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​What is the effect of religiosity on public opinion? Islamist religiosity in particular has been linked to a variety of outcomes, including authoritarianism and violence. Nevertheless, many scholars have countered that there is in fact no relationship between religiosity in the Arab world and adverse political outcomes. Thus the debate remains unresolved to some degree. To adjudicate this debate, we use the Arab Opinion Index's 2016 data to examine the effect of individual religiosity on public opinion and political behavior. We find that there is no link between increased religiosity and negative views of democracy; in fact, the opposite is the case. There is also no link between religiosity and political participation. Finally, there is a positive correlation between religiosity and political tolerance.

This paper adopts the assumption that the series of foreign interventions which served to transform the Syrian crisis from a domestic revolution into a regionalized, and later globalized, conflict were not the result of factors intrinsic to the revolution itself, but rather the consequences of dramatic changes sweeping across the entire Middle East following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The fallout from 2003 included the collapse of the former tripartite of Arab regional powers: Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. For the first time, the non-Arab regional powers of Turkey and Iran came to be directly involved in intra-Arab affairs. The latter effectively had an overland border tying it to Syria's Mediterranean coast once the US withdrew the bulk of its military forces from Iraq in 2011. While the Syrian regime had worked to strengthen its ties to both Ankara and Tehran in the wake of its losses following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Syria would fall victim to regional power politics between its two regional neighbors. Once the Syrian revolution was militarized, in response to the Damascus regime's iron-fisted approach to peaceful popular protests, Turkish-Iranian rivalry over the future of Syria quickly became bloody. In an attempt to limit the extent of influence not only by Turkey but also its ally Iran, the Syrian regime resorted to seeking out additional foreign support, latterly from Russia.

This study explores the trajectory of state disintegration in Sudan from 1821 to 2025 , starting from a central question: does the April 2023 war constitute a revealing variable that exposes a process of structural disintegration whose foundations accumulated over time? Or is it an explanatory variable that, in itself, drives the deepening of this disintegration? Drawing on a historical sociology approach, the study analyzes the interaction of five main variables addressed in the literature on state disintegration: war, elite conflict, geostrategic intervention, erosion of legitimacy, and the pressures of globalization. The study shows that successive wars and resource depletion, along with ethnic/regional elite divisions and international competition over the Red Sea, have undermined the state’s monopoly over the legitimate means of violence, leading to a hybrid pattern of disintegration in which the center retains international recognition while power is effectively distributed among local armed networks. The study concludes that existing models of state disintegration explain important aspects of the Sudanese experience, but require further development to accommodate forms of multiple sovereignties and managed disintegration.

This paper compares the results of the Fragile States Index issued by the Fund for Peace, a charitable organization, with indicators established in the Arab Opinion Index, an annual survey undertaken by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in a number of Arab countries. These indicators reflect the assessments provided by Arab respondents of economic, social and political issues and what their views mean in light of the specific country contexts. The paper also examines whether citizens' views can be relied upon as indicators of the vulnerability of the state and the extent to which the indicators of state vulnerability are accurate by comparing them with the opinions of citizens in different areas. In this context, based on the Arab Index survey, the paper relied on nine indicators out of 12 adopted by the Fragile States Index in order to interpret economic, social and political opinions expressed by respondents.

The contemporary Yemeni state is characterized by strife and complications involving all aspects of the state and society. These complexities go back to the era of its inception and continue today, leaving serious implications for the political, geographic and social unity of Yemen. There are very clear intersections between the internal (political, economic, social) and external components, which contribute to the sustained crisis in the Yemeni state. Successive Yemeni governments have failed to fulfill their assumed duties and functions, thus preventing them from dealing with all kinds of foreign interventions. Moreover, tribal and sectarian roles in Yemen have historically prevailed over other Yemeni political roles, which have not succeeded in transferring Yemen to civil rule. Nor have they managed to build a democratic model that achieves stability and allows Yemenis to participate actively in the political and economic process, consolidate the concepts of citizenship and the rule of law, and safeguard the various rights and freedoms of all members of Yemeni society.

Book Title: Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition Under Authoritarianism in Egypt [English]

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.

​يرصد هذا الباب أبرز الوثائق السياسية ذات الصلة بالتحول الديمقراطي في الوطن العربي. وننشر في هذا العدد توثيقًا لأهم الوثائق في المدة 1 أيار/ مايو - 30 حزيران/ يونيو 2021.

​يتضمّن هذا التقرير توثيقًا لأبرز محطات التحول الديمقراطي في الوطن العربي في المدة 1 أيار/ مايو - 30 حزيران/ يونيو 2021.