan civil society.
How Can Water Sector Cooperation Support Democratic Governance? Insights from Morocco
By: Annabelle Houdret
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This paper analyzes how development cooperation can actively support democratic governance through cooperation in the water sector. To answer this question, we develop an analytical approach based on democratization research and on water governance research. We tested the approach in three donor-supported water projects in Morocco and carried out over seventy interviews with key stakeholders.
Our findings show (a) key factors influencing the scope for external support for democratic governance in the water sector, (b) potential negative effects of the support when local elites grasp new resources, and (c) unintended positive spill-over effects of water projects on democratic governance within and beyond the sector (for instance, strengthening formerly marginalized groups). As these empirical findings suggest, there is a potentially large scope of action for supporting democratic governance through water sector cooperation. We therefore highlight the need for more analytical and empirical research on causal interlinkages between these two fields of intervention.
Re-thinking the Tanẓīm: Tensions between Individual Identities and Organizational Structures in the Muslim Brotherhood after 2013
By: Lucia Ardovini
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article traces the struggle between individual agency and organizational structures characterizing the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of the 2013 coup, identifying these tensions as a main point of contention driving its restructuring and fragmentation. Since Mohammed Morsi’s violent toppling, the Brotherhood experienced a process of gradual fragmentation, with tensions developing between different approaches to repression. Yet, while these debates came to the fore during the current crisis, they have roots in the pre-revolutionary period. The article traces the emergence of tensions between structure and agency from 2011 to the post-2013 context to provide a clearer picture of the internal challenges facing the Brotherhood today. It relies on data collected during fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2019 in Turkey and the UK, and interviews with current and former Brotherhood members from across the organizational spectrum. It focuses on the members’ individual perspectives in order to trace the growing disconnect between them and the organization.
From Competition to Cooperation: The Radicalization Effect of Salafists on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in the Aftermath of the 2011 Uprising
By: Mohammad Yaghi
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Using the case studies of the 2012 Constitution, the call of al-Jabha al-Salafiyya for the Revolution of the Muslim’s Youth (rmy) and the Salafi’s statement of Nida Ard al-Kinana, this article provides empirical evidence that the Salafists have a radicalization effect on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood when they compete or cooperate with each other. By “radicalization effect,” the article means pushing the Brotherhood to build less inclusive institutions and/or pulling them toward the justification of the use of violence in religious terms in their confrontation with al-Sisi’s regime. Methodologically, the article relies on the Salafist and the Brotherhood statements as well as on the work of other scholars.
Women and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood post-2013: Calls for Gender Reforms and Pluralism
By: Erika Biagini
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The Muslim Brotherhood’s brief period of governance in Egypt, followed by its 2013 ousting from, power heightened the movement’s pre-existing internal divisions, causing members to question the tenets upon which the organization was established and ran. Since then, a growing body of literature has investigated the Brotherhood members’ call for internal reforms, but this rests largely on the views of its male members. In order to fill this gap, this article explores how the Muslim Sisterhood, an important but often overlooked Brotherhood constituency, envisages the movement changing in the aftermath of 2013. Findings based on interviews with Muslim Sisterhood members suggest that the central issues over which women envisage change within the movement include the Sisterhood’s desire for greater pluralism, the possibility to express women’s diverse identities, and the ability to pursue personal ambitions.
The Making of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Faith Brand
By: Noha Mellor
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article sheds light on the use of narrative within the realm of political Islam, taking the Muslim Brotherhood as a topical case study. The argument is that the Brotherhood media served as a faith brand that was based on a narrative aimed at mobilizing voters and supporters, both within Egypt and regionally. The article questions whether the Brotherhood media represent a coherent voice of the movement, and how the media have helped sustain, preserve, and distinguish the Brotherhood’s brand for nine decades. It is argued that the Brotherhood’s narrative and brand attributes have come under scrutiny with the ongoing fissures within the movement post-2013, particularly between the old and new guard with regards to the re-assessment of the Brotherhood’s ideology and mission. These controversies attest to the gradual fragmentation of the Brotherhood brand, raising doubts about the movement’s ability to resuscitate this brand in the future.
Becoming an Ex: Dynamics of Disengagement from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood after 2011
By: Mustafa Menshawy, Khalil Al-Anani
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article explores the disengagement of members from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Following both the 2011 uprising and the 2013 coup, increasing disenchantment with the group’s ideology and political project have led many members to reconsider their commitment to, and membership in, the Brotherhood. While scholarship examining the Brotherhood’s processes of recruitment and forming of collective identity is burgeoning, few works have assessed members’ disengagement from the movement and abandonment of its ideology, or how former members make sense of their “ex” identity. Based on rich, original material and extensive interviews with former Brotherhood members in Egypt, Turkey, the UK, and Qatar, this article investigates how former members seek new meanings and identities. Adopting a processual and discursive perspective on disengagement from the Brotherhood, we identify disengagement as consisting of distinct ideological, political, and affective processes. These processes shape individuals’ strategies for exiting the Brotherhood and forming their new identities as ex-members.
Parliaments in the MENA Region: Between Timid Reform and Regression. A Comparative Survey
By: Rainer Grote
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Part of a special issue devoted to the role of parliaments in contemporary Arab politics, this article gives an oversight of the evolution of the constitutional rules governing the status and powers of Arab parliamentary assemblies following the “Arab spring” and during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Parliaments have traditionally played a marginal role in Arab constitutional theory and practice. Although the strengthening of the role and powers of parliaments and a rebalancing of the executive-legislative relations in favour of the latter featured prominently in the reform agendas emerging from the protest movements of the “Arab spring,” these movements proved unable to produce lasting change. The reforms have either been rolled back by oppressive governments or given way to a political pactice of renewed presidential dominance which diverges considerably from the initial aspirations of the reformers. The highly unfavourable conditions existing in most Arab countries – with internally divided democratic reform movements, entrenched military, and political elites determined to resist genuine democratic change with all means available and powerful external actors supporting the domestic status quo – are likely to ensure that parliaments will remain confined to a largely ornamental role in Arab politics in the foreseeable future.
A Struggle for Institutionalization: the Tunisian Assemblée des Répresentants du Peuple and the Dominance of Consensus-Oriented Politics
By: Chahd Bahri, Jan Claudius Völkel
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article is part of the Special Issue “Parliaments in the Middle East and North Africa: A Struggle for Relevance.” Tunisia’s parliament has undergone a remarkable internal transformation process since 2011, from a formerly mostly irrelevant institution to an influential locus of policy-making. This successful progress notwithstanding, the parliament’s transformation to a democratic assembly has not been fully concluded yet. A main challenge is that the legislature still shows a number of characteristics of an “authoritarian parliament”: besides a lack of staff and financial resources, the continuous dominance of personal kinship over institutionalized power structures remains particularly problematic.
