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The Tunisian Tamarod (Rebellion) Movement replicated the experience of the Egyptian movement of the same name after the latter’s success in changing the nation’s head of state. The study analyzes the factors that led to the emergence of the Tunisian Tamarod Movement, such as the difficulties facing the transitional process, the slow pace of reforms, and the failure to achieve the goals of the revolution. This long list of grievances ranges from the failure to create jobs and provide justice for victims of injustice, to the continuation of widespread poverty and unemployment in the cities, and the problematic struggle for influence instead of power sharing leading to polarization not only between al-Nahda Party and the Nidaa Tounes Movement, but also between the ruling coalition and the opposition. The study explores the most important commonalities and differences between the Egyptian Tamarod Movement and the Tunisian Tamarod Movement, wondering whether the latter can change from a protest phenomenon to a force for change, and what its future holds in light of the new developments in the urban and political scene in Tunisia today.

The Gulf Crises and Blockade of Qatar: Economic, Legal and Political Perspective

This article draws from structurationist and symbolic interactionist sociology, seeking to build a bridge between the realist–liberal and rationalist–reflectivist debates in the field of international relations. In doing so, it argues against the neorealist claim that self-help is given by anarchic structure exogenously to process. It further argues that self-help and power politics do not follow either logically or causally from the anarchic structure of the international system, but are generated by process rather than by structure. There is no logic of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one particular structure of identities and interests rather than another. Self-help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy – anarchy is what states make of it. The article explores three ways in which identities and interests are transformed under anarchy: by the institution of sovereignty, by an evolution of cooperation, and by intentional efforts to transform egoistic identities into collective identities.

The purpose of this paper is to study the Algerian experience with the Arab spring by identifying the nature of the protests movements in Algeria, to search the adaptation mechanisms of the Algerian political regime with the protest act and to answer the question: why the change in Algeria is so hard to happen? Next, this paper will expose a range of the most important political bets to understand better the Algerian exception by searching the roots of the crisis which has been overcomed in searching a radical and real reform. Finally, this paper will be concluded by addressing the prospects of political, institutional and economical changes and by exposing a future scenarios of the hard transition in light of internal and external challenges.

This study aims to deconstruct the Algerian security approach towards the Sahara and Sahel region in Africa which is a concern that currently exemplifies a corne stone in its foreign policy, because of its considerable importance to Algeria’s security, as well as to its national interests. Algeria insists on maintaining an autonomous approach in engineering its security strategy in the region while remaining in cooperation with others. By identifying Algeria’s contribution to security arrangements in Africa, the study provides practical examples that reflect Algeria’s security vision on both: the regional and the continental fronts. This study aims to work as a base for future evaluation of Algeria’s contribution to building African security while preserving autonomy.

​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.

An analysis of the results of the 19th Israeli Knesset elections, held in January 2013, indicates a continuation of the political and social changes currently underway in Israeli politics, such as the decline of the major parties and the continuation of traditional voting patterns in Israel. On the other hand, new transformations have been noted, most importantly the dominance of the right on the Israeli political scene. The elections showed the lack of an alternative to the Likud Party. For the first time there was no other party to compete with it to form the government. This came in the context of the increasing strength of the new right in Israel and the decline in the camp of the leftist parties. The election results also showed for the first time the preponderance of the socio-economic factor in determining how to vote, whereas previously the political-security factor had been dominant in determining electoral behavior. This change led the Israeli middle classes to strongly back the Yesh Atid party, which placed the interests of the middle class at the center of its social discourse. Overall, the study makes clear that the analytic of left and right is inadequate for understanding voting patterns in Israeli elections.

Egypt’s soft power is one of the strongest cards and tools of Egyptian power in the region. This study aims at highlighting the ebb and flow of Egypt’s soft power since the end of World War II, if not before. It explores its sources and forms, how it was employed to fulfill national and nationalistic interests as well as the factors and reasons that led to its decline in the Arab world and the region. The study also focuses on the repercussions of this decline on Egypt’s future power and its situation. The study states several factors or variables that must be taken into account to revive Egypt’s soft power which must include political reform, building a democratic state and reshaping and rehabilitating Egypt’s human resources and developing their skills. The study states that the most needed factor to reignite Egypt’s soft power revolves around giving Egypt’s political regime its legitimacy and appeal back.

​​ Original title: Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents.

This article addresses an epistemological question related to the methodological impasse in political science through a reading of selected conceptual orientations in Gregory Bateson's thought. It advances the hypothesis that methodological difficulty does not primarily stem from analytical tools as such, but rather from the underlying frameworks through which political action is understood. Drawing on an analytical-interpretive approach, the article examines concepts such as "dysfunction as a patterned regularity", the "double bind", and "second-order learning", with the aim of questioning linear modes of explanation in political analysis and approaching politics as a network of interrelated relations and paradoxical repetitions. The discussion also engages, comparatively, with selected contributions by Niklas Luhmann, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu, in order to highlight shifts in the production of meaning in analyses of power and to delineate the limits of dominant approaches. The article concludes that a Batesonian perspective offers epistemological possibilities for understanding political complexity by foregrounding context, relational dynamics, and patterned dysfunction, beyond models based on linear causality and predictive techniques.