This section reviews key political documents related to democratic transition in the Arab world. In this issue, we feature a document from Tunisia covering the period from July 1 to August 31, 2024.
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Siyasat Arabiya is a bi-monthly peer reviewed academic journal published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (ISSN 2307-1583/E-ISSN 2789-326X) dedicated to political science, international relations, and strategic affairs.
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Patriotism Without Citizenship: Non-electoral Legitimacy of the Post-July 2013 Egyptian Regime
2024-01-01
The struggle for political legitimacy has been central to political polarization in Egypt since the 2013 coup. Given the regime's pronounced authoritarian features, the traditional form of legal electoral legitimacy proved insufficient and ineffective. As a result, the regime adopted alternative strategies to reinforce its political legitimacy. Drawing on theories of political legitimacy and literature on citizenship in authoritarian regimes, this study explores the measures and practices implemented by the July 2013 regime to achieve legitimacy across its three dimensions: the system's effectiveness and competence, citizens' beliefs in its legitimacy, and their behaviours that signal recognition.
The Arab Opinion Index 2019/2020 data on the Algerian Hirak shows the consolidation of the phenomenon of taking to the streets to protest as the dominant form of expression of political, economic, and social demands at a time when forms of institutional political participation, such as party and trade union membership, are declining. The Index results confirmed that tyranny, monopolisation of power and corruption are the main factors that led people to protest and gave the movement the great dynamism that characterises it. Although the Algerian street movement succeeded in forcing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the former President of Algeria, to resign, preventing him from running for a fifth term as president and raising hopes for an improvement in economic and social indicators, these hopes quickly faded after the conviction grew that the regime had not changed and that the general situation remained as it was before.
The importance of this book derives from the context of ongoing Arabic research on the links between Western and Chinese civilisations, a topic that has gained prominence in the wake of the Arab Spring.
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Global Climate Negotiations: Improving the Legal Aspects and Practice’s Constraints
2016-07-01
This study discusses the most important developments in global climate negotiations since the Rio de Janeiro’s conference of 1992 until the Paris ‘conference in November 2015 that main focus was to control global warming rates. Nevertheless, these rates continue to rise in an unprecedented manner posing dangerous direct threat to all humanity. The study shows the most important achievements accomplished and the most important agreements that the international negotiations have arrived to, indicating the main shortcomings and gaps of these negotiation’s that may hinder the international efforts for reducing emissions’ gasses. The study emphasizes the importance of concentrating on environmental aspects, as well as on financing energy and economy so it would fit the needs of sustainable development, especially in developing countries.
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The European Union and Democratic Transition in the Arab World: The Limits of Normative Power
2018-11-01
Despite high levels of mass mobilization in the past, Palestinian society today finds itself polarized and demobilized. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has gained control as a governing apparatus and has become increasingly authoritarian in nature. But the PA does not have complete control over the territories. This variation in control allows isolation of the effect of the PA's authoritarian nature on mobilization patterns and social dynamics. The study argues that mobilization has systematically declined in places where the PA has more direct control. Counter-intuitively, political mobilization today is more prevalent in areas under direct Israeli occupation. Findings suggest the PA has a direct role in this dynamic, using selective cooptation and repression. Overall, authoritarian strategies in the Palestinian territories have led to decreased capacity for mobilization.
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Electoral Engineering in the Transitional Phase: The National Constituent Assembly Elections in Tunisia as a Case Study
2018-01-01
This study provides an overview of development stages in post-conflict reconstruction since World War II. The authors attempt to summarize a set of lessons learned from accumulated experiences, which could then be used to better inform Arab decision-makers. The authors also call for an indigenous, Arab perspective, distinct from Western approaches, to post-conflict reconstruction policies. The first section in the study addresses the differences between the traditional definition of war and contemporary conflicts, focusing on how armed conflicts in the Arab region have caused vast levels of destruction requiring immense, cooperative efforts to aid in the post-conflict reconstruction. The paper goes on to explain the concepts and terminology which underpins post-conflict reconstruction and recovery, as well as the historical and analytical arc of the most significant milestones in the development of post-conflict reconstruction methodology.
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The Ersal Crisis: Background to the Armed Confrontation and its Implications
2014-09-01
At the beginning of August 2014 clashes broke out in the Lebanese town of Ersal between armed factions fighting in Syria, among them jihadist groups such as ISIL and the Nusra Front, and the Lebanese army. These clashes continued for five days and ended with the withdrawal of the Syrian fighters from the town as part of an initiative under the auspices of the Association of Muslim Ulema in Lebanon and the Lebanese Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (LIFE). In view of the contradictory accounts and the mutual recriminations, this paper looks at what really happened in Ersal, the background that led the crisis to develop, the positions and calculations of the various sides, and the repercussions in Syria and Lebanon.
The book discusses Qatari foreign policy, starting with the historical foundation, then moving on to reading the events that transformed this small country into an important regional and international actor, emphasizing the uniqueness of this model.
يتضمّن هذا التقرير توثيقًا لأبرز محطات التحول الديمقراطي في الوطن العربي في المدة 1 أيار/ مايو - 30 حزيران/ يونيو 2021.
