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China's economic growth led to a concomitant expansion of its interests across the globe, and the Middle East and North Africa s today vital to the sustainability of that growth.

This study examines the role played by the youth of Morocco, turning this generational group into a political and social force capable of proposing alternative solutions to Morocco's political impasse, introducing dynamism and alternatives along the path to democracy. The question which frames this study is: to what extend did Moroccan youth contribute to the reshaping political culture in the country? How do Moroccan youth conceptualize the transition to democracy, and what happened to their demands? The author adopts a sociological definition of a "generation," meaning that it does not define a generational cohort as a homogenized social group but rather represents a set of people with a shared set of anxieties surrounding their position in relation to other (previous) generations.

This study examines the role played by the youth of Morocco, turning this generational group into a political and social force capable of proposing alternative solutions to Morocco's political impasse, introducing dynamism and alternatives along the path to democracy. The question which frames this study is: to what extend did Moroccan youth contribute to the reshaping political culture in the country? How do Moroccan youth conceptualize the transition to democracy, and what happened to their demands? The author adopts a sociological definition of a "generation," meaning that it does not define a generational cohort as a homogenized social group but rather represents a set of people with a shared set of anxieties surrounding their position in relation to other (previous) generations.

Since the publication of Horowitz's Ethnic Groups in Conflict, comparative political scientists have increasingly converged on their classification of ethnic identities. But there is no agreement on the definition that justifies this classification— and the definitions that individual scholars propose do not match their classifications. I propose a definition that captures the conventional classification of ethnic identities in comparative political science to a greater degree than the alternatives. According to this definition, ethnic identities are a subset of identity categories in which membership is determined by attributes associated with, or believed to be associated with, descent (described here simply as descent-based attributes). I argue, on the basis of this definition, that ethnicity either does not matter or has not been shown to matter in explaining most outcomes to which it has been causally linked by comparative political scientists. These outcomes include violence, democratic stability, and patronage.

Palestine Over Two Months 1/9-31/10/2020

This study explores the origins of Qatari-US relations, the foundations on which they are based, and the rules that govern them. It begins by examining relations between the two countries from the 1970s up until the Trump era. The paper finds that Qatar's need for US security assurances did not prevent it from adopting independent policies that occasionally contradicted US strategy. Accordingly, the Qatari-US relations have been upended, and exposed to crises due to diverging interests, concerns and challenges. While Qatar has embraced a foreign policy independent of Washington, it has also tried not to alienate it and has established itself as an asset for the US, both in terms of the military facilities it provides and the unique role it plays through maintaining ties with parties that the US cannot communicate with directly. Mutual dependency has enabled Qatari-US relations to overcome all the challenges they have faced over the past three decades, including those that emerged under the Trump administration.

This seminal article is one of the founding texts of Critical Theory in International Relations. In this article, Robert Cox advances a critical alternative to traditional International Relations theory by foregrounding the dialectical relationship between social forces, forms of state, and structures of world order, rather than limiting analysis to interactions among states as isolated units. Cox further distinguishes between problem-solving theory, which takes the existing order as a given and seeks to preserve and improve its functioning, and critical theory, which questions the historical conditions that produced that order, exposes its underlying power relations, and illuminates the possibilities for its transformation. He develops the concept of historical structures as continually evolving configurations composed of material capabilities, ideas, and institutions, and reconceptualizes hegemony as a congruence between power, ideology, and institutions, rather than as the mere material preponderance of a single state.

​It was mostly British colonisers who came to consolidate the political, economic and military interests of the motherland and did what they used to do: play football. Apart from spending their time, football worked as a colonial instrument both "civilising" and "disciplining" the colonised populations. The first clubs in North Africa and the Levant restricted membership for non-Westerners and non-whites, but soon football also became a transnational transmitter of independence movements, the stadiums becoming important social spaces on the local and national levels. Such was the emancipatory force of football that it has been preserved across the region ever since the colonial era, prominent again in the Arab Uprisings. However, the massive wealth of the Gulf States and their decision to invest in football's soft power has changed the equation. The article thus describes emancipatory and counter-emancipatory trends in MENA football history from a longue durée perspective.

The presence of the external factor is usually related to the context of the popular hirak, the periods of political transition and the transitional phases in many countries. This factor is evident in countries with a geopolitical position in regional and international competition. This study discusses the variable of the external factor in the 22 February 2019 hirak in Algeria by examining the limits of international and regional interventions in steering the course of the popular hirak compared to other Arab cases where the external factor seemed to be more influential. It aims to discuss the determinants of Algeria's relations with regional and international powers and to explain the issue of the lack of external interference in the popular hirak, ending with the modalities of the future of the turbulent political path and discussing the possibilities of transformation from abroad. The study concludes that the lack of regional and international intervention in the popular hirak is mainly related to geopolitical and strategic constraints, far from value and normative considerations. The behaviour of external forces is determined by Algeria's geopolitical situation. The risks of instability in the country would create highly complex security challenges in the Mediterranean region. Added to this is the importance of Algeria in assessing the strategic balances in the region, especially for European security.

Following the transformations in the Levant’s regional system since the beginning of World War II to the rise of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, this paper examines the new context of the region with regard to Washington’s resumption of direct military intervention. It finds that the Levant – as a soft area easily subject to geopolitical influences – has always been subject to changes based on shifts in world order, from the Cold War, followed by unipolarity, to the relative decline of US power. Thus, while the main actors of the Levant’s regional system were Arabs during the Cold War, the region has become a battleground for non-Arab parties – namely Turkey and Iran – following the invasion or Iraq and the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutions.