scholarly journals Civil War, Economic Governance & State Reconstruction in the Arab Middle East

Daedalus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Heydemann
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
State Reconstruction ◽  
State Fragility ◽  
Postconflict Reconstruction ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
The Relationship

Civil wars currently underway in Libya, Syria, and Yemen demonstrate that patterns of economic governance during violent conflict exhibit significant continuity with prewar practices, raising important questions along three lines. First, violent conflict may disrupt prewar practices less than is often assumed. Second, continuity in governance highlights the limits of state fragility frameworks for postconflict reconstruction that view violent conflict as creating space for institutional reform. Third, continuity of prewar governance practices has important implications for the relationship between sovereignty, governance, and conflict resolution. Civil wars in the Middle East have not created conditions conducive to reconceptualizing sovereignty or decoupling sovereignty and governance. Rather, parties to conflict compete to capture and monopolize the benefits that flow from international recognition. Under these conditions, civil wars in the Middle East will not yield easily to negotiated solutions. Moreover, to the extent that wartime economic orders reflect deeply institutionalized norms and practices, postconflict conditions will limit possibilities for interventions defined in terms of overcoming state fragility.

scholarly journals Fratricide in rebel movements: A network analysis of Syrian militant infighting

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Kalah Gade ◽  
Mohammed M Hafez ◽  
Michael Gabbay
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
Latent Space ◽  
Space Modeling ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

Violent conflict among rebels is a common feature of civil wars and insurgencies. Yet, not all rebel groups are equally prone to such infighting. While previous research has focused on the systemic causes of violent conflict within rebel movements, this article explores the factors that affect the risk of conflict between pairs of rebel groups. We generate hypotheses concerning how differences in power, ideology, and state sponsors between rebel groups impact their propensity to clash and test them using data from the Syrian civil war. The data, drawn from hundreds of infighting claims made by rebel groups on social media, are used to construct a network of conflictual ties among 30 rebel groups. The relationship between the observed network structure and the independent variables is evaluated using network analysis metrics and methods including assortativity, community structure, simulation, and latent space modeling. We find strong evidence that ideologically distant groups have a higher propensity for infighting than ideologically proximate ones. We also find support for power asymmetry, meaning that pairs of groups of disparate size are at greater risk of infighting than pairs of equal strength. No support was found for the proposition that sharing state sponsors mitigates rebels’ propensity for infighting. Our results provide an important corrective to prevailing theory, which discounts the role of ideology in militant factional dynamics within fragmented conflicts.

Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abeer AlNajjar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Road Signs ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
Language And Politics ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

This book aims to shed light on core questions relating to language and society, language and conflict, and language and politics, in relation to a changing Middle East. While the book focuses on Arabic, it goes way beyond a purely linguistic analysis by bringing to the fore a set of pressing questions about the relationship between Arabic and society. For example, it touches on the development of language policy via an examination of administrative mandates (top-down) in contrast to grassroots initiatives (bottom-up); the deeper layers of the linguistic landscape that highlight the connection between politics, conflict, identity, road signs and street names; Arabic studies and Arabic identity and the myriad ways countries deal simultaneously with globalisation while also seeking to strengthen local and national identity, and more.

The role of personality in shaping pandemic response: Systemic sociopolitical factors drive country differences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Siritzky ◽  
David M Condon ◽  
Sara J Weston
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Big Five ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
State Fragility ◽  
Systemic Factors ◽  
Pandemic Response ◽  
The Relationship

The current study utilizes the current COVID-19 pandemic to highlight the importance of accounting for the influence of external political and economic factors in personality public-health research. We investigated the extent to which systemic factors modify the relationship between personality and pandemic response. Results shed doubt on the cross-cultural generalizability of common big-five factor models. Individual differences only predicted government compliance in autocratic countries and in countries with income inequality. Personality was only predictive of mental health outcomes under conditions of state fragility and autocracy. Finally, there was little evidence that the big five traits were associated with preventive behaviors. Our ability to use individual differences to understand policy-relevant outcomes changes based on environmental factors and must be assessed on a trait-by-trait basis, thus supporting the inclusion of systemic political and economic factors in individual differences models.