Citizen Wayn? The Struggle of Parliament in Contemporary Jordan
By: Paul Maurice Esber
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article is part of the Special Issue “Parliaments in the Middle East and North Africa: A Struggle for Relevance.” Because the politics of citizenship is felt at all stages of the parliamentary process, the very question of parliamentary relevance itself cannot be answered without reference to the citizenry. That Jordan’s citizenship regime influences and impedes parliamentary politics is explored through two cases. The first being decentralization, understood as a relocating of tasks, decision-making and mandates from a centralized location to different, more localized levels. The second study focuses on the uprisings occurring from May 30, 2018 against the draft domestic tax law introduced to parliament by the government of then-Prime Minister Hani al-Mulki. Both cases are implicated in the Kingdom’s parliamentary politics, and their selection is a conscious move away from election analysis. Taken together they elucidate how citizenship is a key battleground on which any future emancipation/development of parliament will be fought.
Lebanon’s Parliament System as a Form of Institutionalized Hybridity
By: James Paterson, Ben MacQueen
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article presents the Lebanese parliament as a form of institutionalized hybridity that offers a modicum of popular participation through highly regulated and moderated channels. It argues that the procedural nature of Lebanon’s electoral system is one that is largely, if not entirely, underscored by a closed elite bargaining process and is driven by elite preferences. This dynamic is a by-product of a power-sharing arrangement that ostensibly balances sectarian concerns, but in reality creates a disparity between political elites and the individuals within those sects which the consociational arrangement purports to include. However, this system has also created and reinforced challenges to its rule, particularly from below. With that in mind, this article highlights the evolving interactions between the entrenched, elite dominated, political system and popular protest movement and outlines how recent patterns of popular unrest present more fundamental critiques of the parliament and its central role in Lebanese politics.
Walking a Thin Line of Representation: Analyzing the Behavior of Egyptian MPs
By: Mazen Hassan, Ahmed Abdrabou, Hala Abdelgawad
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article is part of the Special Issue “Parliaments in the Middle East and North Africa: A Struggle for Relevance.” While legislators in democratic settings have the electorate as their main principal, mps in semi- and nondemocratic settings need to serve two principals to remain in office: the regime and the active segment of the electorate. This dichotymy sometimes requires particular skills in parliamentary behavior. For the case of Egypt, we investigate how mps strike a balance between regime support and representing their constituents up to an extent that does not endanger their chances for re-election. A content analysis of session scripts of the Egyptian parliament in 2016 was conducted to examine how mps walk this – traditionally understudied – thin line. Our findings indicate that representation gets reduced to “descriptive representation,” i.e. a representation that puts more emphasis on representing local constituents and demographic segments, like Copts and women, that mps are presumably elected to represent. We therefore show that mps fulfill the important tasks of citizens representation even in semi- and nondemocratic settings.
European Support for Arab Parliaments: A Successful Way to Democracy?
By: Jan Claudius Völkel
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article contributes to the Special Issue “Parliaments in the Middle East and North Africa: A Struggle for Relevance.” In the Euro-Mediterranean region, several international parliamentary initiatives are engaged in parliamentary diplomacy and cooperation. Aside from the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean (pa-UfM) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (pam) cross the shores. In addition, a number of national European parliaments, as well as governmental and non-governmental organizations, cooperate with Arab parliaments in a bilateral manner.
Conclusions, Arab Parliaments Post-2011: A Sisyphean Task?
By: Jan Claudius Völkel, Paul Maurice Esber
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Jordan’s Election Law: Reinforcing Barriers to Democracy
By: E.J. Karmel, David Linfield
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 13, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Since the 2016 introduction of a proportional open-list voting system to Jordan’s parliamentary elections, the Jordanian government has faced ongoing demands for reform. In response, the government has continually pointed to the many liberal democracies in Europe that use similar electoral systems. However, the issue is not that an undemocratic system is in place but rather that the system is unconducive to democratic reform given Jordan’s broader socio-political environment. This legal comment will explore the key facets of Jordan’s 2016 election law, discussing how the system – which could be effective in other contexts – impedes political change in Jordan and thus maintains the same patronage-fueled electoral dynamics that have prevailed since the reintroduction of parliamentary life in Jordan three decades ago.
The New Gulf Order: Crisis, Mediation, and Reconciliation
By: Majed Mohammed Hassan Al-Ansari, Bülent Aras, Emirhan Yorulmazlar
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The longevity and depth of regional challenges in the Middle East have elevated political and security concerns to a new level within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in recent years. Three conflicting worldviews have confronted one another, resulting in debilitating consequences for the region. Increasing fragmentation of Arab politics, in turn, has engendered attempts at enforced Arab unity that have ultimately failed, further dividing and destabilizing the regional order. This article delineates the background of the Gulf crisis of 2017 within the broader context of the Arab Spring and analyzes the ensuing attempts at mediation, the US role in the region, political developments in Kuwait and Oman, normalization efforts with Israel, and the recent resolution of the Gulf crisis by examining various actors’ political roles.
The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the International Community
By: Najib Ghadbian
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article analyzes the problematics of the international community's response to the Syrian refugee crisis: patterns of displacement, including the lack of attention to basic needs, the limited economic opportunities in host countries, the conditions facing Syrian refugee children, the risk involved in migration, and the challenge of adapting to host societies. The article then elucidates the series of failures of the international community to address the causes of this displacement, despite efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international institutions to alleviate suffering. It traces the humanitarian mismanagement to political divisions in the international community, including the failure of Arab states, the Iranian intervention, and the role of the United Nations, Russia and the United States in aggravating the displacement. The article provides policy recommendations for international actors in order to honor their commitments to hosting refugees and addresses the political requirements for a lasting solution.
“Moderate” Arab States: From the Cold War to the Syrian Conflict
By: Yaniv Voller
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Moderation has been a recurring theme in international politics, particularly in the international politics of the Middle East, where foreign and regional actors have often categorized others and themselves as either “moderates” or “radicals.” However, very few works have sought to deconstruct the meaning of moderation in this context. Those that have addressed the issue have mostly treated moderation as a Western attempt to simplify regional geopolitics and dichotomize the actors to justify their choices of allies and foreign policy toward the region. This article argues that “moderate” has evolved from a category of analysis to one of practice. The so-called moderates, after negotiating the word's meaning, have embraced it as a description of themselves. Through an examination of the evolution of the “moderate” Arabs label from the Cold War to the Syrian civil war, the article demonstrates that the word has evolved through negotiations among the foreign powers that introduced it and the so-called moderates themselves. Furthermore, it demonstrates the role that the label as a category of practice has come to play in regional geopolitics.
