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​This study examines the management of ethnic and social diversity in the military by comparing the United States of America, a reference case, and Saudi Arabia, which is still in an early stage of institutionalization. It uses a military-sociological approach, which posits that the military reflects the socio-cultural structure of society. It focuses on four key societal indicators: ethnicity, gender, sectarian affiliation, and tribal identity. It argues that the effectiveness of diversity management depends on integrating both normative (legislation and policies) and practical (implementation) levels, while accounting for the societal specificity of each case. The US experience shows that the presence of both normative and practical frameworks does not necessarily yield an ideal type, due to persistent representation challenges, particularly at senior military ranks. In contrast, the Saudi case is characterized by the absence of a clear normative framework and the novelty of the experience, despite emerging indicators of openness, especially after 2017. The study concludes that managing diversity is not merely a social demand, but also a prerequisite for strengthening military effectiveness and institutional cohesion​.

Book Title: The Virtual Public Sphere in the Syrian Revolution [Arabic]

​The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies devoted its second Annual Conference for Arab Policy Research Centers to studying the Palestinian cause. “The Palestinian Cause and the Future of the Palestinian National Project” brought together representatives from over 60 research institutes from across the Arab region on December 7-9, 2013.

This article explains underlying drivers of the general contours of Chinese foreign policy. Since the Cold War, China has increasingly been playing the role of a major power but demonstrates hesitancy in some theatres and has not developed its full capacities to that end. This article attends to the study of “Strategic Culture”, a framework which helps explain ideas generated from the history, culture, and societal narratives of a state, and which place general parameters that indicate preferred foreign policy options. Strategic Culture does not cause action, but helps define potential acceptable options. It is complementary to other explanations around the importance of factors such as distribution of material capabilities, decision maker’s idiosyncrasies, and alliance commitments. In particular, strategic culture helps understand long-term foreign policy patterns.

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 study examines the ability of network technology to challenge despotism regimes. It thus applies two theoretical approaches. The first is the "Prisoner's dilemma" and the "despot/jailer's dilemma" and the second is the "case study", which studies a number of cases of "network technology", whether used by protest groups or by authoritarian regimes, to determine the extent (and direction) of their impact in practice. The study concludes that network technology — through challenging the logic of the "prisoner's dilemma" and reversing it to become the "jailer's dilemma" — can, theoretically, pose an element of weakness for despotism regimes. However, in reality, network technology can be used by these regimes with the same effectiveness, to respond to mass protests supported by technology. This indicates that network technology can be seen as a neutralizing factor, the impact of which should be studied relative to the impact of other factors.

This study explores the perceptions of Britain's main political parties towards the Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas throughout the period between 2003 and 2016. It explores also the extent of variation between the major political parties in the UK towards Hamas. The author argues that the lack of a value-based outlook on the part of the British ruling establishment as well as a lack of respect for the tenets of international law—which enshrines the right to resist occupation—have driven that establishment to embrace the UK's colonial legacy, and to regard their government as the founder and protector of the State of Israel. It is this establishmentarian discourse, argues the author, which drives the criminalization of Hamas within British politics.

In recent years, phrases such as “migrant crisis” and “illegal migration” have gained increased currency as means of describing larger waves of migration to Europe. International law rests on the assumption that refuge and asylum are always “legitimate”, thus failing to provide a justification for the use of terms such as “illegal migration”. As a response, in this paper the author adopts the term “illicit migration” to refer to undeclared migration which does not pass through official channels, and which, he argues, is a clearer expression of the phenomenon currently underway, in which large numbers of migrants seek to secretly enter the borders of their destination countries. The topic under discussion has particular importance due to the reflexive way in which European countries tie migration to extremism. This has spurred European nations to increase reliance on an “iron shield” erected to isolate themselves from those landing on their shores from the southern end of the Mediterranean, and with no distinctions made between refugees legitimately seeking refuge from armed conflict and those seeking to “ride the wave”.

This article explores what James Rosenau had founded as a post-international politics paradigm. It does so through a comparative reading of the two concepts of the two coexistent systems, state-centic and multicentric, on the one hand; and neo- medievalism on the other. The article aimes at offering some reflections on the essential characteristics that both concepts can contribute to improving our understanding of post-international politics in an era of increasing complexity. The article is divided into two sections. The first section introduces the concept of post-international politics, from Rosenau's perspective, and identifies the most prominent assumptions on which Rosenau called turbulence (another label for the post-international politics paradigm). The second section introduces the concept of neomedievalism, which traces back to Hadley Bull, as an appropriate depiction for a system within which the state's monopoly of violence is constantly declining, especially under the growing influence of private armies/security companies, which are considered a contemporary example of the mercenary armies that characterized the first medieval period.

Documents of Democratic Transition in the Arab World 1/ - 31/8/2021.