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This study focuses on the legal status of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence (PDI) issued in 1988 by the Palestinian National Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in light of the Palestinian Constitutional Court 2018 decision, which granted the declaration a "supra-constitutional" status—placing it above the Basic Law issued by the Palestinian Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The authors characterize the legal nature of the PDI as a "Declaration of Rights" and argue that the Court, in issuing its decision, overstepped its interpretive power, deeming the decision flawed due to the political considerations behind it, aiming at enhancing the legitimacy of the PA by invoking the symbolic legitimacy of the PLO. The study comparatively showcases experiences from the United States, France, Egypt, and Algeria, revealing that none of these jurisdictions have granted Declarations of Rights a status superior to that of the constitution. The authors conclude that the Court's decision was unsound and that the PDI should be treated as a reference constitutional document, but not one that supersedes the Basic Law.

This study provides a discussion and analysis of the circumstances that led to the military occupation of the core of the state and government in contemporary Algeria, and the ramifications for the process of building political and legal institutions, and the democratic transition experience. The study employs the concepts of populism and neopatrimonialism to paint a picture of the path taken by the government in Algeria since independence. Populism describes the ideology that sanctified the one-party state and revolutionary legitimacy, while neopatrimonialism is the resulting shape taken by the exercise of political power. Framing these two concepts within their historical context provides an understanding of the circumstances of the army's seizure of power and its identification with the state. It clarifies the reasons for its refusal to redistribute power within the society after the establishment of political pluralism in the 1989 Constitution.

The Iranian political regime represented by the ruling establishment decided to sign the Geneva Interim Agreement or the Joint Plan of Action in order to renew its legitimacy domestically. The agreement was signed in response to the challenges imposed by geopolitics, especially those related to the repercussions of the Arab Spring, in addition to the Syrian war and its ramifications. In this context, the ruling establishment goes past the Supreme Guide to the president then to the parliament, and past the executive institutions like the Foreign Ministry, the intelligence and the military institution represented by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This study explores the relationship and reciprocal influence between the political authority in Iran, led by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the religious authority in Najaf, led by the Grand Ayatollah and marja', Ali al-Sistani. Rather than focusing exclusively on jurisprudential/ideological doctrines, the paper approaches the subject from a perspective that emphasizes the interactive relationship between the structure and the agency. It suggests that the emergence of the Islamic regime in Iran, based on the principle of Willayat Al-Faqih, had a significant impact on reshaping power relations in the Shi'i theological space and the response of Shi'i religious actors. At the same time, the practices adopted by al-Sistani in Iraq after 2003 , the context he was responding to, and the emergence of the Marji ʿ yya as an extraconstitutional actor, allowed for the formation of an alternative transitional model, which I term a "neo-traditional authority". The study argues for an alternative to two theses: first, the potential decline of the traditional Marji ʿ yya due to the dominance of the Willayat Al-Faqih in Iran, put forward in particular by Mehdi Khalaji, and second, the superiority and continuity of the traditional Marji ʿ yya due to its depoliticization, contended by Linda Wallbridge. The paper also maintains that there is an interpretive framework that meets the two theses in the middle, represented by the rise of the neo-traditional Marji ʿ yya and the possibility it will emerge as an alternative model in the future.

This article traces the different paths taken by constructivism in International Relations, from its emergence as a critical social theory in the 1980 s, in response to the third debate between positivist rationalists and post-positivist reflectivists, to Alexander Wendt's project to seize a middle ground and to bridge the rationalist–reflectivist epistemological gap. The article, then, examines the intra-debates among conventional and critical constructivists on Went's project, as well as the rise of the new constructivism after Wendt left the constructivist research program. The article explores the Wendtian project's epistemological tensions and demonstrates how such tensions led to a plurality within constructivism: modernist conventional and postmodernist critical (reflectivist). It highlights that Wendt's leaving constructivism and his shift to a quantum approach have not caused constructivism to decline, but instead, it continued to thrive through the efforts of a new generation of constructivists. The article argues that three main developments in International Relations over the past twenty years have contributed to its ongoing thriving: the decline of epistemological polarization among IR theories; the rise of critical realism as a philosophy of science in International Relations, and the emergence of analytical eclecticism.

The study focuses on civil-military relations in Egypt since 2013 , examining measures the regime employs to achieve three objectives: controlling the military to prevent coups, thwarting political mobilization that could lead to popular uprisings akin to the January Revolution, and securing ongoing external support. The study concludes that these measures have brought about fundamental changes. Firstly, they have restructured the political regime towards a personalist regime led by one man, a close-knit elite, and loyalists. Secondly, they have threatened military unity with the emergence of parallel armed entities, notably Sinai's tribal union. Thirdly, they have undermined state sovereignty through expanding debts, selling state assets, and making other concessions to foreign backers. The analysis reveals that concessions granted to the military to ensure loyalty have also strengthened its independence, potentially paving the way for various scenarios if the presidential office becomes vacant or public discontent erupts due to mismanagement of state affairs.

​This article seeks to understand the secession of Somaliland by exploring its historical, political and legal motives and rationales. It suggests that the secession is a notable outcome of the structural, political and cultural factors surrounding the emergence and unification of the Somali state post-independence. The article argues that the historical perspective offers a better understanding of not only the secession of Somaliland, but also why Somalia is a textbook case for the failure of the nation-state. The article starts with a general background on the modern socio-historical history of the Somali peninsula and analyses four key moments, starting from the history of the formation of the modern state in British and Italian Somaliland, leading to the establishment of Somalia as a unified nation-state. Accordingly, the article explains the rationale behind the secession of Somaliland from Somalia in 1991, as well as the obstacles to this secession, and concludes with an evaluation of the attitude and approaches of the international community.

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.

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.

The causal link between economic and political freedom is a complex and interesting debate in the domain of social sciences. To enrich the academic debate on this issue, we have examined the Arab context based on econometric instruments, especially the test of causality. Based on the results of the study, the interactions between economic and political freedom in the Arab world appear to be generally in line with the thesis strongly defended by liberal thinkers, in particular Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek, that there is a unilinear causality in which the first variable leads to the second. This result may seem self-evident in a transformed Arab context, but the reality seems to be more complex. Economic freedom indeed guarantees freedom, the constructing of the national identity and the conditions necessary to ensure individual well-being. However, such freedom is not understood in isolation from political freedom and its social context interactions and cultural structures, in contrast with restricted collective consciousness.