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​This introductory essay highlights the considerations that prompted this in-depth look at the state of political science in Arab academic institutions, and made it essential. For political science, and the humanities and social sciences more generally, play a central role in any societal renaissance. Our experience of teaching graduate level political science at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies has already indicated to us that the situation of the discipline in Arab universities was not at all rosy. This impression was confirmed by many studies, conferences, and forums organized by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, which revealed a huge gap of knowledge in the field. This made it imperative to undertake an evaluation of what Arab universities were offering in their efforts to guide students to master the discipline up to global standards. The studies in this special issue, and the following one, highlight a multi-layered crisis in the field, impacting teaching, research, and employment prospects. The studies point to the late arrival of the discipline in the region, the limited areas covered, inadequate resources, and a lag behind international achievements in the field. The crisis is complicated by a number political, economic, social and structural obstacles that hold the discipline back from achieving its potential. This introduction summarizes and assesses the findings of the studies included in this special issue, and the second part in the following one, one emergence, evolution and achievements of the discipline, and the impediment obstructing its progress and maturity in the region. It focuses on case studies from Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, and Tunisia, adding surveys and reflections on methodologies and theoretical challenges. It concludes that despite some major achievements and progress, the biggest obstacle to progress in the discipline remains the absence of viable scholarly communities, both regionally and nationally in in each country. The essay offers proposals to address this problem.

The occupied West Bank has experienced a steady expansion of settlement construction and settler demographic presence since 1967. This study analyzes the strategies of settler colonialism in the West Bank using interactive maps produced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It argues that settler colonialism operates as an ongoing structure rather than a discrete event, relying on evolving forms of the logic of elimination and the spatial and demographic reconfiguration of Palestinian society. The study highlights the central role of the Israeli Civil Administration and state institutions in regulating the indigenous population in ways that facilitate settlement expansion. It demonstrates a shift from direct exclusion to more complex mechanisms of domination based on population management and bureaucratic control. The findings identify two core strategies: consolidating control over the Jordan Valley and land behind the separation barrier, and tightening control over the heart of the West Bank through three settlement belts surrounding Jerusalem.

In this study, the researcher builds on the idea he presented in a previous study on “Symbolic Liberalism”, which he used to describe the responses of social sciences to the ailments of late modernity. This modernity is characterized by a blend, where it is defined as classical liberalism but politically illiberal. The study argues that this modernity is undergoing polarization across various societies, including on university campuses and in the media. This is evident through high levels of intolerance that have surfaced in discussions on political, cultural, and social issues, where bias and taking sides prevail over the use of strong, persuasive arguments. This intolerance comes from both the left and the right, manifesting in what is known as "cancel culture" on both sides. The spread of "over-safety culture" among administrative officials has led to hasty decisions and sanctions against some university professors, merely for using certain references in class or for not providing prior warnings to students, all within an atmosphere of fear. The study provides examples from the United States and France, often driven by symbolic liberals. Following this, provide a case related to the ongoing war in Gaza.

This study conducts research on the traditional academic methods used in the Arab scholarly community. Specifically, it employs the case of legal science when addressing the following questions: Is the Arab academy in its field suffering from academic dependency? What forms does this take and what are the reasons behind it? Where does reviewing theoretical or conceptual frameworks of legal science fall in this? This study focuses on law as a method of social control in the methodological crisis undergone by the social sciences. This study refers to two crises examined by Arab legal science: identity crisis and functional crisis. These are illustrated by two main indicators: The gap between the quantitative growth of the number of law students and the weak production of legal research knowledge, the gap between the quantitative development of the educational institutions of law and of legal structures.

Original Title: Nous ne sommes plus seuls au monde- Un autre regard sur l’ " ordre international "

This article traces routes taken by social and political research to explain the state's role in relation to economy and society, and in explaining policies and government activities. Pluralist and structural functionalist approaches commanded the landscape of political science and sociology in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, and before that in nineteenth century Europe, all centering around society. But a shift occurred with the "Keynesian revolution" culminating in current research that emphasizes the state as a powerful and influential actor in political and social processes, by virtue of its policies and typical relationships with social groups. The emphasis of contemporary study on the state is a theoretical reclamation of the role it played in familiar works of leading German scholars such as Max Weber and Otto Hintz. This article discusses the role and capacity of the state, as detailed through various texts.

This study provides a discussion and analysis of the circumstances that led to the military occupation of the core of the state and government in contemporary Algeria, and the ramifications for the process of building political and legal institutions, and the democratic transition experience. The study employs the concepts of populism and neopatrimonialism to paint a picture of the path taken by the government in Algeria since independence. Populism describes the ideology that sanctified the one-party state and revolutionary legitimacy, while neopatrimonialism is the resulting shape taken by the exercise of political power. Framing these two concepts within their historical context provides an understanding of the circumstances of the army's seizure of power and its identification with the state. It clarifies the reasons for its refusal to redistribute power within the society after the establishment of political pluralism in the 1989 Constitution.

Any attempts to interpret the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 through the prism of generational shifts raises four major questions. The first two concern the difficulty of attributing to young Tunisians any kind of generational or political consciousness, particularly before the outbreak of the revolution in 2011. The third and fourth questions relate to the concept of the "Generational Theory" itself and its ability (or otherwise) to explain a wide spectrum of social factors. Can the demographic approach sufficiently describe the Tunisian Revolution of 2011? This paper will demonstrate that a demographic approach can illuminate not only an understanding of the Tunisian Revolution, but also of the wider social and political changes which have shaped the country in recent times.