Strategic Depth Through Enclaves: Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah
By: Robert Mason
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article interrogates and extrapolates Iran's bilateral relationship with the Assad government and Hezbollah in the context of the so-called Resistance Axis, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's objective of enhancing its strategic depth in Syria after the onset of conflict in 2011. Utilizing a complex realist conceptual framework, and with reference to constructivism, it argues that Iran's strategic depth in Syria could have been addressed as part of a dialogue on regional security after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal) in 2015. However, it has been reinforced by the legacy of past warfare, the Trump administration's “maximum pressure” policy, and a regional trend toward the creation of enclaves in conflict zones. This trend, including Turkey's forward-defense strategy in Syria, could create further instabilities as state and nonstate actors vie for security and political influence and as long as enclaves remain untethered to broader interests and alliances. The case of Pakistan highlights enduring themes such as how shifting US diplomatic and military strategy and dependency could impact strategic depth.
How Russia Exploited Nationalism in Turkey to Expand Its Influence in Syria
By: Burak Bilgehan Özpek
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: After the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in the June 2015 national elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sparked the re-emergence of nationalism and changed the course of Turkish politics. This was a vulgar, populist version of nationalism based on pillars such as a militaristic approach toward the Kurdish question, anti-Americanism, conspiracy theories, and a refusal to accept universal norms. With the help of this nationalism, Erdoğan managed to stop the decline of the AKP and further consolidate his power. Russia has been the primary beneficiary of rising nationalism in Turkey. President Vladimir Putin has been able to manipulate the irrationality at the heart of Erdoğan's populist nationalism. First, the withdrawal of Turkish-backed rebel groups has enabled the government of Bashar al-Assad to establish authority over Aleppo in Syria's north. Second, Turkey has accepted guardianship over Idlib, an isolation camp designed to ensure that jihadist groups do not pose a threat to the Assad regime. Third, Russia has expanded its sphere of influence to the west of the Euphrates by setting up bases in Manbij, Raqqa, Haseke, and Kobane. Fourth, Russia received $2.5 billion in cash for its sale of S-400 air defense systems to Turkey. Finally, Turkey's shifting foreign-policy axis has jeopardized the harmony among NATO members. This picture shows that nationalism not only helps governments to rally people around the same flag; it is also an opportunity to maximize other states’ foreign-policy goals.
The Regional Origins of the Libyan Conflict
By: Theocharis N. Grigoriadis, Walied Kassem
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: We explore the effects of Libya's administrative division into Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan on the onset of the Libyan conflict. We argue that Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, in particular, followed two different and distinct paths of political development and socioeconomic transformation. While Tripolitania and its elites are connected to the core of Libyan statehood and the legacies of Italian colonization, Cyrenaica is defined by localized political autonomy and economic autarky with respect to natural resources. Furthermore, the Qadhafi regime marginalized Cyrenaica politically, despite its major significance for the Libyan economy, because of its strong royalist inclinations. By offering an overview of Libya's political evolution and socioeconomic development, we indicate that the current conflict has largely been due to the asymmetric and artificial dominance of Tripolitania over the other two regions, particularly Cyrenaica.
Droned Out? Counterterrorism Policies in Yemen
By: Sumaia A. Al-Kohlani, Carlin C. Crisanti, Jennifer L. Merolla
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Yemen has been the target of a high level of drone strikes by the US government, but we know very little about public reaction to such strikes, even though scholars of foreign policy have been concerned about the possibility of blowback from the Yemeni public. We conducted 63 in-depth interviews to assess how Yemenis think about terrorism and US counterterrorism strategies. In particular, we were interested in evidence of blowback among the public. We find that Yemenis have very negative views toward drone strikes, primarily related to the death of innocent bystanders and violations of sovereignty. We also see evidence of blowback in our interviews, with respondents expressing the belief that US counterterrorism policies contribute to the creation of new insurgents, the destabilization of the government, and the deterioration of US-Yemeni relations. At the same time, a substantial portion of interviewees think the United States can follow other strategies to help Yemen combat terrorism within its borders.
Turkish Foreign Policy in a Neorealist Framework: Bilateral Relations Since 2016
By: Eren Alper Yilmaz
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 3-4 (2021)
Abstract: In the last five years, Turkish foreign policy in the regional and international arenas has followed a neorealist approach, mostly defensive, by establishing either cooperation or conflict with its allies, based on the dynamics of its domestic politics and the structure of the international system. Due especially to the coup attempt in 2016 and rising tension in Syria sparked by the activities of illegal groups, Turkey has usually followed a security-oriented foreign policy to ensure national security and strengthen its strategic position within the framework of agreements in the military operations at its southern borders and its uncompromising principles regarding migration. The objective of this study is to analyze why Turkish foreign policy has followed a neorealist policy, by evaluating the bilateral relations with Turkey's core allies, the United States, Russia, and the European Union—ties that have survived at the highest level, even after the coup attempt and the Syrian conflict.
Transforming Yemen? Divergent Saudi and Emirati Intervention Policies
By: Tyler B. Parker
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 3-4 (2021)
Abstract: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have pursued distinct policies in Yemen since their intervention began in March 2015. The Saudis remain mired in an air war in the north to defeat the Houthis, an Iran-linked group that ousted Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Between 2016 and 2019, the UAE shifted from this task toward a ground war in the south to fight Islamist groups and support the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secessionist organization that opposes Hadi's government. Why have Saudi Arabia and the UAE pursued such different intervention policies? Building on Elizabeth Saunders’ intervention typology, as well as theories of alliance politics, I analyze individual-leader perceptions of both the origins and types of external threats. I argue that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman formed a “nontransformative” policy in the north to address a material threat embodied in the Houthis. Alternatively, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed formed a “transformative” policy in the south to counter Islamist threats that could spread to the UAE. Assessing these different intervention policies amid divergent threat perceptions sheds light on Yemen's multifaceted conflict.
Iran's Regional Influence in Light of Its Security Concerns
By: Ali Akbar
Published in Middle East Policy Volume 28, Issue 3-4 (2021)
Abstract: During the past two decades, Iran has gained a prominent position in the Middle East. Its influence in Iraq has gradually increased following the US invasion in 2003, and in Syria after the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. Many scholars and political analysts frame Iran's actions in the region as driven by the country's desire for expansionism. This article, however, demonstrates that Tehran's foreign policy rationale for exercising regional influence, especially in Iraq and Syria, has mainly been oriented around guaranteeing Iran's national security.
Rethinking the "Arab Spring": Just a Media Event?
By: Eyal Zisser
Published in Middle East Quarterly Volume 28, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Although there are those who prefer spring, there are also those who prefer winter or summer ... "Spring" expresses something temporary because it is one of the seasons of the year. Hence the use of the term "Spring" [to describe what is happening in
Rethinking the "Arab Spring": Winners and Losers
By: Hillel Frisch
Published in Middle East Quarterly Volume 28, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Assessing outcomes of revolutions is a precarious business, especially with a mere ten years of hindsight. Even more difficult is the assessment of revolutionary waves for the simple reason that there have been so few of them in modern history. Bearing
Tunisia’s Marginalized Redefine the Political
By: Sami Zemni
Published in Middle East Report Issue 298 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Minorities in Libya Marginalized by the Revolution
By: Sabina Henneberg
Published in Middle East Report Issue 298 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Government Efforts to Reduce Inequality in Morocco Are Only Making Matters Worse
By: Mona Atia, Said Samlali
Published in Middle East Report Issue 298 (2021)
Abstract: Inequality between rural and urban areas of Morocco has been deeply entrenched since the colonial era. But recent government public policies that ostensibly seek to reduce disparities are in fact further marginalizing already impoverished communities. Atia and Samlali's research reveals what is going wrong and why residents believe that the only way to get essential infrastructure like roads and schools is to protest.
Understanding the Diversity of Political Islam
By: Francecso Cavatorta
Published in Middle East Report Issue 300 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Dialectics of Hope and Despair in the Arab Uprisings
By: Atef Said, Pete Moore
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Egypt From Icon to Tragedy
By: Mona El-Ghobashy
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Whatever Happened to Dignity? The Politics of Citizenship in Post-Revolution Tunisia
By: Nadia Marzouki
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
The Evolution of Sudan’s Popular Political Forces
By: Muzan Alneel
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
“We Don’t Have the Luxury to Stop”—An Interview with Syrian Civil Society Activist Oula Ramadan
By: Oula Ramadan, Wendy Pearlman
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Revolution, War and Transformations in Yemeni Studies
By: Laurent Bonnefoy
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Reflections on Exile
By: Razan Ghazzawi, Ahmd Awadallah, Mohammed Kadalah
Published in Middle East Report Issue 301 (2021)
Abstract: Not available
Syrian poetry in exile: the case of Wafai Laila
By: Jonas Elbousty
Published in Middle Eastern Literatures Volume 24, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The social, economic, ecological, political, and religious hardships have forced many Syrian intellectuals to search for a safe haven. These struggles, both in their country of origin and host lands, have inspired many poets to explore topics documenting their trauma and loss. The majority of cultural production that has been produced since 2011 discusses themes, such as alienation, displacement, traumatic experience, liminality, and constructed subjectivities. Laila's poetry focuses on the refugee experience, but rather than looking back at the losses of a former home his work dwells on the losses of the present; the dehumanizing experiences and the vilification refugees face in Europe where they have sought safe haven. This essay, along with the poems, shows how Laila's poetry is restless, preoccupied with trauma, continuous longing for the past, and the unworkability of language.
Fatwas and politics in Bahrain: exploring the post 2011 context
By: Rashed Alrasheed, Simon Mabon
Published in Middle Eastern Studies Volume 57, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Religious discourse has a fundamental impact on sectarian violence, stability and sovereignty across the Gulf region. Amidst an increasingly volatile political and social situation, fatwas serve as a prominent factor in the behaviour and beliefs of individuals and groups across the Gulf. Fatwas have long been a source of great interest in religious studies and international law yet very little work has been undertaken in politics. This article aims to analyse the impact of fatwas from Shiʿi and Sunni clerics in the promotion of sectarian violence across Bahrain in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings. In this article, it will be argued that religious discourse has a significant impact in determining the nature of the political relationship between the components of society in Bahrain. We argue that fatwas serve a key role in regulating life across the island and, in the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings, in facilitating sectarian violence.
Kurdish cross-border trade between Syria and Turkey: the socio-political trajectories of Syrian Kurds
By: Cemal Ozkahraman
Published in Middle Eastern Studies Volume 57, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: From Syria’s independence to the eve of the civil war in 2011, Kurds in Syria were subjected to state ethno-exclusion, economic and socio-political marginalization, impacting on their freedom and profoundly altering the demography of their region. The majority became stateless and sank into severe poverty, having to work illegally on their own land and participate in informal cross-border trade for their basic needs. This article examines this cross-border trade and its impact on interaction between Kurds in Syria and those in Turkey, arguing that it has not only been a socio-economic resource for marginalized Syrian Kurds but that these interactions have contributed to a broader social process of Kurdish political mobilization, which resulted in socio-political trajectories that became evident just before Syria’s civil war.
Humoresque and satire in ʿAli Salem’s writing as a means for social and political criticism
By: Mira Tzoreff, Naomi Avivi Weisblatt
Published in Middle Eastern Studies Volume 57, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: ʿAli Salem was an independent intellectual, unbound to the regime or political parties. He believed that the intellectual must also be independent from the public. It does not mean he must be detached from society or elevated above it, but that he must avoid flattering it. Over thirty years of literary activity, Salem published 27 plays and hundreds of humoresques and short stories, which were collected in 15 books. He also published opinion pieces in the Egyptian press and periodicals. Salem was an uncompromising social and political whip, who criticized Egypt’s society and regime in the context of a political culture that limits freedom of expression and impedes the expression of views that contradict those of the autocratic ruler. The Article will focus on the witty humor Salem used in both his satires and plays to sharply criticize the socio-political maladies from which Egyptian society suffers and at the same time it served as a means to introduce to Egyptians the problems of their society in a way that would make it easier for them to internalize them, shake them out of their apathy and urge them to act in order to improve their lives for the better.
