Latest Articles

Why did the January 25, 2011 revolution in Egypt descend into a state of violent oppression of the revolutionaries on the grounds of securing stability and fighting terrorism? This paper examines how the manner in which regime change took place following the January 25 revolution impacted on the democratic transition and its trajectory. The author looks specifically at those transformations which served to divert the course of revolutionary momentum, turning an uprising previously centered on "democratization" in the broadest sense, including the change in the system of government and the protection of personal and social liberties, into a movement which is often described in academic literature as an "electoral revolution". In other words, revolutionary momentum was focused exclusively on procedural questions and the filling of vacant executive and legislative positions following the collapse of the Mubarak regime before the more fundamental precursors to democracy could be established. This first transformation took place before the "electoral revolution" was itself diverted into a "counter revolution" which targeted all of the revolutionary forces behind the original uprising, making way for the establishment of a totalitarian mode of government.

​يتضمــن هــذا التقريــر توثيقًــا لأهم الوقائــع الفلســطينية والأحداث المرتبطــة بالصــراع العربي - الإسرائيلي في المدة 1 آذار/ مارس - 30 نيسان/ أبريل2018.

This research aims to shed light on the continuous rise of the military's role in Sudanese politics, the efforts of civilian forces to contain this phenomenon, and the outcomes of these efforts. It focuses on the manifestations, causes, and consequences of the growing militarization during the three periods of military rule in Sudan. The research hypothesizes that the political role of the Sudanese military forces has steadily increased, leading to widespread militarization of the political, social, and economic spheres in Sudan and a continuous decline of democracy. This is attributed to party conflicts, the weakening of civil society, and the decline of a political culture supportive of democracy. Limiting the political role of the military and containing the phenomenon of militarization requires an agreement between civilian and military forces on a comprehensive national project, the development of political parties, the strengthening of civil society capacities, the promotion of democratic culture, the improvement of military oversight mechanisms, and the enhancement of democratic transition processes.

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 splitting, renaming and merging of factions can lead to the start of new rivalries, or in some cases, end existing ones. A new faction may inherit the original faction's previous rivalries with other groups, and if a faction name change results in a total restructure, it may signal the end of the rivalry. However, this was not the case when Jabhat al-Nusra renamed itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and later Tahrir al-Sham. It was considered a 'cosmetic' and superficial change because it did not develop a new structure. This article will shed light on exclusionary politics and the political ramifications of sectarianism caused by certain jihadist movements, such as Jabhat al-Nusra (presently known as Tahrir al-Sham), enabling us to analyse its practices, especially towards minorities, and sectarian ideologies present in Idlib, and which ultimately led to the expulsion of many who fled outside the governorate. The article also calls attention to the roles of regional and international powers in Idlib against the backdrop of opposition factions, and their physical and ideological influence on Islamist forces that frequently facilitated displacement within and outside the city.

In this section you will find the most important political documents related to democratic change in the Arab world. In this issue we publish a number of documents from Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq and Egypt. And we stop when we publish documents for the months of January and February 2022.

This study discusses the possibility of bridging the gap between IR (International Relation) and Foreign Policy Analysis when studying the interaction between memory and apology in foreign policy. By dealing with apology as an expressive practice, not just as a tact between statesmen, this study argues that apology is an act used by states to express their attitudes toward their past memories. It presumes that examining the interaction on the theoretical level between concepts such as narrative identity, ontological security, and discursive representations would bridge the gap between the two fields through two versions of social constructivism. Those two versions are then used to understand the motives behind Germany's apology to Israel, and Turkey's resistance to apologize to Armenia despite international pressure to do so. The study concludes that "critical constructivism" approach by Nizar Messari can explain the German case. It considers the role of foreign policy as a tool in reconstructing national identity through transforming representation of the Jewish/Israeli "other" from a "different other", who is an enemy of the self, to a "similar other", who is a part of its moral responsibility. As for Turkey, it concludes that Ted Hopf's "practical/societal constructivism" suggests that the reasons behind Turkey's unwillingness to apologize to Armenia is due to an ontological need best understood as "a need to preserve the routine of its narrative identity, and the need to preserve it heroic memories".

This study adopts a comparative approach to investigate the impact of the reciprocal fears of internal and external parties on the stances of key actors during the 2011 transitions. Apparently, the uncertainty that accompanies any democratic elections has not been a local factor in the Arab cases because regional and international forces have an interest in hindering democracy, being a potential threat to the status quo. The study examines four interrelated problems related to external factors. It concludes that the external factors that have hindered democracy in non-Arab cases were not inevitable because addressing them seems to have been related to changes in the international system and the emergence of domestic democratic blocs that are able to exert pressure on external forces and get them to change their positions.

​What is the effect of religiosity on public opinion? Islamist religiosity in particular has been linked to a variety of outcomes, including authoritarianism and violence. Nevertheless, many scholars have countered that there is in fact no relationship between religiosity in the Arab world and adverse political outcomes. Thus the debate remains unresolved to some degree. To adjudicate this debate, we use the Arab Opinion Index's 2016 data to examine the effect of individual religiosity on public opinion and political behavior. We find that there is no link between increased religiosity and negative views of democracy; in fact, the opposite is the case. There is also no link between religiosity and political participation. Finally, there is a positive correlation between religiosity and political tolerance.

This study explores the trajectory of state disintegration in Sudan from 1821 to 2025 , starting from a central question: does the April 2023 war constitute a revealing variable that exposes a process of structural disintegration whose foundations accumulated over time? Or is it an explanatory variable that, in itself, drives the deepening of this disintegration? Drawing on a historical sociology approach, the study analyzes the interaction of five main variables addressed in the literature on state disintegration: war, elite conflict, geostrategic intervention, erosion of legitimacy, and the pressures of globalization. The study shows that successive wars and resource depletion, along with ethnic/regional elite divisions and international competition over the Red Sea, have undermined the state’s monopoly over the legitimate means of violence, leading to a hybrid pattern of disintegration in which the center retains international recognition while power is effectively distributed among local armed networks. The study concludes that existing models of state disintegration explain important aspects of the Sudanese experience, but require further development to accommodate forms of multiple sovereignties and managed disintegration.