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This study examines the impact of securitization on the democratization of three countries in the in the Horn of Africa: Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan. The three countries, all members of the Arab League, represent diverse but integrated securitization models. The study assumes that securitization in the region has left democratic transformation low in the list of priorities for the major powers, at a time when counterterrorism rhetoric is overwhelming. The paper raises the following questions: Why has securitization discourse overpowered talk of democracy in the Horn of Africa? How do the mechanisms of the securitization discourse interact with political reality? What is the role of regional institutions in enhancing securitization discourse?

This study advances a new approach to theorizing the Arab state after the popular uprisings. It does this in two steps. Suspending the western European model of state formation and bringing the Arab world's experience in conversation with other parts of the Global South, it examines alternative state formation and state building sequences, trajectories, and temporalities in the making of Arab states. It thus historicizes the process of state formation and state building in the Arab world as compared to the western European one and other regions in the Global South. This first step liberates us from explicit and implicit comparisons with the European model of state formation. The second step surveys alternative theorizations of the Arab state after the uprisings. Tracing the causal assumptions embedded in these theories reveals how much they rely on the European model of state formation and state building as an implicit point of analytic departure and critical comparison. This survey unpacks the assumptions these theories make about the state, the difference between states and regimes, state and non-state actors, the private and public realms, and the formal and informal sectors. The objective of this study is to not only de-exceptionalize states in the Arab world, but, more importantly, borrowing from Gurminder Bhambra, 'unmake' our understandings of state formation and state building in the Arab world and thus contribute, following Walter Mignolo, to a knowledge production that serves a form of 'epistemic reconstitution' of alternative historical trajectories and possibilities.

Eastern Sudan is in a critical stage, where local fault lines intersect with Horn of Africa tensions and regional and international ambitions. This study traces those fissures and their intersections in order to understand and analyze the conflict in the region. Its basic premise is that eastern Sudan represents the priority and geographical entry point in the Sudanese peace-building process, and that the establishment/strengthening of peace in this region is linked to a reciprocal relationship with the security and stability of the Horn of Africa. The study presents preliminary ideas, in terms of preventive diplomacy, that may contribute to healing the rifts. It is based on a combination of primary sources, literature, and personal interviews with Sudanese academics, diplomats and other actors. In addition, it builds on the outputs of two workshops from the Sudan Track II Peace Dialogue Project. It frames some aspects of the analysis and ideas presented with a set of theories and hypotheses that intersect with the field of conflict studies, following the "combined approach," for studying complex conflict environments.

This paper discusses international competition in Latin America between the United States, Russia, and China. Whilst the United States aims to maintain its traditional influence in the region based on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 , which made Latin America a zone of exclusive influence for the US due to its geographic and economic significance. Russia and China instead seek to challenge this influence, on the one hand in the face of American expansionism in their respective vicinities, and on the other to bring about a multipolar global order. Moreover, the region is of economic importance to those states. The study arrives at the basic conclusion that the US still has the greatest military and economic presence in Latin America, but Russia and China have managed to penetrate the region by establishing military relations with anti-US regimes, most prominently Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Moreover, China has become an important trade partner to countries such as Brazil and Argentina, surpassed the US in trade volume with these states.

Scholars studying the Middle East often challenge the IR discipline's Eurocentric framings of the world by emphasizing the particularities of the Middle East, which defy and challenge the universality of Western-rooted IR theories. Social constructivism, focusing on agency and processes, has been regarded by many as an approach with the potential of taking into consideration specific historical, ideational, and cultural contexts in the Middle East region. Social constructivism, as developed by Alexander Wendt (1992 , 1994 , 1999), seems to lend itself especially well to adaptations to provide insights for the Middle East. This article revisits some aspects of Wendt's constructivism and explores its applicability in the Middle East. The article examines Wendt's cultures of anarchy to show how cooperative relations transform into conflict through processes of interaction. I examine how the Middle East provides both a potential and challenge to his argument by examining the case of Saudi relations with Hamas, with a particular focus on the episode of the 2009 Gaza war. The article examines the puzzle of how Saudi Arabia changed and evolved over the years from supporting Hamas and the Palestinian resistance to identifying it as an enemy, despite sharing pan-Islamism as a collective identity.

