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The fall of Mosul on June 10, 2014 following the assault by armed factions, with ISIL at the forefront, represented a major point of transformation for the political scene in Iraq, particularly following the withdrawal of the Iraqi military and police, and the succession of cities in northern and western Iraq that fell to ISIL. This paper looks at the accelerating developments in the Iraqi crisis since 2014. It tries to understand and describe the event, and presents two current narratives: the first is that ISIL is the only actor responsible for the planning and implementation of what happened and is happening; and the second observes the revival of the Sunni opposition movements in the context of the Anbar uprising against the Iraqi government. The paper reviews the positions of the forces active internally: the Iraqi government and its allies, the armed factions and their allies, and the Iraqi political forces participating in the political process, and externally in the region and on the global scene.

This article discusses the challenges facing the government of Haider al-Abadi in Iraq, and outlines what ought to be expected in the coming stage, particularly after the fall of Mosul to ISIL. The paper reviews the failure of the regime post 2002 to insure equal participation of all segments of Iraq in the institution of power following the sectarian polices adopted by Nouri al-Maliki who exercised control over all the levers of the political regime and the public political institutions, and systematically harassed other politicians and parties – Sunnis in particular. The paper also reviews the American position, the intervention of the international coalition, and the establishment of the national guard. It looks at the other challenges facing the effort to keep Iraq together and help it emerge from its problems, including the threat of ISIL, sectarian division, the security situation, and the economy. The paper also reviews the regional overlap with the Iraqi situation, particularly the Iranian aspect, and what is transpiring as a new regional equation.

The seventh Annual Conference on Democratic Transition focusing on External Factors and the post-2011 Democratic Transition in the Arab Region. The conference, which is being held by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies on 21-22 September 2018, examines the nature of regional and international roles and their impact on the transition to democracy in the Arab countries following the revolutions of 2011.

The book analyzes China's strategy toward Arab states, exploring its objectives, tools, and implications. The author examines China's strategic goals, its vision for the Arab world, and the methods used to achieve these aims.

​This study is about the state-building impasse in the Arab World in General, and in Libya in particular. These states have suffered, since the beginning of the Arab Spring, from lack of political prospects, eruptions of civil wars, and obstacles of political settlements among different actors in the public space. These elements have inhibited the achievement of state building, the formation of a pluralist political system and the realization of an integrated national identity. This study endeavors to analyze the obstacles that have obstructed state-building in Libya until now. It focuses on tribalism and regionalism as main obstacles to that process. In addition, it analyzes the role of external factors and actors in the light of tribalism and regionalism. It argues that state-building in Libya has stumbled and has not followed a gradual path of modern state-building and formation, and it has not gone through the necessary stages of political transition. The former has trapped Libya within narrow loyalties which are short of the wider loyalties necessary for the national state.

This study investigates the causes beneath the absence of non-Western theorizing efforts in the field of International Relations (IR), aiming to shed light on intellectually and politically defectiveness of the Arab World in the field, as manifested since the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolutions. To this end, the study discusses the position of the Arab World in IR and illustrates how the North (the Centre) deliberately ignores knowledge production on international relations from the South (the Periphery) through abstraction, reductionism, and exclusion. Finally, the study scrutinizes how the situation in the Arab World reflects the continuation of colonialism in two evident forms: epistemologically through the knowledge-power nexus; and by subjugation or keeping states, even those that are nominally independent, subservient to the Great Powers in international politics.

This study analyses the constructivist perspective of security and establishes the constructivist contribution to security studies, particularly in terms of the conventional and critical constructivist approaches, arguing that constructivism has constituted an intellectual turning point. It demonstrates how constructivism, or rather constructivisms, has enriched and developed the concept of security and security studies on three levels. First, it approaches security as socially constructed and intersubjective. Second, it has undertaken a critical revision of major rationalist concepts, notably anarchy and the security dilemma. Third, it has introduced concepts of identity, interests, and norms to the field of security studies. However, there are shortcomings in the constructivist contribution on identity and security, in addition to inter-constructivist disagreements, which have prevented the evolution of a clear theoretical framework, even within critical constructivism, which has made the most innovative contributions to the field. The study concludes that constructivism has not formulated a distinct theory of security. However, its innovative contributions and its role as a theoretical reference point for new approaches to security constitute a constructivist perspective within International Relations. Both critical and non-critical strands of the new security approach have developed security theories grounded in constructivist insights. This constitutes the central theoretical achievement of constructivism in the field of security studies.

This study explores the concepts and premises related to youth movements, particularly as they relate to the democratic transition within the Arab Spring countries.

This study aims to deconstruct the Algerian security approach towards the Sahara and Sahel region in Africa which is a concern that currently exemplifies a corne stone in its foreign policy, because of its considerable importance to Algeria’s security, as well as to its national interests. Algeria insists on maintaining an autonomous approach in engineering its security strategy in the region while remaining in cooperation with others. By identifying Algeria’s contribution to security arrangements in Africa, the study provides practical examples that reflect Algeria’s security vision on both: the regional and the continental fronts. This study aims to work as a base for future evaluation of Algeria’s contribution to building African security while preserving autonomy.

The book analyzes the Algerian Hirak through political, social, and media studies to explore its context, activists, dynamics, and its political, social, and symbolic dimensions, along with its impact on Algeria's democratic transition.