Latest Articles

​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 documents on democratic change in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish documents highlighting the political movement in Tunisia demanding democracy and look at the main political changes in Sudan, Iraq and Jordan in March and April 2022.

This article traces the different paths taken by constructivism in International Relations, from its emergence as a critical social theory in the 1980 s, in response to the third debate between positivist rationalists and post-positivist reflectivists, to Alexander Wendt's project to seize a middle ground and to bridge the rationalist–reflectivist epistemological gap. The article, then, examines the intra-debates among conventional and critical constructivists on Went's project, as well as the rise of the new constructivism after Wendt left the constructivist research program. The article explores the Wendtian project's epistemological tensions and demonstrates how such tensions led to a plurality within constructivism: modernist conventional and postmodernist critical (reflectivist). It highlights that Wendt's leaving constructivism and his shift to a quantum approach have not caused constructivism to decline, but instead, it continued to thrive through the efforts of a new generation of constructivists. The article argues that three main developments in International Relations over the past twenty years have contributed to its ongoing thriving: the decline of epistemological polarization among IR theories; the rise of critical realism as a philosophy of science in International Relations, and the emergence of analytical eclecticism.

​In recent years, Analytical Eclecticism has emerged as a promising theoretical trend and has attracted great attention from researchers and practitioners of international relations theory. Analytical Eclecticism is based on the following three pillars: the call for theoretical diversity and pluralism by adopting Eclectic methodology; challenging the dominance of classical paradigms (realism, neoliberalism, constructivism) over international relations theory; and to advocate for the replacement of Grand Theory with middle range theories following its decline. The article presents a critical review of these pillars to demonstrate that the rationale upon which analytical Eclecticism is based is tainted by some contradictions; its criticisms of Grand Theory are built on an incomplete understanding of what it and its function are. Moreover, analytical eclecticism is not a new subject in the discipline of international relations, and the decline of Grand Theory does not necessarily signify its disappearance.

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.

This article examines what analytical eclecticism can offer to qualify IR to overcome the Grand Theory crisis. It debates analytical eclecticism’s basic promises relying on its main characteristics which distinguish it from the dominant research traditions/paradigms: fostering research pragmatism; expanding the scope of the research issues and involving more aspects of social reality complexities in world politics; and producing complex causal statements. The article is divided into six parts. First, it provides an introduction to eclectic philosophy through Paul Feyerabend’s reflections on methodological/epistemological relativism. Second, it conceptualizes analytical eclecticism and examines its promises. Third, it explores an example of eclectic literature in the field of international studies. Fourth, it debates the relationship between the promises of eclecticism and the complexity of social causality. Finally, it seeks, in parts 5 and 6, to position analytical eclecticism epistemologically, through examining the main assumptions of Critical Relaism and its promises to move the dominant debate away from the positivist/postpositivist binary opposition.

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.

This paper addresses the implications of the transformation of the international system from a bipolar to a unipolar system for realist theory. The paper demonstrates and analyzes how realists react to this external challenge. The paper demonstrates the traditional response to the "attack" on realism, in an attempt to preserve its basic premises. It then proceeds to explain the different revisionist orientations undertaken by the theorists of this school in an attempt to harmonize the foundations of this theory with unipolarity. The study deals with four revisionist approaches: "balance of threat", "soft balance", "balance of interests" and "external balancing". This paper presents a new addition, "internal balancing" which, while derived from the liberal theory opposed to realism, comes with a realist adaptation to explain the length of the current unipolar era.

This study examines US foreign policy and the changes that occurred under former President Donald Trump, compared to other post-Cold War administrations, assessing their impact on the future of US hegemony and the liberal international system, with projections for current president Joe Biden's rule. Two main questions arise: First, what foreign policies did Trump pursue? Second, what impact do they have on the future of US hegemony and the liberal international order? The analysis studies the concept of hegemony in international relations theory. It concludes with three possible scenarios awaiting the future of US hegemony under Biden's rule, with his administration likely to move between partial reform and catastrophic failure.

This paper examines the rise of modern social sciences that deal with sports phenomena. It begins with the first formula that paved the way for sports science to become an independent scientific field. This is found in European intellectual discourse in the first half of the twentieth century, which linked sport to what was then known as the "crisis of European values." It then deals with the endeavours of the social sciences to make sport a research and knowledge topic, which was devoted to and institutionalised in the 1960s. It investigates the first theoretical paradigms in the field, the first designed by Norbert Elias, and deals with the position of sport in the development of modern European societies. The other, designed by Pierre Bourdieu, is based on viewing sport as an independent social field. Finally, the paper looks at the interest in cultural studies in sports in the late seventies of the twentieth century, which saw it as a field revealing the distinctions on which Western societies are built.