There is no supranational authority that can solve international water disputes; thus, the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (UN Watercourse Convention) may be the answer. However, as is shown in this article, when it comes to the Eastern Nile water dispute, namely between Egypt and Ethiopia, both sides can use different articles of the UN Watercourse Convention to support their legal arguments. As a result, there is little that the UN Watercourse Convention can offer to solve this dispute. This article summarizes the relevant articles of the UN Watercourse Convention and discusses the contentious, historical treaties that allocated the rights to the Nile River water over the past century. The paper also discusses how both Egypt and Ethiopia can use principles from the international water law to support their legal position rendering the dispute difficult to be solved legally. Thus, we turn to a discussion of the current state of the recent initiatives to solve the ongoing water dispute between the riparian countries in the Nile River Basin. The article concludes with the current state of dispute after the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.

This study distinguishes between three Interrelated theoretical approaches prevalent in writings of researchers seeking to understand the emergence of the Islamic Resistance Movement, "Hamas". The first of these approaches examines the movement from the portal of ideology, stressing the importance of international and regional dimensions and the rise of political Islam after the "setback" (Naksa) of the 1967 Six Day War. The second approaches Hamas as representing a social movement seeking to revisit the historical narrative of Palestinian society. The third considers it to be the heir of the Palestinian national liberation movement, attributing its rise to transformations witnessed in Palestinian identity and the Palestinian community's definition of itself. Although the three readings do not contradict each other, a focus on one of them can lead to oversimplification or exaggeration: emphasis on the first approach is at risk of overlooking transformations in the movement in its later stages and a marginalization at the micro level of local dimensions; emphasis on the second approach can result in the overestimation of the effectiveness of collective action; exaggerated emphasis on the third approach deprives social actors of their effectiveness. Hence this study proposes situating Hamas in the intersection of these three approaches.

This article discusses Moroccan-African relations in light of the recent visit undertaken by the Moroccan king to Mali, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon, and how this differed from previous visits. The visit led to the signing of a number of strategic agreements with the above-mentioned states. In this context, the study looks at the historical constants that have governed relations between Morocco and West and Sub Saharan Africa. The paper also looks at the political, economic, and religious variables of the two sides using inference, analysis, comparison, and interpretation. What is the nature of the historical relationship between Morocco and the West African states? What are the variables that have contributed to the more intensive Moroccan presence in the region? What new elements have been added by Moroccan political, economic, and security initiatives? What are the difficulties that might impede Moroccan ambitions on the African continent? These issues are dealt with in the paper.

This study adopts a comparative approach to investigate the impact of the reciprocal fears of internal and external parties on the stances of key actors during the 2011 transitions. Apparently, the uncertainty that accompanies any democratic elections has not been a local factor in the Arab cases because regional and international forces have an interest in hindering democracy, being a potential threat to the status quo. The study examines four interrelated problems related to external factors. It concludes that the external factors that have hindered democracy in non-Arab cases were not inevitable because addressing them seems to have been related to changes in the international system and the emergence of domestic democratic blocs that are able to exert pressure on external forces and get them to change their positions.

The debate over the most appropriate model for governing Somalia continues. This article begins by synthetizing that debate using interviews, discussion groups, as well as document and literature analyses. It addresses issues of complaint with the current system, including lack of confidence, demands for democracy, access to basic services, and for a fair share of resources. These form the core of local interest in decentralized proposals. It analyses the regional and international context, as well as tribal politics as forces pushing for the current tribal federal project. The suitability of proposals for confederacy, federalism, government by consensus, and decentralization contained in the published literature are analyzed in this context, alongside the literature available on the subject. The paper finds that a decentralized system is the most appropriate governance model for Somalia, explaining how the flexible tools it involves will work to keep the country united, address local grievances, and legitimate interests of external Parties.