Did as-Saʿidiyya really revolt? An ethnographic investigation
By: Ahmed Abozaid
Published in Middle Eastern Studies Volume 57, Issue 6 (2021)
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate and inspect the causes that prevented the (marginalised and isolated) society of Saʿid from rebelling against President Mubarak’s authoritarian regime, as the North did. Here I seek to present different interpretation of as-Saʿidiyya’s attitudes toward the 2011 uprising away from the Manichean ‘glorification’ versus ‘ignominy’, or ‘celebrating’ v. ‘contempt’ narrative that dominated the study of the Saʿid and as-Saʿidiyya role in the 2011 Arab uprising. My research is based on interviews, participant observation and ethnographic investigation which articulates the behaviour of peasants as political actors in this time of turmoil, While most sociological and anthropological studies of revolutions concentrate on cities and urban areas, this article focuses on a small town, Madinat Al-Fikriyya, and village, Munshaʿiat Al-Fikriyya in Al-Minya governate in Upper Egypt. Therefore, to understand the role of as-Saʿidiyya in the 2011 uprising, the article suggests three conceptual changes to this convention. Firstly, by putting peasantry communities within socio-political and socio-economic contexts; secondly by concentrating on understanding the dynamics of state-society relations, and lastly, exploring the role of security establishment and levels of penetration into the society in order.
Subordinates’ Quest for Recognition in Hierarchy
By: Karim El Taki
Published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies Volume 50, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: The scholarship on hierarchy held the promise of exposing conditions of systemic inequality in world politics. However, a significant strand of it approached the international order from above, privileging the perspective of dominant actors. I make the case for a from-below approach to hierarchical orders, recognising and accounting for understudied experiences in world politics, but also developing a more accurate understanding of hierarchy. Through a relational-sociological approach, I conceptualise hierarchy as a socially differentiated system predicated on recognition. The experience of misrecognition by way of normative and material constraints constitutes actors as subordinates. I propose a framework for subordinate actors’ navigation of hierarchy in quest of social recognition. I identify three strategies that subordinates employ, depending on the misrecognising constraints they counter (normative/material) and the recognition they seek (internal/external). Subordinates may engage in norm appropriation, alternative leveraging, and salvation from victimhood. I demonstrate the applicability of the framework by examining Egypt’s quest for recognition in the aftermath of the 2013 military coup.
How Narratives and Evidence Influence Rumor Belief in Conflict Zones: Evidence from Syria
By: Justin Schon
Published in Perspectives on Politics Volume 19, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Armed conflict creates a context of high uncertainty and risk, where accurate and verifiable information is extremely difficult to find. This is a prime environment for unverified information—rumors—to spread. Meanwhile, there is insufficient understanding of exactly how rumor transmission occurs within conflict zones. I address this with an examination of the mechanisms through which people evaluate new information. Building on findings from research on motivated reasoning, I argue that elite-driven narrative contests—competitions between elites to define how civilians should understand conflict—increase the difficulty of distinguishing fact from fiction. Civilians respond by attempting thorough evaluations of new information that they hope will allow them to distinguish evidence from narratives. These evaluations tend to involve some combination of self-evaluation, evaluation of the source, and collective sense-making. I examine this argument using over 200 interviews with Syrian refugees conducted in Jordan and Turkey. My findings indicate that people are usually unable to effectively distinguish evidence from narratives, so narrative contests are powerful drivers of rumor evaluation. Still, civilian mechanisms of rumor evaluation do constrain what propaganda elites can spread. These findings contribute to research on civil war, narrative formation, and information diffusion.
Russian Intervention in Syria: Exploring the Nexus between Regime Consolidation and Energy Transnationalisation
By: David Maher, Moritz Pieper
Published in Political Studies Volume 69, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: Interpretations of Russia’s military intervention in Syria overwhelmingly focus on Russia’s political motivations. An alternative view foregrounds Russia’s economic motivations, namely, the construction of a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline traversing Iran, Iraq and Syria. This article examines the salience of Russia’s economic motivations and considers two related aspects: First, if Russian intervention aims to secure areas of strategic importance for the proposed pipeline. Second, if Russian intervention realises longer term political and commercial interests that include proposed future pipeline projects. The evidence suggests Russian military policies towards Syria are unlikely to be motivated primarily by the prospect of a proposed gas pipeline, but that regime consolidation is a more immediate policy goal. This article then posits that Russian intervention has a distinct ‘dual logic’ aimed at integrating the interests of key regional actors into a transnational energy network, while stabilising Russia’s regional dominance within this network.
Teaching the Military and Revolutions: Simulating Civil–Military Relations during Mass Uprisings
By: Kristen A. Harkness, Marc R. DeVore
Published in PS: Political Science & Politics Volume 54, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: During revolutions, strategic interactions among civilian policy makers, armed forces, and opposition groups shape political outcomes—most important, whether a regime stands or falls. Students from advanced industrial democracies frequently find these dynamics counterintuitive, even after completing readings and engaging in traditional instruction methods. We therefore sought to improve pedagogical outcomes by designing a simulation based on scenarios similar to those witnessed during the Arab Spring and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution. We divided students into four teams representing the regime, the armed forces, and two distinct groups of anti-regime dissidents. Rules were designed to incorporate the best recent scholarship on each category of actors’ behavior, such as the probability of military units defecting to protesters and the ability of riot police to repress urban uprisings. By forcing student teams to make decisions under time pressure, we obliged them to wrestle with the uncertainties and fears of betrayal inherent in complex civil–military emergencies.
Political Science Scholarship on the Middle East: A View from the Journals
By: Melani Cammett, Isabel Kendall
Published in PS: Political Science & Politics Volume 54, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Based on an original dataset of all articles on the Middle East in major political science journals during the past two decades, we assess trends in publishing on the region to explore whether it remains underrepresented in political science and how the field has evolved. We focus on the evolution of the total share of Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-focused articles, research topics, methods employed, and patterns of authorship by gender. The proportion of MENA-focused articles has increased, particularly after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, but remains strikingly low. With respect to topics and methods, research on the Middle East is increasingly integrated in mainstream political science, with articles addressing core disciplinary debates and relying increasingly more on statistical and experimental methods. Yet, these shifts may come at the expense of predominantly qualitative research, and primary topics may reflect the priorities of Western researchers while underplaying the major concerns of Middle Eastern publics.
Does Domestic Political Instability Foster Terrorism? Global Evidence from the Arab Spring Era (2011–14)
By: Michael J. Schumacher, Peter J. Schraeder
Published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism Volume 44, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: This article explores the intellectual puzzle of whether the domestic political instability associated with the Arab Spring is responsible for a surge in global terrorism that peaked in 2014. A series of negative binomial regressions demonstrate strong support for an “escalation effect”: more severe forms of domestic political instability, most notably government purges and riots, breed greater levels of terrorism, although the most severe form of domestic political instability—revolution—does not. We also find that specific types of domestic political instability affect terrorism levels differently depending on geographical region and regime type (i.e., democracy versus dictatorship).
