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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, neorealist theory came under severe scrutiny. During its growth stages, the theory encountered unavoidable conceptual and empirical impediments, which cast doubt on its capacity to overcome such hurdles. This was the challenge that neorealist theory faced when the concepts of "anarchy" and "balance" were questioned. In terms of empiricism, the criticism focused on the neorealism inability to represent the new realities of the international system, notably US hegemony. This study evaluates the progressiveness or degenerassive of the neorealism research program in an attempt to assess the theory's progressivism and degenerative by examining the adjustments and improvements made to the ideas of anarchy and balance. It is based on the methodology of the Imre Lakatos Scientific Research Program as an evaluation tool.

​عنوان الكتاب الأول بلغته الأصلية: The End of American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: نهاية النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: أميتاف أشاريا Amitav Acharya. دار النشر: Polity. سنة النشر: 2018. عدد الصفحات: 138. عنوان الكتاب الثاني بلغته الأصلية: Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: اللفياثان الليبرالي: أصول وأزمة وتحول النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: جون إكنبري Gilford John Ikenberry. دار النشر: Princeton University Press. سنة النشر: 2011. عدد الصفحات: 372.

This report documents the most significant Palestinian events and developments related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering the period from September 1 to October 31, 2024.

This paper presents an overview of Arab public opinion towards US policies in the Arab region at a turning point between two US administrations. The findings, taken from the 2016 Arab Opinion Index, show that the Arab public has a complete lack of trust in US policies towards their region. The paper explores the evolution of Arab public perceptions of US policies through successive polls of the Arab Opinion Index, and analyzes the factors driving negative Arab public perceptions of US foreign policy in the region, asking whether these are driven by religious, cultural, political or ideological reasons. With the Obama Administration handing over to Trump, the author examines the Arab public expectations of a change US foreign policy towards the region.

The premise of this study is the belief that there is a crisis in contemporary liberal democracy resulting from the tension between two traditions: one democratic and the other liberal. The spread of right-wing populism in the West is not a new phenomenon, but rather a new manifestation of what may be called a permanent crisis of democracy. The study distinguishes populism from totalitarian ideological movements that gain popular support through demagogy and incitement against the other and reviews existing tensions in the structure of liberal democracy. The paper finds that populist rhetoric is channeled through tensions in the structure of liberal democracy and translates social anger into criticism of the democratic system itself, by using one component of a complex democratic system against another.

​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.

This paper addresses problematic aspects of the concept of "terrorism" from within its present-day setting, exploring the futile conflict between "terrorism" and "counter-terrorism" which has been utilized to marginalize the discourse on democracy, justice and national liberation. The paper argues that the categorization of an event as a terrorist act based on the identity of the perpetrator, and regardless of the victims, leads to a logical fallacy. One consequence of categorizing all armed acts by non-state actors as "terrorist" is the erosion of distinctions between terrorist acts and acts of national liberation, resistance to foreign occupation and armed opposition to state violence against civilians. One conclusion of the paper is that blurring the distinctions between terrorist and legitimate acts is counterproductive to the war on terror.

This study explores the relationship and reciprocal influence between the political authority in Iran, led by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the religious authority in Najaf, led by the Grand Ayatollah and marja', Ali al-Sistani. Rather than focusing exclusively on jurisprudential/ideological doctrines, the paper approaches the subject from a perspective that emphasizes the interactive relationship between the structure and the agency. It suggests that the emergence of the Islamic regime in Iran, based on the principle of Willayat Al-Faqih, had a significant impact on reshaping power relations in the Shi'i theological space and the response of Shi'i religious actors. At the same time, the practices adopted by al-Sistani in Iraq after 2003 , the context he was responding to, and the emergence of the Marji ʿ yya as an extraconstitutional actor, allowed for the formation of an alternative transitional model, which I term a "neo-traditional authority". The study argues for an alternative to two theses: first, the potential decline of the traditional Marji ʿ yya due to the dominance of the Willayat Al-Faqih in Iran, put forward in particular by Mehdi Khalaji, and second, the superiority and continuity of the traditional Marji ʿ yya due to its depoliticization, contended by Linda Wallbridge. The paper also maintains that there is an interpretive framework that meets the two theses in the middle, represented by the rise of the neo-traditional Marji ʿ yya and the possibility it will emerge as an alternative model in the future.

This paper explores the concept of “the Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), an outcome of the 2005 World Summit which entails that the international community has a moral duty to intervene in the domestic affairs of sovereign states in cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. The author illustrates the historical legacy of the R2P, covering how early legal philosophers justified the intervention of European powers through theories such as just war, intervention in the name of humanity, and humanitarian intervention, before exploring whether R2P represents a violation of well-established principles of international law: the sovereignty of states and non-intervention in their affairs and the non-use of force in international affairs. The paper concludes that R2P does not provide for the use of force in a manner that does not already exist in the UN Charter.

In September 2014, US President Barack Obama announced a “comprehensive strategy” to degrade and destroy ISIL. Obama stated, “I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” But despite this announcement, questions over the nature, goals, and instruments of US policy towards ISIL still continue to be asked in the context of a debate between those who think that the US is not doing enough to take on ISIL and those who think it would be better for the US not to expand its military involvement in the conflict. This debate has been influenced by internal American political polarizations in the form of the critical position taken by leading Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who view the Obama policy as weak, and Middle Eastern regional rivalries over the position towards ISIL and the nature of the political choices that must frame the confrontation with it.