Latest Articles

Although the academic study of International Relations (IR) in the Arab world has been ongoing for almost seventy years, there remains a dearth of information regarding its origins that can be attributed, in part, to a lack of research on the state of the field. The present study seeks to address this gap by conducting an examination of the state of IR in the Arab World over the course of a century. Additionally, this study proposes a novel method for evaluating the current state of the field and assessing its scientific output. To achieve these objectives, the study applies sociological generational analysis to three generations of Arab IR scholars, then examines their contributions to four key aspects of the field: the scientific production cycle, the formation of the scientific community, the development of its institutional structure, and relative autonomy from political science.

​Through literature reviews (mainly in English and German), this review sheds light on the analytical approaches prevalent in the study of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and their outcomes before and after the Arab revolutions, and explores previous and current theoretical reflections on them. Using all of this, the study attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the various issues in the region. The first part presents the various analytical concepts and their results before the revolutions, and the second part provides an overview of the analyzes of the Arab revolutions. The third part reviews the theoretical reflections on the previous analytical approaches. Finally, the researcher makes some concluding observations.

العقلاني. ومثاليًا، يتمتع الناس بدرجة معينة من الاختيار فيما يتعلق بالمنطق الذي يريدون استخدامه لتحقيق أهدافهم بأفضل طريقة ولتحقيق مصالحهم". Gero Erdmann & Ulf Engel, "Neopatrimonialism Revisited: Beyond a Catch- All Concept," GIGA Working Paper , no. 16 (2006), pp. 18-19. 32 Peter Pawelka, "Der Orientalische Staat im 21. Jahrhundert: Zur Reinkarnation des vormodernen Staates in einer globalisierten Welt," in: Peter Pawelka (ed.), Der Staat im Vorderen Orient: Konstruktion und Legitimation politischer Herrschaft (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008), pp. 42-38; B rownlee, p p. 35-36 ; Schlumberger, Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt , pp. 110-116. 33 Hazim Beblawi, "The Rentier State in the Arab World," in: Hazim Beblawi & Giacomo Luciani (eds.), The Rentier State (London/ New York/ Sydney: Groom Helm, 1987), p. 62; Michael L. Ross, "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" World Politics , vol. 53, no. 3 (April 2001), pp. 356-357; Rolf Schwarz, "The Political Economy of State-Formation in the Arab Middle East: Rentier States, Economic Reform, and Democratization," Review of International Political Economy , vol. 15, no. 4 (October 2008), pp. 599-600; Schlumberger, Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt , pp. 116-132. 34 Schlumberger, Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt , pp. 123-129.

This study argues that relying on the United States for of security and defense has led to the neglect of the Arab Gulf states to varying degrees. These countries failed to build an independent regional security capacity or develop broad security relations with third parties besides the United States. Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009-2016, before Donald Trump replaced him, questioning the regional balance of power, this reliance has destabilized the most stable part of the Arab world. This study examines the implications of the unprecedented regional reality regarding the strategic and security relations between the United States and the Gulf in the context of the divergent views of Washington and its local partners on regional security management methods, in particular the role of the GCC in managing peace and security.

This study examines how the 2023 Gaza War reshaped maritime security dynamics and geopolitical rivalry in the Red Sea, particularly in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, through a complex interplay between great powers and non-state actors. It demonstrates that the Houthi (Ansar Allah) attacks on commercial vessels –framed as support for Gaza – transformed the strait into a global flashpoint that exposed the vulnerability of international supply chains. The study also shows how these developments reactivated U.S.–China rivalry in the Red Sea: the United States adopted a military–security approach in support of Israel's war on Gaza and to reaffirm its role as guarantor of the maritime commons, while China favored a cautious strategy centered on economic influence, calculated non-involvement in military operations, and securing the passage of its vessels through discreet diplomatic channels. The study concludes that the Red Sea has become a space where U.S. naval dominance intersects with China's rising economic power, and where non-state actors increasingly shape regional and global security.

This article looks at Algeria's security policy in general and its security doctrine in particular, analysing its changes and dilemmas in a turbulent regional environment and in the context of an internal Hirak. It argues that these doctrines have undergone minor changes to meet regional security needs, which precludes fundamental change at this stage. It also argues that the tension between the moral-normative imperative and the security imperative, on the one hand, and the principle of dual non-interference (political and military), on the other, constitute two major dilemmas confronting Algerian politics and security doctrine. Starting from these two elements, the article, after setting out my concept of the subject, examines the formation and nature of Algerian politics, ideology, and transformations. It then looks at the constitutional decision on the participation of Algerian armed forces in international peacekeeping operations, analysing their context (domestic and foreign), their motives and justifications, and the reservations they face. Finally, it analyses Algeria's regional security strategy as an alternative to intervention. The article comes to three main conclusions. First, there is a limited adjustment to the issue of external interference depending on the needs of the security interest. Second, the end of the absolute refusal to use armed forces outside the borders. Third, it is likely that the tension between moral-normative and security considerations will escalate if the unrest continues within its geographical boundaries.

This study traces the evolution and divergence of state–society relations in the Middle East and North Africa through the lens of social pacts and welfare regimes. It asks how governments across the region have responded to popular mobilization during and after the Arab uprisings, and what these responses reveal about the nature of the Arab state – or, more accurately, Arab states – in the region. By situating post-uprising developments within longer post-independence trajectories, the study traces sharply divergent paths since 2010. These varied responses underscore the absence of a single "Arab state" model. Instead, welfare regimes and social pacts across different types of political economies in the region reflect at least three distinct models of Arab statehood. In the oil-rich Gulf monarchies, fiscal surpluses sustain generous welfare systems and ambitious development strategies, while rulers cautiously promote expanded roles for the private sector under tight control. In middle-income states, initial post-uprising concessions, such as expanded social spending and employment, quickly gave way to austerity, debt crises, targeted assistance, and rising repression, resulting in declining welfare provision and shrinking opportunities for the middle class. In low-income and conflict-affected countries, protracted wars and state fragmentation have devastated welfare infrastructures, leaving humanitarian actors to fill governance vacuums.

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.

​It was mostly British colonisers who came to consolidate the political, economic and military interests of the motherland and did what they used to do: play football. Apart from spending their time, football worked as a colonial instrument both "civilising" and "disciplining" the colonised populations. The first clubs in North Africa and the Levant restricted membership for non-Westerners and non-whites, but soon football also became a transnational transmitter of independence movements, the stadiums becoming important social spaces on the local and national levels. Such was the emancipatory force of football that it has been preserved across the region ever since the colonial era, prominent again in the Arab Uprisings. However, the massive wealth of the Gulf States and their decision to invest in football's soft power has changed the equation. The article thus describes emancipatory and counter-emancipatory trends in MENA football history from a longue durée perspective.

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.