Predicting the End of the Syrian Conflict: From Theory to the Reality of a Civil War
By: Sally Sharif
Published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism Volume 44, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: The Syrian civil war has confounded all predictions on its end date and is still ongoing. Valuable explicative work has been done on civil war duration; however, scholars have failed to reliably predict the end of ongoing conflicts. This article argues that faulty predictions on termination date of the Syrian conflict did not necessarily result from statistical errors in modeling civil wars data and better models might not necessarily mitigate the prediction problem. Rather, three factors contributed to the misperceptions: the conflict’s cartography problem, the splintering of the opposition, and the multi-partner foreign intervention in the conflict. The last two factors can also be held accountable for prolonging the conflict. Incorrect predictions or descriptions in scholarly works on ongoing conflicts can have disastrous implications for the present and future of states and populations beset by protracted conflict. Had it been made clear that neither the insurgents nor the government had the capacity to win the war within the predicted timeframe, the international community may have taken a more decisive role in bringing belligerents to the negotiation table, improving prospects for a peaceful diplomatic settlement.
A Struggle for Power: Al Nusra and Al Qaida in Syria
By: Antonio Giustozzi
Published in Studies in Conflict &Terrorism Volume 44, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: Relying on interviews with members of the organization, the article argues (contrary to the prevailing view) that Al Nusra never split from Al Qaida and even more so from the global jihadist movement. Instead the leadership of Al Nusra was locked in a power struggle with Al Qaida over the control of jihad in Syria and possibly even over the future of Al Qaida itself. Efforts to unify the Syrian opposition, even those limited to jihadist groups, failed also because of the leadership of Al Nusra kept trying to co-opt other opposition groups, rather than forming alliances with them.
The Non-Jihadi Foreign Fighters: Western Right-Wing and Left-Wing Extremists in Syria
By: Ariel Koch
Published in Terrorism and Political Violence Volume 33, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: The ongoing war in Syria reflects the interesting phenomenon of foreigners flocking to the troubled region to join the combat. While foreign Jihadists joining the fighting ranks of terror organizations such as the Islamic State or Al Qaeda have attracted considerable reporting and research, the flip side of this phenomenon has gone largely unnoticed—that of the foreign anti-ISIS fighters. Although these fighters share a common enemy, adversary on the battlefield, they hold disparate personal ideologies and motives. This article will examine manifestations of foreign anti-ISIS fighters affiliated with both the far right and far left ideologies, in order to contribute to the understanding of this unfamiliar aspect of the war in Syria and its scope, as well as the potential consequences and potential threats it embodies.
‘I Dream of Going Home’: Gendered Experiences of Adolescent Syrian Refugees in Jordan’s Azraq Camp
By: Jude Sajdi, Aida Essaid, Clara Miralles Vila, Hala Abu Taleb, Majed Abu Azzam, Agnieszka Malachowska
Published in The European Journal of Development Research Volume 33, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: Although the influx of Syrian refugees in Jordan initially attracted considerable international humanitarian support, funding has declined recently, and labour market restrictions have tightened. Adolescents in Azraq refugee camp face particular challenges due to its unique characteristics, including strong surveillance and security measures and a remote desert location, which affords only limited mobility and income-generating opportunities. Instead of offering protection and security for displaced Syrians, the camp has become a ‘violent space’. This article explores the experiences of younger (10–12 years) and older (15–17 years) adolescent girls and boys in Azraq camp. It provides insights into their gendered experiences in four capability domains—education, voice and agency, bodily integrity and freedom from violence, and psychosocial wellbeing—highlighting key vulnerabilities that need to be addressed to deliver the Leave No One Behind agenda. The findings suggest that when planning programmes and services, the government, international community and civil society actors working with adolescent refugees in Azraq need to take into consideration spatial dimensions of vulnerability. Such efforts should ensure that programmes are designed and implemented in an inclusive and accessible way so that male and female adolescents in specific camp settings can overcome the constraints that they uniquely face.
‘No One Should Be Terrified Like I Was!’ Exploring Drivers and Impacts of Child Marriage in Protracted Crises Among Palestinian and Syrian Refugees
By: Bassam Abu Hamad, Samah Elamassie, Erin Oakley, Sarah Alheiwidi, Sarah Baird
Published in The European Journal of Development Research Volume 33, Issue 5 (2021)
Abstract: Exacerbated by 9 years of conflict and displacement, child marriage among Syrian refugees appears to be increasing, while in Gaza, the noticeable reduction in child brides over the past two decades has recently plateaued. This comparative study explores drivers and consequences of child marriage in protracted crises, drawing on mixed-methods research from Gaza and Jordan with married adolescent girls and their parents. Our findings suggest that conflict reignites pre-existing drivers of child marriage, especially conservative norms around family honour and clan inter-marriage. Poverty is a strong driver of child marriage among Syrian refugees, while social protection programmes and educational opportunities for girls have played a protective role in Gaza. In both contexts, our findings underscore the multiple and intersecting negative effects of child marriage on girls’ health and bodily integrity, and point to the urgency of tackling this harmful practice to ensure that no adolescent is left behind.
Typology of Women’s Collective Agency In Relation to Women’s Equality Outcomes: Case Studies from Egypt and Beyond
By: Mariz Tadros
Published in The European Journal of Development Research Volume 33, Issue 6 (2021)
Abstract: There is a rich body of scholarship recognizing the important role of women’s collective agency and mobilization for gender equality, inclusive development, and politics. In this paper, we interrogate the relationship between women’s collective agency on the one hand, and its contribution towards women’s equality outcomes on the other, drawing on empirical work undertaken during over 20 years’ fieldwork on women’s collective action in Egypt and complemented with a literature review of women’s collective action globally. A typology is proposed for analyzing women’s collective agency in terms of women’s movements, women in movements, feminist, anti-feminist movements, and gender justice movements, which inform an interpretive framework that explores collective agency and women’s equality outcomes. First, while recognizing the need to avoid reductionist understandings of women’s collective agency exclusively in terms of their agenda on gender equality, this paper argues that collective agency and equality outcomes cannot be entirely disentangled. Second, it suggests that women’s membership and leadership in collective action can have highly varied implications on women’s equality outcomes, both positive and detrimental. The paper concludes with reflections on the implications of the analysis of the relationships between women’s and men’s collective agency for praxis.
