Download or read book The International Dimension of the Failed Algerian Transition written by Francesco Cavatorta and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text focuses on the international dimension of Algeria's failed transition to democracy. It deals with the role of international factors in democratisation and offers a theoretical framework that can be used to investigate other case studies.

Download or read book The international dimension of the failed Algerian transition written by Francesco Cavatorta and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book builds an innovative theoretical framework, through which previously neglected international factors are brought into the analysis of transitions to democracy. The case of Algeria is then explored in great detail. This volume is an important contribution to the literature on democratization and provides an interesting analysis of Algerian politics during the last two decades. More specifically, the book examines how international variables influence the behaviour and activities of Algerian political actors. By bridging the comparative politics and international relations literatures, the book offers a new understanding of the initiation, development and outcome of transitions to democracy. International factors, far from being marginal and secondary, are treated as central explanatory variables. Such external factors were crucial in the Algerian failed transition to democracy, when the attitudes and actions of key international actors shaped the domestic game and its final outcome. In particular, the book explores the controversial role of the Islamic Salvation Front and how its part was perceived abroad. In addition the book argues that international factors significantly contribute to explaining the persistence of authoritarian rule in Algeria, to its integration into the global economy and its co-optation into the war on terror. This book will be useful for scholars and students of processes of democratisation, for Middle East and North Africa specialists and for general readers interested in the role of international actors across the Arab world.

Download or read book Authoritarian Elections and Opposition Groups in the Arab World written by Gail J. Buttorff and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how opposition groups respond to the dilemma posed by authoritarian elections in the Arab World, with specific focus on Jordan and Algeria. While scholars have investigated critical questions such as why authoritarian rulers would hold elections and whether such elections lead to further political liberalization, there has been comparatively little work on the strategies adopted by opposition groups during authoritarian elections. Nevertheless, we know their strategic choices can have important implications for the legitimacy of the electoral process, reform, democratization, and post-election conflicts. This project fills in an important gap in our understanding of opposition politics under authoritarianism by offering an explanation for the range of strategies adopted by opposition groups in the face of contentious elections in the Arab World.

Download or read book America s War against Global Jihad written by William R. Nester and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes America’s crusade against Jihadism. It addresses the successes and failures of Washington’s counter-Jihadist strategy before and after September 11, and explores whether the United States should stay the course or cut its losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Download or read book Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence written by Jacob Mundy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-09 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massacres that spread across Algeria in 1997 and 1998 shocked the world, both in their horror and in the international community's failure to respond. In the years following, the violence of 1990s Algeria has become a central case study in new theories of civil conflict and terrorism after the Cold War. Such "lessons of Algeria" now contribute to a diverse array of international efforts to manage conflict—from development and counterterrorism to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and transitional justice. With this book, Jacob Mundy raises a critical lens to these lessons and practices and sheds light on an increasingly antipolitical scientific vision of armed conflict. Traditional questions of power and history that once guided conflict management have been displaced by neoliberal assumptions and methodological formalism. In questioning the presumed lessons of 1990s Algeria, Mundy shows that the problem is not simply that these understandings—these imaginative geographies—of Algerian violence can be disputed. He shows that today's leading strategies of conflict management are underwritten by, and so attempt to reproduce, their own flawed logic. Ultimately, what these policies and practices lead to is not a world made safe from war, but rather a world made safe for war.

Download or read book North Africa s Arab Spring written by George Joffé and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses issues surrounding the evolution of the Arab Spring in North Africa. After a general introduction and explanation of the events on a region-wide basis, it turns to examine aspects of each of the countries concerned. The role of the Muslim Brotherhood during the Nasser regime and in the contemporary situation is compared, together with an analysis of the emergence of new political parties in Egypt. The book analyses the links between social media and satellite television during the revolution in Egypt. This is followed by a study of the intellectual and cultural background to the Tunisian revolution and an analysis of the new political parties in Tunisia. It also looks at the revolution process in Libya and concludes with a study of why there was no revolution in Algeria and how the Moroccan monarchy was able to sideline those who challenged it at the price of constitutional changes that are essentially cosmetic. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of North African Studies.

Download or read book Democratization and Competitive Authoritarianism in Africa written by Matthijs Bogaards and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The special issue revisits Levitsky and Way’s seminal study on Competitive Authoritarianism (2010). The contributions by North American, European, and African scholars deepen our understanding of the emergence, trajectories, and outcomes of hybrid regimes across the African continent.

