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This report highlights some of the major milestones of the Arab democratic transition. The countries covered include Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Book Title: Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition Under Authoritarianism in Egypt [English]

​This report highlights some of the major milestones of the Arab democratic transition. The countries covered include Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

This study examines the emergence of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in the Arab Gulf countries, focusing on the dynamics that accompanied this development in the 1950 s and 1960 s. Fatah emerged in a Gulf context, through which it was able to establish recruitment networks and build an active Palestinian elite base, utilizing institutional margins, forming a type of negotiated legitimacy that allowed Fatah to expand within Gulf administrative structures and provide social and educational services to Palestinian communities. The study draws on a biographical and archival research to provide an analytical reading of the formation of the Palestinian political space in the Gulf as a foundational ground for the Palestinian liberation project.

عنوان الكتاب: الردود العسكرية على الانتفاضات العربية ومستقبل العلاقات المدنية - العسكرية في الشرق الأوسط: تحليل من مصر وتونس وليبيا وسورية. المؤلف: ويليام س. تايلور. سنة النشر: 2014 . الناشر: .Palgrave Macmillan US عدد الصفحات: 252 صفحة.

This study reviews the various Syrian military groups currently active against the Syrian regime, and discusses the circumstances that led to their formation as well as their intellectual and political orientations, links, and funders. The study sees that in general these groups can be divided into two main currents: one with a secular orientation and one with an Islamist orientation. It argues that these military groups were formed spontaneously, in response to the violence of the regime, rather than as an intentional political act. In addition, uneducated sectors were confronted with the task of forming most of the leaderships of these military groups and actually leading them, which helped make their visions lack clarity. This study is a contribution toward filling the gap in Arab academic research on armed Syrian opposition forces.

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 testimony provides a qualitative understanding of the diversity of Kurdish positions on the Syrian revolution, and the evolution of Kurdish attitudes over the course of the revolution. The position of the Kurds, like all Syrians, was never homogenous. Within this context, the writer distinguishes three declared positions (pro-revolution, pro-regime, and observer), as well as another, hesitant position that interacts with the situation and waits. The writer concludes that Syrian Kurdish communities are now witnessing a clear distinction between two main political positions. The first is represented by the Kurdish National Council, which works within the Syrian opposition institutions. The second position is represented by the Democratic Union Party, and the parties in its orbit. This trend is a regional project that does not intersect with the Syrian national project.

This study explores the origins of Qatari-US relations, the foundations on which they are based, and the rules that govern them. It begins by examining relations between the two countries from the 1970s up until the Trump era. The paper finds that Qatar's need for US security assurances did not prevent it from adopting independent policies that occasionally contradicted US strategy. Accordingly, the Qatari-US relations have been upended, and exposed to crises due to diverging interests, concerns and challenges. While Qatar has embraced a foreign policy independent of Washington, it has also tried not to alienate it and has established itself as an asset for the US, both in terms of the military facilities it provides and the unique role it plays through maintaining ties with parties that the US cannot communicate with directly. Mutual dependency has enabled Qatari-US relations to overcome all the challenges they have faced over the past three decades, including those that emerged under the Trump administration.

With the expansion of donor entities and the growth of their various activities, the questions about foreign aid and the strategic objectives behind it have become essential. This paper asks the following questions: Why do donor entities provide aid to poor countries? What are the most important objectives of these donors? Are humanitarian motives the main factor determining the conduct of donors? Theoretical and empirical studies have addressed these questions in depth from various theoretical backgrounds looking at many areas of the world, but there remains no agreement regarding the most important motives and objectives governing the conduct of donor countries in providing aid to poor countries. This paper seeks to answer these questions by reviewing, analyzing, and adapting the most important studies in international development and international relations to highlight the most important features of the global debate on this issue.