Tunisia's Peripheral Cities: Marginalization and Protest Politics in a Democratizing Country
By: Larbi Sadiki
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article investigates Tunisia's southern "periphery within the periphery," drawing on original interviews to examine marginalization and center-periphery relations in the country since the 2011 revolution. Comparisons are drawn between the informal economy of cross-border smuggling in Ben Guerdane and the jobless youth of Tataouine being left behind as corporate elites and companies become wealthy from the natural resources extracted from the area. This had led to an embrace of "unruly" protest politics, rebelling against the postrevolutionary political establishment. A trend toward disillusionment with democracy might be on the horizon for the marginalized youth in the south, exacerbating regional cleavages and posing a potential crisis for Tunisia's democratization.
China and the Reconstruction of Syria
By: Guy Burton, Nicholas Lyall, Logan Pauley
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: How will China contribute to Syria's postwar reconstruction? The Syrian regime's Russian and Iranian sponsors are unlikely to provide sufficient material assistance, while Gulf and Western countries are unwilling to help. This article shows how Chinese support has thus become the Syrian regime's priority, although China's state and private firms will be wary of risk. China could also provide Syria with a model for development, but it would be partial as it lacks a peace-building dimension, including the construction of transitional justice.
Fighting for a Monopoly on Governance: How the Asad State "Won" the Syrian War and to What Extent
By: Philippe Droz-Vincent
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article argues that the functional continuity of the Syrian state has been a key factor in the "victory" of the regime of Bashar al-Asad in the country's civil war. State continuity has not only meant first maintaining the structure of the military but sustaining the bureaucracy and preserving its reach within society. While elements of the opposition have been able to create state-like structures, the regime has managed to undermine its competitors and ensure the indispensability of the Asad state, though challenges remain.
Securitization as a Tool of Regime Survival: The Deployment of Religious Rhetoric in Bashar al-Asad's Speeches
By: Rahaf Aldoughli
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract: This article analyzes the role of Sunni Islam in speeches given to religious scholars by Syrian president Bashar al-Asad in 2014 and 2017. I discuss how religion was used in these speeches as a security tool to consolidate authority, legitimize the Ba'thist regime, and marginalize political dissidents. I specifically highlight the emphasis Asad placed on convincing government-recognized 'ulama to support state security measures and to the novel links he constructed between Islam and national unity.
Iranian Reconstruction, Development, and Aid in Syria
By: Eric Lob
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: This article examines the activities of the Iranian parastatal development organization Construction Jihad in the Syrian Civil War since 2015. Construction Jihad has implemented reconstruction and development projects and delivered social services and humanitarian aid in order to appease segments of the Syrian population and help pro-government forces consolidate territory. This case study sheds light on the complexities and tensions surrounding the Syrian regime's alliance with Iran and Russia and its efforts to preserve national sovereignty and avoid becoming dependent on its allies.
How Do Liberalized Autocracies Repress Dissent? Evidence from Morocco
By: Yasmina Abouzzohour
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: The Moroccan regime has used repression to successfully contain numerous types of opposition. Although research on its repressive policies is now extensive, impartial scholarly work that systematically examines its rational use of repression remains limited. This article addresses this gap by investigating the causal mechanisms behind the regime's repression of opposition actors between 1956 and 2018. Examining these mechanisms sheds light on the multilevel games between ruling actors and opposition groups during various opposition events and shows that liberalization does not ensure the reduced use of repression. Rather, repression remains a strategic policy employed by the regime to pursue important political objectives such as maintaining power.
Deterrence through Diplomacy: Oman's Dialogue Facilitation Initiatives during the Yemeni Civil War
By: Samuel Ramani
Published in The Middle East Journal Volume 75, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: In contrast to other states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Oman has declined to participate in the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen and has opted to facilitate dialogue between the conflict's warring parties. Oman has embraced a strategy of diplomatic deterrence in Yemen, facilitating dialogue to counter the perceived threats that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pose to its foreign policy independence. The article explores how the Sultanate's diplomatic deterrence strategy manifests at the local, regional, and international levels, building on English- and Arabic-language source material and interviews.
Escape to Germany in Syrian Television Drama: From Cross-Cultural Gender Constructions to Transnational Tropes of Masculinity and Homeland
By: Rebecca Joubin, Sophia Nissler
Published in The Middle East journal Volume 75, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Looking at programs from the 1960s onward, this article shows the persistence and evolution of the gender imbalance in Syrian television characters' relationships with Germany. Before the 2011 uprising, screenwriters linked women charac ters to Germany as a way to challenge patriarchal standards of sexuality and gendered conceptions of national belonging. As the war has ensued, this trope has vanished. Meanwhile, long-standing narratives about men emigrating to Germany continue to represent abandonment of the homeland and have become intensified through nationalist nostalgia.
The Social Media War in the Middle East
By: Daniel Byman
Published in The Middle East journal Volume 75, Issue 3 (2021)
Abstract: Several Middle Eastern governments are especially active in information campaigns, notably Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. They use a range of overt and clandestine disinformation tools to bolster their regimes, silence their critics, and weaken their rivals. Social media are particularly attractive venues for government propaganda. Sustaining social media operations is cheap, allows a degree of deniability, enables regimes to reach a large audience while differentiating their messages, and is easy to exploit. Social media campaigns are important, but judging their success is difficult. However, understanding their methods and motivations is vital in order to anticipate their possible impacts and design the best solutions to improve the quality of information in the region. Here, Byman discusses the social media war in the Middle East.
The UAE’s foreign policymaking in Yemen: from bandwagoning to buck-passing
By: Betul Dogan-Akkas
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: The military intervention in Yemen is analysed in this paper within a context dominated by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There are several scholarly works regarding the Emirates’ involvement in Yemen, but there are only a few about the recent series of transformations that the policymaking has undergone. This research aims to fill this gap by arguing that the prioritisation of national interest has transformed the Emirati policy regarding Yemen from ‘bandwagoning’ to ‘buck-passing’. The main objective in this paper is to scrutinise the UAE’s motivations in engaging in a buck-passing strategy towards Qatar and Saudi Arabia. From this point of view, any proper examination of the UAE’s drivers in policy change must begin by investigating the relationship between internal and external motivations. The assessment combines levels of systemic and individual dimensions in order to examine two main motivations as to why the buck-passing is articulated to bandwagoning. A structural complexity is embedded in the UAE’s strategies. Prioritisation of economic gains over military interests and the consolidation of internal power are two reasons for such policy transformation.