Download or read book Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World written by Francesco Cavatorta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition paradigm has traditionally viewed civil society activism as an essential condition for the establishment of democracy. The democracy promotion strategies of Western policy-makers have, therefore, been based on strengthening civil society in authoritarian settings in order to support the development of social capital -to challenge undemocratic regimes. This book questions the validity of the link between an active associational life and democratization. It examines civil society in the Arab world in order to illustrate how authoritarian constraints structure civil society dynamics in the region in ways that hinder transition to democracy. Building on innovative theoretical work and drawing on empirical data from extensive fieldwork in the region, this study demonstrates how the activism of civil society in five different Arab countries strengthens rather than weakens authoritarian practices and rule. Through an analysis of the specific legal and political constraints on associational life, and the impact of these on relations between different civic groups, and between associations and state authorities, the book demonstrates that the claim that civil society plays a positive role in processes of democratic transformation is highly questionable. Offering a broad and alternative vision of the state of civil society in the region, this book will be an important contribution to studies on Middle Eastern politics, democratization and civil society activism.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa written by Francesco Cavatorta and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-03 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook analyzes elections in the Middle East and North Africa and seeks to overcome normative assumptions about the linkage between democracy and elections. Structured around five main themes, contributors provide chapters detailing how their case studies illustrate specific themes within individual country settings. Authors disentangle the various aspects informing elections as a process in the Middle East by taking into account the different contexts where the electoral contest occurs and placing these into a broader comparative context. The findings from this Handbook connect with global electoral developments, empirically demonstrating that there is very little that is “exceptional” about the Middle East and North Africa when it comes to electoral contests. Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine all aspects related to elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Through such comprehensive coverage and systematic analysis, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in politics, elections, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Download or read book Democracy and Reform in the Middle East and Asia written by Amin Saikal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-12-23 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The protests that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and 2011 confounded long-time observers of the region, in both the media and academia. After addressing the conditions in the Middle East and North Africa that produced these attempts at revolution, Amin Saikal and Amitav Acharya explore the global impact of the protests, both in terms of their ideological influence on opposition groups and the prospects for democratic transition in a variety of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian governments. Democracy and Reform in the Middle East and Asia commences with a comprehensive attempt to understand the cultural, economic and political background out of which the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya emerged. It then expands outwards investigating the impact of the Arab uprisings on a regional level in other Middle Eastern and north African states such as Iran, Morocco and Algeria, and on a more global level in the Asian states of China, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the former Soviet Muslim republics. Saikal and Acharya bring a global perspective to the still-unfolding wave of calls for more meaningful political participation, which continues to make itself felt in the Middle East, to shed light upon the ideal role of both regional and international actors in promoting sustainable transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. This book not only offers explanations for why certain countries were more susceptible to the spread of the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, but also contrasts the organic and grassroots vehicles for democratization characteristic of the most recent Arab uprisings with the Western model of externally imposed regime change to illustrate the conditions necessary for a successful democratic transition. Touching on perennial issues in politics - for example, democracy, authoritarian rule and social protest - this book is vital for researchers of politics and international relations.

Download or read book The Suspended Disaster written by Thomas Serres and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Algeria’s president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his intention to run for a fifth term in early 2019, a popular peaceful uprising erupted calling for change. Bouteflika, who had been in office since 1999, was eventually forced to resign, but the Hirak (“movement”) continued to protest the country’s inequalities and entrenched ruling elite. The Suspended Disaster examines the dynamics of the Algerian political system, offering new insights into the last years of Bouteflika’s rule and the factors that shaped the emergence of an unexpected social movement. Thomas Serres argues that the Algerian ruling coalition developed a mode of government based on the management of a seemingly never-ending crisis, marked by an obsession with security and the ever-present possibility of unrest, violence, and economic collapse. Identifying this form of rule as “governance by catastrophization,” he shows how attempts to preserve the status quo through emergency policies and constant reforms can also lay the groundwork for a revolutionary situation. Serres contrasts the government’s portrayal of perpetually imminent disaster with the uncertainty, precarity, and indignity experienced by much of the population, which fueled the rejection of ruling elites, a profound mistrust toward institutions, and new spaces for grassroots opposition. Based on extensive fieldwork and theoretically novel, The Suspended Disaster sheds new light on the political, economic, and social processes underlying an uprising that changed the face of Algerian politics.

Download or read book Dividing Africa with Policy written by Lara Hierro and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses timely concerns of rising African nationalism and the 2nd decolonisation in Africa. The wholesale rejection of all things considered ‘Western’ is seen to be a result of ‘integrationalism’, defined as the specific kind of methodology by which EU foreign policy engagement may be interpreted. Using complexity theory and panarchy, a specific arrangement of interacting complex adaptive systems together with a ‘resilience assessment’, the EU’s foreign policy is shown to be undermining the aims of the premier African institution, the AU, created to provide unity and security on the continent: the EU pursues these objectives in its own image rather than honouring African values. This book raises awareness of these issues, as well as to widen the application of the theoretical framework in international relations and politics, which is becoming increasingly important in a complex world. The aim of this book is to show that the negative isolationism pursued in order to counteract western influence is not the answer and can be avoided through this awareness.

