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This article explores what James Rosenau had founded as a post-international politics paradigm. It does so through a comparative reading of the two concepts of the two coexistent systems, state-centic and multicentric, on the one hand; and neo- medievalism on the other. The article aimes at offering some reflections on the essential characteristics that both concepts can contribute to improving our understanding of post-international politics in an era of increasing complexity. The article is divided into two sections. The first section introduces the concept of post-international politics, from Rosenau's perspective, and identifies the most prominent assumptions on which Rosenau called turbulence (another label for the post-international politics paradigm). The second section introduces the concept of neomedievalism, which traces back to Hadley Bull, as an appropriate depiction for a system within which the state's monopoly of violence is constantly declining, especially under the growing influence of private armies/security companies, which are considered a contemporary example of the mercenary armies that characterized the first medieval period.

This book includes a collection of distinguished research contributions in political science and international relations, in addition to the fields of historical studies and anthropology.

This study addresses a longstanding and renewed subject in the case of Sudan: the continual interference of military formations and elites in political authority and the instability of post-independence civil governance. It uses a compound methodology blending a historical reading of political events and developments with a descriptive reading of the present reality, in its domestic and foreign dimensions, and a forecast of Sudan's future in light of the current situation. The study observes that the plurality of regional, ethnic, and military structures, instead of being a constructive and integrating aspect of the Sudanese state and nation, has reflected negatively on the country's unity and its political and security stability. Since independence, these formations have remained in confrontation, whether between one another or among the internal parts and divisions of each. Evidence for this claim is found in Sudan's complex crises, including that of governance, the South, Darfur, the current transitional period, and the struggle for power presently raging between military branches.

The study presents the problems of structural politicization in political studies, and the danger of methodological debates transforming into political confrontations, a situation that has been repeated in the ongoing debate between the advocates and opponents of secularism. The study demonstrated that the necessity of the political dimension, and/or the political dependencies of every "scientific" approach to politics does not necessarily mean acceptance of unrestricted politicization. It is possible to acknowledge the political content of treatment without slipping into politicization. From this standpoint, criticism of underlying or structural politicization, as in Edward Said's criticism of Orientalism and Western Centralism, cannot be compared to the way that Israel's supporters crudely politicize US Middle East studies in their battle to hold it hostage to the interests of Israel and the extreme right. In the same vein, the study critically addresses the opinion that "area studies" in political science is marked by theoretical poverty and academic inferiority. The study itself leans towards the opinion that so called "theoretical studies" are in fact "area studies" that take western countries as the testing ground for political experiences and seek to generalize the results in the form of "theories" that enjoy universal validity.

​يتضمــن هــذا التقريــر توثيقًــا لأهم الوقائــع الفلســطينية والأحداث المرتبطــة بالصــراع العربي - الإسرائيلي في المدة 1 كانون الثاني/ يناير - 28 شباط/ فبراير 2018.

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.

Despite high levels of mass mobilization in the past, Palestinian society today finds itself polarized and demobilized. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has gained control as a governing apparatus and has become increasingly authoritarian in nature. But the PA does not have complete control over the territories. This variation in control allows isolation of the effect of the PA's authoritarian nature on mobilization patterns and social dynamics. The study argues that mobilization has systematically declined in places where the PA has more direct control. Counter-intuitively, political mobilization today is more prevalent in areas under direct Israeli occupation. Findings suggest the PA has a direct role in this dynamic, using selective cooptation and repression. Overall, authoritarian strategies in the Palestinian territories have led to decreased capacity for mobilization.

This study conducts research on the traditional academic methods used in the Arab scholarly community. Specifically, it employs the case of legal science when addressing the following questions: Is the Arab academy in its field suffering from academic dependency? What forms does this take and what are the reasons behind it? Where does reviewing theoretical or conceptual frameworks of legal science fall in this? This study focuses on law as a method of social control in the methodological crisis undergone by the social sciences. This study refers to two crises examined by Arab legal science: identity crisis and functional crisis. These are illustrated by two main indicators: The gap between the quantitative growth of the number of law students and the weak production of legal research knowledge, the gap between the quantitative development of the educational institutions of law and of legal structures.

The post-Cold War environment has produced a world distribution structure different from that of the system prevailing in the 1945-1991 period. Geographical regions of pivotal value have emerged as important arenas of competition among the great powers, each drawing strength from the prominent features of location and resources. Referencing these same features, this study examines the geopolitical importance of Arab and Islamic countries within the international system. It posits a set of factors to inform an understanding of the international system's evolving nature: energy, the distribution of power and hegemonies in the geopolitical spaces of Europe and Asia.

​This paper addresses a theoretical model for the concept of "consociational democracy", beginning with the concept's roots in the Austrian Marxist tradition before describing its elaboration in 1969 by the Dutch-American political scientist Arend Lijphart. Lijphart's work was part of his wider critique of Gabriel Almond's categorization of Western political systems. This study presents a structural criticism of the term "consociational democracy" and its usage, arguing that the practice of "consociational democracy" was born of pragmatic policies before maturing into a theoretical model. It argues that the subsequent contributions of Lijphart were merely an extrapolation from a set of examples without "theory" to underpin it and that "power sharing" does not necessarily lead to democratization. The study thus draws up several theoretical observations that help distinguish "consociationalism" from "consociational democracy". Finally, the paper contrasts the suitability of this theoretical model for both Northern Ireland and Lebanon.