Latest Articles

The post-Cold War environment has produced a world distribution structure different from that of the system prevailing in the 1945-1991 period. Geographical regions of pivotal value have emerged as important arenas of competition among the great powers, each drawing strength from the prominent features of location and resources. Referencing these same features, this study examines the geopolitical importance of Arab and Islamic countries within the international system. It posits a set of factors to inform an understanding of the international system's evolving nature: energy, the distribution of power and hegemonies in the geopolitical spaces of Europe and Asia.

Since the mid-1990s Morocco has traversed several stages of political and constitutional reforms. These were characterized by a restructuring of the political field in keeping with constitutional methodology and political consensus and were the precondition for the process of rapprochement between political actors. However, if this rapprochement or political openness transformed the electoral process into something diminished in practical terms, it in turn intensified the expansion of the protest arena, the accumulation of skills and experience among protesters, the development of more independent coordination capabilities, and the weakening of the regime's polarizing tendencies. This development imposes upon the political class a renewal of its discourse and means and modalities of communication, in the short and medium terms, to prevent continued erosion of its credibility.

China's economic growth led to a concomitant expansion of its interests across the globe, and the Middle East and North Africa s today vital to the sustainability of that growth.

This paper investigates the factors that have led to the collapse of Baath-ruled Syria. It argues that the abandonment of the rentier – distributive economic system that had traditionally propped up the social base of the Baath party (labourers, farmers, and rural populations) and the adoption of liberal economic policies was key to the crisis. The end of the Cold War, the passing of resistance discourse, with the start of the Middle East peace process, and the information revolution have contributed to weakening the cultural and ideological hegemony of the Syrian Baath-ruled state. This led to increasing reliance on the security apparatus to control an increasingly young and educated society. The loosening economic grip of the state resulting from the abandonment of the public sector, and the rise of crony capitalism accompanied by the declining role of political socialisation (in schools and universities), and the loss of control over the flow of information, left the regime with no other option but resorting to violence to deal with the crisis. The peaceful opposition movement hitherto was transformed into an armed revolution, and then into a regional and international proxy war, with the rising role foreign interference in the crisis.

​In recent years, Analytical Eclecticism has emerged as a promising theoretical trend and has attracted great attention from researchers and practitioners of international relations theory. Analytical Eclecticism is based on the following three pillars: the call for theoretical diversity and pluralism by adopting Eclectic methodology; challenging the dominance of classical paradigms (realism, neoliberalism, constructivism) over international relations theory; and to advocate for the replacement of Grand Theory with middle range theories following its decline. The article presents a critical review of these pillars to demonstrate that the rationale upon which analytical Eclecticism is based is tainted by some contradictions; its criticisms of Grand Theory are built on an incomplete understanding of what it and its function are. Moreover, analytical eclecticism is not a new subject in the discipline of international relations, and the decline of Grand Theory does not necessarily signify its disappearance.

​This paper agrues that although the Arab Gulf is strategically located and of economic importance to China, the Gulf states did not fall along the original routes demarcated by the Belt and Road initiative roadmap. Nevertheless, both China and these states have begun to engage with the initiative and its projects by signing strategic partnerships, and to enmesh these projects with perspectives on national development in the Gulf. This has unsettled the United States and its allies, some of whom have begun to view this expansion as a serious challenge. As a result, there has been an attempt to impede the initiative's projects through debt-trap debate, geopolitical alliances, and putting forth alternative economic proposals. This study argues that the Gulf is of great concern to China and the requirements of the Belt and Road initiative, identifying where the Arab Gulf states are located on the initiative map and illustrating the way in which each state has gradually become involved in associated projects. It considers Western mechanisms and alternative projects in response to respond to and impede the initiative and the degree to which these mechanisms may apply to the Gulf states. The paper presents deductive observations as to China's likely approach in the event that the initiative is obstructed and its interests undermined. Will it modify its foreign strategy – and will this impact the Gulf?

This study examines how international economic and political matters are interrelated within the context of the Covid- 19 pandemic's outbreak as well as its serious effects on global economy. It argues that the International Political Economy (IPE) may provide answers to how the pandemic shapes (or fails to shape) international economic relations. The paper explores how, as a transdisciplinary field, IPE helps to understand patterns of change and continuity in global economics and politics in the wake of the pandemic, and IPE's contribution to global health research as well. The study defends the hypothesis that the state has been and is still present at the heart of neoliberal capitalism, and that it has preserved its foundations within a heterodoxy neoliberal trend heading towards more authoritarian neoliberalism, and steadily moves from market to state neoliberalism. The study also advocates positioning the Political Economy of Health at the center of health research; as long as health is considered a transnational issue. It goes on to discuss the failure of international institutions to enable international cooperation to confront the pandemic, a failure forged by the rise of nationalist populism.

Ukraine occupies a highly sensitive position between Russia and the Nato-member states because it is currently the main buffer state between them and also occupies more than half the extent of the eastern gateway to Europe, via which threats to Europe have passed throughout history. The continuation of European and Nato actions to incorporate and form partnerships with other states aims to curtail Russian influence in this region and reinforce control over it. Russia, deeply disturbed at the encroachment of Western influence to its wider immediate neighborhood, cannot abandon Ukraine to become part of the West's security and economic order. For, in addition to Russian nationalist feeling for Ukraine, it is part of its "special interest zone" and the final strategic stronghold buffering it from the West and its allies. The global tensions caused by the Ukraine crisis and the threat it poses to relations between two major global actors call for a discussion over the wider context to Ukraine's place in Western and Russian strategic thinking.

This study builds on the assumption that any change in the structure of the international system in the foreseeable future cannot be immediately ascribed to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, even if the pandemic is purely incidental and unable to change the existing distribution of power, this does not mean it has not introduced a dialogue within International Relations on the impact of epidemics on the structure of the international system, and their ability to intensify some essential - economic, social, and political - factors that contribute to international system change. International power balances before the outbreak of the pandemic indicate the beginning of change of the international system, as if it has been moving towards multipolarity, particularly with many rising powers, such as China, Russia and the European Union, whose international interests challenge those of the US, especially as the latter persistently impedes any rise of rival powers in the foreseeable future.