Latest Articles

This study explores the perceptions of Britain's main political parties towards the Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas throughout the period between 2003 and 2016. It explores also the extent of variation between the major political parties in the UK towards Hamas. The author argues that the lack of a value-based outlook on the part of the British ruling establishment as well as a lack of respect for the tenets of international law—which enshrines the right to resist occupation—have driven that establishment to embrace the UK's colonial legacy, and to regard their government as the founder and protector of the State of Israel. It is this establishmentarian discourse, argues the author, which drives the criminalization of Hamas within British politics.

Beside the military and external challenges, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are facing serious domestic non-conventional challenges, i.e., the demands of political reform, social mobilization, demographic imbalance, environmental deterioration, resource depletion, the transformation and diversification in post-oil economy, terrorism and radicalization etc. In particular one of these new kinds of threats has started to be significant in the last decade. The massive immigration and demographic imbalance between local citizens and foreign residents in countries like the U.A.E, 10 percent; Qatar, 15 percent. This imbalance and the massive immigration into the GCC countries increased the vulnerability of these states, especially since it relates to other critical security issues such as human security (food security for example, in UAE is an example, the country import almost 95 percent of its food consuming) radicalization, energy security, and domestic unrest especially after 2011.

العقلاني. ومثاليًا، يتمتع الناس بدرجة معينة من الاختيار فيما يتعلق بالمنطق الذي يريدون استخدامه لتحقيق أهدافهم بأفضل طريقة ولتحقيق مصالحهم". Gero Erdmann & Ulf Engel, "Neopatrimonialism Revisited: Beyond a Catch- All Concept," GIGA Working Paper , no. 16 (2006), pp. 18-19. 32 Peter Pawelka, "Der Orientalische Staat im 21. Jahrhundert: Zur Reinkarnation des vormodernen Staates in einer globalisierten Welt," in: Peter Pawelka (ed.), Der Staat im Vorderen Orient: Konstruktion und Legitimation politischer Herrschaft (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008), pp. 42-38; B rownlee, p p. 35-36 ; Schlumberger, Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt , pp. 110-116. 33 Hazim Beblawi, "The Rentier State in the Arab World," in: Hazim Beblawi & Giacomo Luciani (eds.), The Rentier State (London/ New York/ Sydney: Groom Helm, 1987), p. 62; Michael L. Ross, "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" World Politics , vol. 53, no. 3 (April 2001), pp. 356-357; Rolf Schwarz, "The Political Economy of State-Formation in the Arab Middle East: Rentier States, Economic Reform, and Democratization," Review of International Political Economy , vol. 15, no. 4 (October 2008), pp. 599-600; Schlumberger, Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt , pp. 116-132. 34 Schlumberger, Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt , pp. 123-129.

There is no supranational authority that can solve international water disputes; thus, the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (UN Watercourse Convention) may be the answer. However, as is shown in this article, when it comes to the Eastern Nile water dispute, namely between Egypt and Ethiopia, both sides can use different articles of the UN Watercourse Convention to support their legal arguments. As a result, there is little that the UN Watercourse Convention can offer to solve this dispute. This article summarizes the relevant articles of the UN Watercourse Convention and discusses the contentious, historical treaties that allocated the rights to the Nile River water over the past century. The paper also discusses how both Egypt and Ethiopia can use principles from the international water law to support their legal position rendering the dispute difficult to be solved legally. Thus, we turn to a discussion of the current state of the recent initiatives to solve the ongoing water dispute between the riparian countries in the Nile River Basin. The article concludes with the current state of dispute after the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.

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.

Civil society rests on the principle of economic independence from politics, deemed to be a long-standing precondition to limiting the despotism of a political authority and its ability to wreak havoc on society. The paper poses the question of why civil society has thus far failed to materialize in Algeria, despite the existence of political pluralism in the country dating to the 1989 Constitution. The author contends that the persistence of rentierism in the Algerian economy has enabled the country’s government to prevent the rise of a genuine civil society in Algeria, despite the de jure acceptance of political pluralism in the country. The government has been able to use the levers of a rentier economy to subdue the political elites and dominate society, effectively controlling the political fallout of economic liberalization. The paper goes on to survey the political economic context, which led to the failure of a democratic transition in Algeria, by exploring how private capital was unable to echo the catalyzing role played by the European bourgeoisie in the democratization and political modernization of their continent.

According to the World Bank indicators, the Maghreb youth unemployment rate is among the highest in the world. After the Arab Spring uprisings (2011), the youth aspirations and expectations clashed with the economic difficulties and political reality in the Maghreb countries, which are unable to provide employment opportunities and efficient solutions to youth major problems. In the light of this situation, we analyzed (using quantitative methods) the satisfaction degree of young people under the effect of economic challenges and political transformations in the Maghreb region. It is clear from the results that the Maghreb youth adhere more to the economic priority, despite other priorities related to administrative corruption, the lack of public services, the fight against terrorism and insecurity. The second conclusion is that the youth economic expectations create a kind of homogeneity in this region. In all the observed countries, most young people consider the economy as the first priority, as well as the entire population.

Libyan crisis has been scrutinized through many analytical tools in order to understand its dynamics of escalation and ways to de-escalation, however, literature on the topic often focus on purely political and security variables. This study aims at tracing insights the political economy may provide to the crisis in Libya. First, some economic variables that give analytical significance to "Need" and "Greed" understandings has been presented, which confirms that they are not less important as compared to those brought from "Creed" and that a better understanding of the Libyan case as most of internal crises and conflicts requires that light being shed on political, social and economic interpretations alike. The study concludes that political economy understandings could be useful to de-escalation efforts through a package of measures.

Transboundary rivers have been a source of increasing disputes due to growing populations and economies, as well as the consequences of environmental change. With the increase in river flow utilization, concerns about potential violent interstate conflicts have arisen in public debates. However, academic literature argues for more nuanced and evidence-based views of transboundary water conflicts and proposes problem-solving tools based on water diplomacy and cooperation. Using the Eastern Nile conflict as a case study, this paper identifies eight common misconceptions regarding the conflict surrounding the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The paper contextualizes the GERD conflict within the broader transformation of river utilization towards greater competition for water use. The ongoing Eastern Nile conflict goes beyond technical affairs related to the dam operations and involves broader issues of rights to water use, national development, and climate variability and change. It is also embedded in complex regional hydro-politics that involves new actors. Recent academic evidence shows that Eastern Nile riparian countries (Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia) face unique negotiating realities and diverse environmental impacts as a result of the GERD conflict. The Eastern Nile conflict presents an opportunity to facilitate benefit-sharing in the Nile Basin. Water cooperation remains the only realistic option to resolve transboundary water conflicts in the region.

​The study is premised on the assumption that the US-Iranian tensions under the Trump administration represents a new chapter in the crisis in the US-Iranian relationship. This extreme hostility was related to US domestic politics and the bordering on personal rivalry of President Trump with his predecessor, President Barack Obama, in domestic and foreign policy. One of the most important policy manifestations of this administrative divergence concerns the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, signed in 2015. Opposition to the Nuclear Agreement united Gulf players such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, who considered shared hostility towards Iran as a bridge to strengthen their relations with the US on the one hand; while also forming a strong front, in the presence of Israel, to weaken the Iranian regime without necessarily replacing it.