Latest Articles

Politicians are increasingly adopting populist rhetoric that is appealing to people's emotions and biases rather than their rational judgments. This rhetoric includes claims of representing the people (us) as opposed to the establishment and the traditional elite (them). Anti-elitist populism manifests in its opposition to facts, with populists becoming the main players who distort facts and spread disinformation. Therefore, populism and disinformation reinforce one other, creating a cycle of manipulation that undermines democracy. By conducting a comparative qualitative analysis of the speeches of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Egypt and Kais Saied in Tunisia, this study argues that there are four tactics, rely on disinformation, used by authoritarian populists to legitimize the obstruction of constitutional and institutional constraints and suppress the opposition: (1) constructing the people by creating the enemy; (2) attacking the media and democratic institutions; (3) creating illusion by amplifying achievements; and (4) employing conspiracy theory and misinformation to justify failure at fulfilling promises.

This study examines the constitutional management for political transition in Algeria following the popular movement of February 2019. After setting out the basic tenets of Transitional Constitutionalism, the study investigates the extent to which peaceful political change can be achieved through constitutional mechanisms or arrangements derived from inherited texts. In contrast to similar Arab cases, the Algerian experience was characterized by the adoption of a political plan to manage the transitional phase, based on constitutional measures derived from the texts in force. But it was not convincing for a large segment of the popular movement, who believed that these arrangements would restrict the path of change to reproduce the existing system at the expense of achieving peaceful political change. In this sense, managing the transitional political phase according to the applicable constitutional texts did not set a precedent. Rather, in Algeria, a kind of precedent was set in the restriction of the concept of constitutional solution to the literal requirements of the functional constitutional text, without partial constitutional amendments, nor a fundamental revision of the inherited legislative structure.

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.

This study reassesses the experience of political openness in Algeria within the analytical and explanatory categories of political economy. It is built on the premise that the transition from a totalitarian authoritarian regime to a democratic one presupposes the transition from a rentier economy linked to the external market and dominated by rentier groups, to a productive economy based on the national bourgeoisie exploitation of local labour to create wealth. The study argues that the experience of democratic transition in Algeria faltered due to the failure of the rentier groups to undergo capitalist transformation that could have allowed the emergence of the two main sides of the democratic equation: the bourgeoisie and the working class. The political elites that control the rentier economy were willing to accept political but not economic reforms that could have led to a reconsideration of the hegemonic relations within society and liberated it from the grip of power. In this regard, the failure of the economic reforms introduced by the Hamrouche government (1989 - 1991) was a prelude to the disruption of the democratic transition and prevention of the development of a civil society capable of gaining its independence from authority and, on the other hand, the independence of the Algerian state from the global market.

The paper focuses on transnational human rights activism and its efforts to influence the human rights landscape in Egypt. It argues that the global human rights system has provided a space for resisting authoritarianism in Egypt and that its significance has grown amid the widespread restrictions on civil and political rights, as well as the forced or voluntary relocation of many human rights activists and political actors into exile. The paper further reveals that the extent of the Egyptian government’s response to pressures from transnational networks is shaped by domestic, regional, and international conditions and factors—including the impact of counter- discourses and strategies that enable authoritarian regimes to contain and weaken the effects of transnational networks. The paper draws on a diverse set of primary and secondary sources, including publications from international and local human rights organizations, government statements, and media reports, in addition to semi- structured interviews with a group of Egyptian human rights defenders.

​​​​​This study examines the role of civil society organizations in supporting and enhancing youth participation in peacebuilding within the current peace process in Yemen. It investigates how these organizations' programs affect the type and effectiveness of youth participation in the peacebuilding process. The study uses in-depth interviews with representatives of civil society organizations as well as youth activists who participate in the peacebuilding programs. The results demonstrate that while organizations play an important role in supporting youth participation in peacebuilding, their programs do not necessarily lead to substantive and effective participation for youth either in the negotiation process or decision-making. Furthermore, the study highlights the differences between youth and civil society organizations regarding the peace process definition, the expected roles of actors involved, and the program outcomes. Additionally, it identifies several factors that influence the effectiveness of programs, including the expected role of the United Nations vs. reality, the coordination process between civil society organizations and alliances, the impact of funding, and challenges posed by the conflict environment in Yemen and its effects on program implementation and youth participation. Overall, this study provides a detailed analysis of the insights, challenges, and opportunities for youth engagement in the peacebuilding process through civil society in Yemen, offering observations and results that can be applicable and useful in other conflict contexts.

​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.

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 paper offers insights into the Crisis of Liberal International Order by combining Ibn Khaldun's theory of change with scholarship on liberalism and race. We argue that the crisis emerges from the incongruence of two features of liberal order: a binding feature (or 'assabiyya) of white supremacy and liberalism's principles of equality. The crisis is an outcome of a normative political order that can no longer balance a material and discursive reality of racialised hierarchy with ideals of equality. The crisis cannot be reduced to bad leadership or a technical failure to enact liberal values. Instead, attempts to think beyond the crisis must acknowledge the incongruence between white supremacy and liberal equality. Through this diagnosis, we gesture towards the constructive use of "non-Western" theory in the discipline of International Relations.

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.