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The struggle for political legitimacy has been central to political polarization in Egypt since the 2013 coup. Given the regime's pronounced authoritarian features, the traditional form of legal electoral legitimacy proved insufficient and ineffective. As a result, the regime adopted alternative strategies to reinforce its political legitimacy. Drawing on theories of political legitimacy and literature on citizenship in authoritarian regimes, this study explores the measures and practices implemented by the July 2013 regime to achieve legitimacy across its three dimensions: the system's effectiveness and competence, citizens' beliefs in its legitimacy, and their behaviours that signal recognition.

This paper examines the 2012 General National Congress (GNC) elections in Libya, analyzing their implications and the interpretations that framed them as a victory for the liberal bloc (the National Forces Alliance) over the Islamist faction (the Justice and Construction Party and its allies). The paper reveals that this interpretation lacks accuracy, highlighting that a significant number of winning independent candidates were affiliated with Islamist movements. It also argues that Islamists later succeeded in consolidating their control within the GNC, leveraging their alliances to pass laws that excluded their political opponents. These elections marked a turning point in Libya after the overthrow of Gaddafi, representing the country's first democratic experiment in building a new political system despite the challenges inherited from the previous era. The paper examines the electoral system, key competitors, election results, and internal conflicts within the GNC, concluding that Islamist dominance after 2012 challenges the idea of a liberal victory.

This study examines the ability of network technology to challenge despotism regimes. It thus applies two theoretical approaches. The first is the "Prisoner's dilemma" and the "despot/jailer's dilemma" and the second is the "case study", which studies a number of cases of "network technology", whether used by protest groups or by authoritarian regimes, to determine the extent (and direction) of their impact in practice. The study concludes that network technology — through challenging the logic of the "prisoner's dilemma" and reversing it to become the "jailer's dilemma" — can, theoretically, pose an element of weakness for despotism regimes. However, in reality, network technology can be used by these regimes with the same effectiveness, to respond to mass protests supported by technology. This indicates that network technology can be seen as a neutralizing factor, the impact of which should be studied relative to the impact of other factors.

Scholarship explains impediments to democratic transition in Middle Eastern countries as forms of neopatrimonialism - a combination of patrimonial tradition and cosmetic electoral procedures. However, this approach conflates two spheres of governance: firstly, the government as a sphere of appointed or elected politicians, secondly, the state's bureaucracy as a sphere of administrative staff necessary for the government to execute its planned actions. The impediments Hamas governments (2006-2007) faced highlight the difference between the two spheres. Accordingly, I conceptually differentiate between two types of government: government in office and government in power. While the Hamas government was supposed to rule, the administrative personnel refused to comply. Thus, the elected government in office faced local-institutional and external constraints which prevented its functioning, and provoked power struggles that led to internecine war and the collapse of the electoral democracy.

​عنوان الكتاب الأول بلغته الأصلية: The End of American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: نهاية النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: أميتاف أشاريا Amitav Acharya. دار النشر: Polity. سنة النشر: 2018. عدد الصفحات: 138. عنوان الكتاب الثاني بلغته الأصلية: Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: اللفياثان الليبرالي: أصول وأزمة وتحول النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: جون إكنبري Gilford John Ikenberry. دار النشر: Princeton University Press. سنة النشر: 2011. عدد الصفحات: 372.

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.

The paper investigates and analyzes the regional and international interactions with the conflict in Libya, focusing on the period following the December 2015 political agreement in Skhirat, Morocco. The paper argues that this agreement is the result of a limited consensus among domestic and regional forces. These forces have moulded their foreign policies, over the course of the conflict, based on a balance between concerns over the political and economic effects of the Libyan democratic transition and their interests and ambitions for greater control and influence. The conflict of interests between the external forces was a substantial factor along with other internal determinants that have contributed to obstructing the democratic transition process. Therefore, this paper explores a series of research questions, mainly focusing on the role and behavior of the influential external forces in Libya's domestic politics.

Consociationalism is a system of government recommended for ‘divided societies’. Starting with a discussion of its theoretical components and criticisms it has received, this article addresses how consociationalism has been implemented in in post - 2003 Iraq. The article asks whether the Iraqi constitution and institutions formed by it represented a successful case of consociationalism. Key consociational mechanisms such as an electoral system based on proportional representation, governments based on big multi - party coalitions and a federal and decentralized governance were adopted. However, this model was not entirely consociational as some practices that are common in the majoritarian government have also been used. In fact, divisions between majoritarian and consociational perspectives have polarized, and sometimes paralyzed, the political process. In light of this, the article discusses the sustainability of the current model and its likely future trajectories.

​Title: Legislative and Presidential Elections in Tunisia 2019: Politics, Electoral Behaviors and Elite Activism. Editor: Mehdi Mabrouk. Publisher: Doha/Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. Year of Publication: 2022. Page Count: 624 pages.

This study investigates the role of the police apparatus in Egypt during the 2011 revolution and the subsequent counter-revolution following the 2013 coup. It begins by examining the relationships between the Military Council, President Mohamed Morsi, and the police apparatus. The study then explores how the Ministry of Interior and its security agencies reverted to their previous repressive practices, including extrajudicial killings and torture. The research highlights that the security apparatus remained fragmented, marked by overlapping authorities and a focus on resource competition rather than coordination. However, the existential threat posed by the 2011 revolution compelled the apparatus to unify against the tangible threat of popular unrest. Following 2013 , the military, security and intelligence agencies furthered the suppression of opposition in various forms, largely evading accountability.