Anti-populist coups d’état in the twenty-first century: reasons, dynamics and consequences
By: Toygar Sinan Baykan, Yaprak Gürsoy, Pierre Ostiguy
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 4 (2021)
Abstract: There is a burgeoning literature on how to deal with populism in advanced liberal democracies, which puts a strong emphasis on legalist and pluralist methods. There is also a new and expanding literature that looks at the consequences of coups d’état for democracies by employing large-N data sets. These two recent literatures, however, do not speak to one another, based on the underlying assumption that coups against populists were a distinctly twentieth-century Latin American phenomenon. Yet the cases of Venezuela in 2002, Thailand in 2006 and Turkey in 2016 show that anti-populist coups have also occurred in the twenty-first century. Focussing on these cases, the article enquires about the extent to which military coups succeed against populists. The main finding is that although anti-populist coups may initially take over the government, populism survives in the long run. Thus, anti-populist coups fail in their own terms and they do not succeed in eradicating populism. In fact, in the aftermath of a coup, populism gains further legitimacy against what it calls repressive elites, while possibilities for democratisation are further eroded. This is because populists tap into existing socio-cultural divides and politically mobilise the hitherto underrepresented sectors in their societies that endure military interventions.
Managing the humanitarian micro-space: the practices of relief access in Syria
By: Lisa Dorith Kool, Jan Pospisil, Roanne van Voorst
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 7 (2021)
Abstract: The delivery of humanitarian aid remains one of the main challenges in contemporary armed conflict. The legal, political and physical construction of a sustained and respected humanitarian space, in which such aid delivery can occur, is a fragile operation. Humanitarian spaces increasingly appear fragmented and localised. They are re-negotiated continuously, either as part of subnational and local truces and peace or cooperation agreements or through ad hoc bargaining between humanitarians and armed actors. Based on a comparison of how relief efforts are negotiated in Syria, this article argues that humanitarian space is not shrinking, as is commonly assumed, but rather is being reconfigured into humanitarian micro-spaces. Such micro-spaces are fluid, dynamic and overlapping arenas of relief, constantly challenged, and morphed by different actors. Working in humanitarian micro-spaces requires continuous political involvement and decision-making, which presents a substantial challenge for humanitarian organisations.
Revisiting the moderation controversy with space and class: the Tunisian Ennahda
By: Hasret Dikici Bilgin
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 7 (2021)
Abstract: What shapes political parties’ direction of change on the political spectrum? Under what conditions do Islamist movements moderate or shift towards a more radical stance? Drawing on the case of the Ennahda Party in Tunisia, I argue that transformation of the Islamist parties should be analysed on par with that of the secular parties, by focussing on the parties’ popular base and the target electorate rather than through a moderation–radicalisation framework. I find that Ennahda’s shift to Muslim democracy, self-defined as specialisation, is owed to their need to be backed by the new urban middle class in order to rule while maintaining the support of the rural and urban poor to come to power. Through field interviews conducted with the members of Tunisian political parties as well as union leaders and activists, I show that the secular parties are going through a similar process under the pressure of the spatial and class-related dynamics.
Populism, violence and authoritarian stability: necropolitics in Turkey
By: Ihsan Yilmaz, Omer F. Erturk
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 7 (2021)
Abstract: The literature on populism overwhelmingly deals with the factors behind the rise of populism: the supply factors, and the economic and political crises. However, there is a lack of engagement in the literature on the construction of populist narratives and especially on the relations between populist narratives and violence. This paper addresses these gaps. Based on an empirically rich case study of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader President Recep T. Erdoğan, it shows that the populist narrative of the party and its leader is necropolitical as it is based on narratives of martyrdom, blood and death. The paper also shows that to maintain authoritarian stability, the incumbents instrumentalise these populist necropolitical narratives for repression, legitimation and co-optation. We analyse this complex case by combining the literatures on populism, necropolitics, politics of martyrdom and authoritarianism, and contribute to all of them.
Martyrs as a conduit for legitimacy – explaining Iran’s foreign policy towards Syria
By: Hanlie Booysen
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 10 (2021)
Abstract: What explains the Islamic Republic of Iran’s considerable financial, military and diplomatic support for the nominally secular Bashar al-Asad government in the wake of the 2011 Syrian uprising? Iranian foreign policy is subject to realist considerations (security and power). However, realism does not adequately explain Iran’s Syria policy since 2011, given the price Iranian citizens are paying in casualties on the Syrian battlefield. This paper uses a constructivist framework to examine the role of identity in Iran’s foreign policy towards Syria. Moreover, it sketches Eid al-Ghadir as an identity marker for Twelver Shia Muslims. The aim of this paper is to show that Iranian martyrs are not only a consequence of Iran’s foreign policy towards Syria, but that martyrdom serves as a conduit for legitimacy.
Sovereignty alignment process: strategies of regime survival in Egypt, Libya and Syria
By: Mustafa Menshawy
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 12 (2021)
Abstract: Sovereignty is an ambiguous concept. It is always saturated with multiple meanings, especially as other concepts are either defined in terms of it or depend on it for their own meanings. It gets more ambiguous as scholars, especially those adopting constructivism as a theory of politics and international relations, move onto divergent paths, creating a gap between theory and practice. The article proposes the sovereignty alignment process as a two-level approach that can clarify sovereignty and its components, including territoriality. The internal level of the alignment process includes disaggregating meanings into frames before aggregating them into master frames that can identify, group and organise different – even contradictory – facets of sovereignty. The external level traces how these sets of meanings interact with the outside world, having its own meaning and discursive opportunity, which can consolidate the actor’s repertoire of meanings on sovereignty. The outside world can also be material, helping to enact or operationalise the articulated meanings by other means, including the use of force or diplomacy. The approach has been devised to analyse the developments of the Arab uprisings, examining how state leaders redefined their identities and interests to survive the sweeping waves of protests against their regimes in 2011 and afterwards.
Tweeting Beyond Tahrir: Ideological Diversity and Political Intolerance in Egyptian Twitter Networks
By: Alexandra A. Siegel, Jonathan Nagler, Richard Bonneau, Joshua A. Tucker
Published in World Politics Volume 73, Issue 2 (2021)
Abstract: Do online social networks affect political tolerance in the highly polarized climate of postcoup Egypt? Taking advantage of the real-time networked structure of Twitter data, the authors find that not only is greater network diversity associated with lower levels of intolerance, but also that longer exposure to a diverse network is linked to less expression of intolerance over time. The authors find that this relationship persists in both elite and non-elite diverse networks. Exploring the mechanisms by which network diversity might affect tolerance, the authors offer suggestive evidence that social norms in online networks may shape individuals’ propensity to publicly express intolerant attitudes. The findings contribute to the political tolerance literature and enrich the ongoing debate over the relationship between online echo chambers and political attitudes and behavior by providing new insights from a repressive authoritarian context.