Download or read book Elites and Arab Politics written by Ian Kelly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work explains elite behaviour in authoritarian systems and proposes why elites withdraw their support for the incumbent when faced with popular uprisings. Building upon foundations drawn from institutional authoritarianism and synthesised with local context from the substantial scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa, the book argues that the elite supporting autocrats come from three distinct cadres: the military, the single-party and the personalist. Each of these cadres possesses its own distinct institutional interests and preferences towards regime change. Drawing on these interests, the study constructs a theoretical framework that is assessed through testing it against three variables. Utilising an analytic narrative, the research finds that the withdrawal of elite support is the consequence of long-term processes that see distinct cadres marginalised. First, increased incumbent preference for personalist elements destabilises regimes as the military and single-party cadres reconsider their positions. Second, neoliberal economic policies, implemented via structural adjustment, accelerated this personalisation as the state’s withdrawal from the economy. This, in turn, affected the ability of the military and single-party elites to access patronage. Finally, the degree of military involvement in the formal political sphere contributes to shaping the nature of the system that replaced the incumbent regime under examination. Building upon a wide range of literature the book argues that interest realisation determines whether or not elite actors support regime change in authoritarian systems. The volume will be of interest to scholars researching politics, social sciences and the Middle East.

Download or read book Migration Security and Citizenship in the Middle East written by P. Seeberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses new tendencies related to migration from a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean perspective and with an emphasis on security and citizenship. Contributors aim not only to intervene in scholarly debates surrounding citizenship and migration but also to contribute to policy-oriented discussions related to migration.

Download or read book Global justice networks written by Paul Routledge and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a critical investigation of what has been termed the ‘global justice movement’. Through a detailed study of a grassroots peasants’ network in Asia (People’s Global Action), an international trade union network (the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mining and General Workers) and the Social Forum process, it analyses some of the global justice movement’s component parts, operational networks and their respective dynamics, strategies and practices. The authors argue that the emergence of new globally-connected forms of collective action against neoliberal globalisation are indicative of a range of place-specific forms of political agency that coalesce across geographic space at particular times, in specific places, and in a variety of ways. Rather than being indicative of a coherent ‘movement’, the authors argue that such forms of political agency contain many political and geographical fissures and fault-lines, and are best conceived of as ‘global justice networks’: overlapping, interacting, competing, and differentially-placed and resourced networks that articulate demands for social, economic and environmental justice. Such networks, and the social movements that comprise them, characterise emergent forms of trans-national political agency. The authors argue that the role of key geographical concepts of space, place and scale are crucial to an understanding of the operational dynamics of such networks. Such an analysis challenges key current assumptions in the literature about the emergence of a global civil society.

Download or read book Counter Terrorism Laws and Freedom of Expression written by Téwodros Workneh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As nations have aggressively implemented a wide range of mechanisms to proactively curb potential threats terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Laws and Freedom of Expression: Global Perspectives offers critical insight into how counter-terrorism laws have adversely affected journalism practice, digital citizenship, privacy, online activism, and other forms of expression. While governments assert the need for such laws to protect national security, critics argue counter-terrorism laws are prone to be misappropriated by state actors who use such laws to quash political dissent, target journalists, and restrict other forms of citizen expression. The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the politics and discourse of counter-terrorism laws. Part II focuses on the ways counter-terrorism laws have impacted journalistic practice in different countries, with effects ranging from imprisonment of reporters to self-censorship. Part III addresses how counter-terrorism laws have been used to target everyday citizens, social media activists, whistleblowers, and human rights advocates around the world. Together, the chapters address how counter-terrorism laws have undermined democratic values in both authoritarian and liberal political contexts. Scholars of political science, communication, and legal studies will find this book particularly interesting.

Download or read book Weak States Strong Societies written by Amin Saikal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the previously well-established organisation of world politics has been thrown into disarray. While during the Cold War, the bipolarity of the world gave other powers a defined structure within which to vie for power, influence and material wealth, the current global political landscape has been transformed by a diffusion of power. As a result, the world has seen the rise of sub-national or quasi-/non-state actors, such as Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the movement that calls itself Islamic State, or ISIS. These dramatic geopolitical shifts have heavily impacted state-society relationships, power and authority in the international system. Weak States, Strong Societies analyses the effect of these developments on the new world order, arguing that the framework of 'weak state, strong society' appears even more applicable to the contemporary global landscape than it did during the Cold War. Focusing on a range of regional contexts, the book explores what constitutes a weak or strong state. It will be essential reading for specialists in politics and international relations, whether students or academic researchers.