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The major turning points of the Syrian revolution, beginning with the earliest public demonstrations on March 15, 2011, are here examined. The author revisits speeches made by President Bashar Al Assad in the early days of the uprising, in which he was quoted as discounting the likelihood of a revolution affecting Syria the way it did other Arab countries on the grounds that his government’s policies were in line with public sentiment. The paper then revisits the regime’s excessively violent repression of the first peaceful protests, which led to the militarization of the revolution. The author holds the international community, including the Arab League and the United Nations culpable for ensuing large scale slaughter of Syrian civilians, standing idly by even as it became apparent that Assad was mercilessly killing his own people. Meanwhile, Syria has become the site for a number of world and regional powers—including the United States, the United Kingdom, France Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, Iran and Russia—to advance their fundamentally incompatible policies. As a consequence of these competing foreign interventions, the author contends that the return of normalcy in Syria will be impossible for the foreseeable future.

Book Title: The Governance Crisis in Sudan: Crisis of Hegemony or Hegemony of Crisis? [Arabic]

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.

​Title: Legislative and Presidential Elections in Tunisia 2019: Politics, Electoral Behaviors and Elite Activism. Editor: Mehdi Mabrouk. Publisher: Doha/Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. Year of Publication: 2022. Page Count: 624 pages.

Academic studies on Somalia lack focus on analyzing the gaps and problems facing the state-building project. Drawing on an in-depth literature review of post-war and conflict state-building frameworks and models, this study highlights the structural gaps that continue to hinder Somalia's state-building project by seeking to identify and describe them, in addition to discussing their root causes and impacts on the future of the state-building project. The study concludes that these gaps can be summarized into three categories: 1 -Political: As a result of the problematic aspects of both the tribal quota system 4. 5 and the federal system, 2 -Social: represented in the weakened role of civil society in the process of state-building, and 3 -Economic: driven by the controversial business interests of influential businessmen, and the impact of foreign assistance on economic recovery. Thus, the success of the state-building project in Somalia depends on all relevant actors' abilities to deal with these structural gaps.

This paper examines those Arab Spring states in which political Islamists are actively engaged. Specifically, it looks at the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, in which political Islamists were involved in regime change, as well as Morocco and Jordan, which did not experience regime change but in which Islamists were actively engaged in the political process and a protest movement. Following an examination of the individual circumstances which prevail in each of these states, the author asserts that there remains a number of pressing questions related to the future roles of political Islamists that merit attention. The first question surrounds the political and ideological project that the Islamists want to promote: will Islamists be capable of shedding their ideological burden, and forwarding a novel political program? This paper demonstrates the limitations of the long-standing ideological promulgations of the Islamists, especially as it pertains to questions of the nation-state, democracy, pluralism, civil liberties and minority rights.

Revolution is coupled with the state, and thinking about the former is linked to investigating the other, whether in history or political theory. Therefore, the Arab revolutions, as they were overthrowing the authoritarian regimes, had to evoke ideas about the state. This evocation would necessarily lead to an interrogation of the reality of the “nation state” and its future. The problematic dealt with directly in this paper, therefore, is whether the nation state was a subject for the revolution or a framework for it? On this analytical horizon a great many ironies and questions become apparent: is the revolution a sign of the decline of the national state and a decisive closure to a whole period when the state declared the impossibility of modernization and democracy? Or is it a late consolidation of the legitimacy of the nation state as the institutional expression of a national group, with the event of the revolution forming the pinnacle of its coalescence as a political nation? Does the idea of the nation state require burying once and for all, or does it need reconstruction? Was the Arab Spring a revolt against nationalism(s) or was it their maturation and the culmination of their consolidation?

The Iranian nuclear agreement was the result of a pressing domestic need. This paper discusses the factors that pushed Iran to sign a nuclear deal and argues that the circumstances under which Hassan Rouhani became Iranian president meant he had to achieve a political détente in foreign relations within 100 days in office. Moreover, this pressing détente had to address the issue of sanctions. The successive rounds of US and Western sanctions drained the “resistance economy” and pushed it to resort to “heroic flexibility in diplomacy” whose lines were drawn by Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei. This paved the way for a change in politicians’ rhetoric and performance vis-à-vis relations with the US.

Most initial readings have exhausted their explanations for failure, or stumbling, of the democratic transition process in Tunisia. Given the country’s weak political performance, lack of economic achievement, and worsening corruption, the need has emerged to consider the role of political culture in events since the Tunisian revolution up until President Kais Saied declared a state of emergency on 25 July 2021. Contrary to the prevailing trend in the literature on democratic transition, which has often overlooked the importance of a minimum level of civil political culture taking root, there is an urgent need to recognize its vital role in ensuring the success of any transitional process, especially in the early stages. This paper argues that the absence of a minimum level of political culture has contributed to the fragility of the transitional process in Tunisia, making democracy vulnerable to failure and to the reproduction of authoritarian patterns. Therefore, strengthening this culture becomes a necessity to ensure the sustainability of the democratic transition and avoid setbacks.

Forced migration from Iraq and Syria today are reminiscent of the Palestinian Nakba of the late 1940s, underscoring the need for a revision of Arab knowledge in the field of forced migration. This paper attempts to offer a starting point for researchers interested in the subject, and attempts to expand the specifically Sudanese experience across the Arab world. The paper also takes in those academic studies which explore the violent aspects of forced migration as well as the extent to which Sudanese government policy on refugees is tied to the social values of the Sudanese people. One conclusion made in this regard is the possibility that the integration of refugees can be used to address structural instabilities in Arab societies. The author highlights the importance of the interested parties—including governments, grassroots movements and returned refugees—to cooperate in effecting the integration of refugees who return to their home countries, a challenge more complicated than hosting refugees abroad.