Latest Articles

Milestones in Democratic Transition in the Arab World

​In this section you will find the most important documents on democratic change in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish documents highlighting the political movement in Tunisia demanding democracy and look at the main political changes in Sudan, Iraq and Jordan in March and April 2022.

​The constructivist approach provides several perspectives to study sports as a complex social phenomenon. Beginning with the conditions of modernity, which is usually defined as a Western product, and its dominance over narratives surrounding the emergence and rationalisation of sports, the West has traditionally defined the region and history of sports. While recognising Western contributions to modernisation, this paper addresses the need to consider the influence of other cultures and civilizations in the genesis of modernity through knowledge, science, and innovation. In the West itself, differences prevail regarding the concepts of the body (and the soul in the spiritual and religious sense) and productivity, and how to express them in sporting traditions. Any kind of general assessment of sporting culture and practice in Western Europe and beyond is thus no easy task. This short introduction provides an overview of the richness and limitations of constructivist epistemology as an entry point to studying sports. It discusses the concepts of pluralism and otherness in sports studies, applying discourse analysis to the study of sports in different cultural and linguistic traditions, and engages in criticism regarding its potential relativity.

This paper examines the war that broke out in Sudan on April 15 , 2023 , through a comprehensive contextual lens that resists fragmenting its causes and obscuring the wider panorama. It argues that the war must be understood as part of an extended historical trajectory - spanning five centuries - of nation-building and state-building. The study analyzes the theoretical concepts of nation and state building, especially in the African context, and explores their practical manifestations in Sudan. It also investigates how the absence of prioritization by post-independence elites accelerated the slide into conflict. Using historical and political analysis, the paper concludes that, with the high human cost of the war, its resolution depends upon a broad-based national consensus.

The success and widespread deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) have raised awareness of the technology's economic, social, and political consequences. Each new step in the development and application of AI is accompanied by speculations about a supposedly imminent but largely fictional artificial general intelligence (AGI) with (super-)human capacities, as seen in the unfolding discourse about capabilities and impact of large language models (LLMs) in the wake of ChatGPT. These far- reaching expectations lead to a discussion on the societal and political impact of AI that is largely dominated by unfocused fears and enthusiasms. In contrast, this article provides a framework for a more focused and productive analysis and discussion of AI's likely impact on one specific social field: democracy. First, it is necessary to be clear about the workings of AI. This means differentiating between what is at present a largely imaginary AGI and narrow artificial intelligence focused on solving specific tasks. This distinction allows for a critical discussion of how AI affects different aspects of democracy, including its effects on the conditions of self-rule and people's opportunities to exercise it, equality, the institution of elections, and competition between democratic and autocratic systems of government. This article shows that the consequences of today's AI are more specific for democracy than broad speculation about AGI capabilities implies. Focusing on these specific aspects will account for actual threats and opportunities and thus allow for better monitoring of AI's impact on democracy in an interdisciplinary effort by computer and social scientists.

Academic studies on Somalia lack focus on analyzing the gaps and problems facing the state-building project. Drawing on an in-depth literature review of post-war and conflict state-building frameworks and models, this study highlights the structural gaps that continue to hinder Somalia's state-building project by seeking to identify and describe them, in addition to discussing their root causes and impacts on the future of the state-building project. The study concludes that these gaps can be summarized into three categories: 1 -Political: As a result of the problematic aspects of both the tribal quota system 4. 5 and the federal system, 2 -Social: represented in the weakened role of civil society in the process of state-building, and 3 -Economic: driven by the controversial business interests of influential businessmen, and the impact of foreign assistance on economic recovery. Thus, the success of the state-building project in Somalia depends on all relevant actors' abilities to deal with these structural gaps.

This presentation reviews the development of public administration research in the Arab world and its relationship to public policies, with a focus on research that relied on studying the development of the field in the US experience. It suggests that the political, economic and social environment, as well as values remain essential determinants of academic and practical work in public administration, and that the pursuit of global frameworks and models remains subject to an understanding of environmental factors. The same applies to the field of public policy. Siyasat Arabiya thus devoted this special issue to shed light on the field of public administration and public policies in the Arab world. It presented comparative perspectives of the status of public administration research and public policies, with a view to asking questions, inviting researchers and those interested in public administration in the Arab region to consider issues and research methodologies in matters of public affairs, and calling for the development of a research and teaching agenda that engages with points of intellectual and methodological discord that characterize the field in the West.

This study attempts to understand the concept of the "deep state" given its increasing use in political literature and analysis. This happens especially in comparative studies and, specifically, when multiple political systems are addressed. Through an analysis of the literature in which the term is used, it is clear that the concept of the "deep state" is ambiguously understood and applied. This study is based on a critical view of the concept. It assumes that the vagueness of its definition is tinged with secrecy. Its fragmented usage in a variety of political systems (democratic, semi-democratic and authoritarian), render it an analytical tool that is not useful nor capable to expand knowledge of comparative political science. In lieu of this hypothesis, the study reveals discrepancies in the usage of the concept of "deep state", in an attempt to refine the concept.

This study examines the role played by the youth of Morocco, turning this generational group into a political and social force capable of proposing alternative solutions to Morocco's political impasse, introducing dynamism and alternatives along the path to democracy. The question which frames this study is: to what extend did Moroccan youth contribute to the reshaping political culture in the country? How do Moroccan youth conceptualize the transition to democracy, and what happened to their demands? The author adopts a sociological definition of a "generation," meaning that it does not define a generational cohort as a homogenized social group but rather represents a set of people with a shared set of anxieties surrounding their position in relation to other (previous) generations.

This paper applies the categorization of welfare state systems set out by Esping-Andersen in 1990 to the welfare state in Egypt. It analyzes the relationships between state, market, and society over the 10 years from 1995 to 2005, which were marked by a shift to a market economy and a confrontation with the historical legacy of the state’s social role. The best description for the current welfare state in Egypt is “conservative/unorganized” in that social security entitlements are limited to work in the formal sector, which makes the family, religious institutions, and patronage networks take on important roles in meeting the social needs of the large informal sector. Additionally, the study proposes some modifications to the Esping-Andersen categorization with the aim of understanding welfare programs in developing countries. When analyzing welfare systems in general, particularly in the developing countries, it is necessary to take into account methodologically aspects of mismanagement, considerations of quality, the gap between stated aims and their implementation, the disparity resulting from differences between countryside and city and between the sexes, and the role of the informal sector.