A Perspective from the Middle East

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nida Alahmad
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
Regional Power ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Regional Institutions ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Arab League ◽  
Regional Perspective

This chapter argues that, while we can conceive of a ‘global’ or a ‘regional’ governance structure, a ‘critical regional perspective’ is not possible for three reasons. First, there is a problem of governance as a technology of ordering the world that requires the production of abstracted forms of knowledge; second, the problem of determining what a critical ‘regional’ perspective on global governance might be; and third, a critical perspective that would account for the daily lives of people cannot be produced by regional institutions, which are rarely representative of popular democratic movements. In the Middle East, the Arab League has historically been weak, reflecting turbulent regional power relations. As such, it is difficult to identify a regional perspective based on the League’s governance practices. If a regional political counter-perspective to global governance is not possible (as in the Middle East), one cannot speak of a cultural (counter) perspective on governance.

Montaigne and the Wars of Religion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Greengrass
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Relationship

Using examples of moments in the Essays where Montaigne says that he has “seen” something this article problematizes the relationship between the events of the Wars of Religion, those in Montaigne’s life, and his reflections in the Essays. The questions Montaigne chooses to reflect on, and how he does so, is more important than the abstraction of the references in the text, which can be construed as referring to incidents or phenomena during the period of the wars. The plasticity of his allusions (“civil wars,” “troubles,” etc.) furnishes the context for demonstrating why Montaigne’s view of religion meant that he could not regard the period as, in any simple way, “wars of religion.” His attitudes to attempts to bring about a pacification of the troubles through royal edict are analyzed. The article concludes with a brief examination of Montaigne’s public engagements as mayor of Bordeaux and in the wars of the Catholic League.

Higher education, post-conflict democratization and the legacies of authoritarian rule: The Tripoli University Programme for Rebuilding Libya

2021 ◽  
pp. 174619792098136
Author(s):  
Sansom Milton
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Transitional Processes ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper, the role of higher education in post-uprising Libya is analysed in terms of its relationship with transitional processes of democratization and civic development. It begins by contextualising the Libyan uprising within the optimism of the ‘Arab Spring’ transitions in the Middle East. Following this, the relationship between higher education and politics under the Qadhafi regime and in the immediate aftermath of its overthrow is discussed. A case-study of a programme designed to support Tripoli University in contributing towards democratisation will then be presented. The findings of the case-study will be reflected upon to offer a set of recommendations for international actors engaging in political and civic education in conflict-affected settings, in particular in the Middle East.

Beyond Keeping Peace: United Nations Effectiveness in the Midst of Fighting

2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA HULTMAN ◽  
JACOB KATHMAN ◽  
MEGAN SHANNON
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
The Cold War

While United Nations peacekeeping missions were created to keep peace and perform post-conflict activities, since the end of the Cold War peacekeepers are more often deployed to active conflicts. Yet, we know little about their ability to manage ongoing violence. This article provides the first broad empirical examination of UN peacekeeping effectiveness in reducing battlefield violence in civil wars. We analyze how the number of UN peacekeeping personnel deployed influences the amount of battlefield deaths in all civil wars in Africa from 1992 to 2011. The analyses show that increasing numbers of armed military troops are associated with reduced battlefield deaths, while police and observers are not. Considering that the UN is often criticized for ineffectiveness, these results have important implications: if appropriately composed, UN peacekeeping missions reduce violent conflict.

Historicising the Left in the Middle East: On Agency, Archives and Anti-capitalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 230-240
Author(s):  
Sara Salem
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article is a review of Ilham Khuri-Makdisi’s bookThe Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1860–1914. I argue that this book is a valuable contribution to historiographies of the Left in the Middle East, a field that remains under-represented given the importance of labour to the nationalist movements as well as broader worker-activism in the region throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I review the main debates of the book, and raise critical questions about aspects that could have been probed further, among them the questions of imperialism and race in contexts such as Egypt and Lebanon, and the relationship(s) between workers and the radical intellectuals discussed throughout the book.

Managing different forms of distances in Dutch healthcare organizations

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 1080-1097
Author(s):  
Annemiek Stoopendaal
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Healthcare Organization ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
Healthcare Executives ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose – Dichotomous “gap” thinking about professionals and managers has important limits. The purpose of this paper is to study the specific ontology of “the gap” in which different forms of distances are defined. Design/methodology/approach – In order to deepen the knowledge of the actual day-to-day tasks of Dutch healthcare executives an ethnographic study of the daily work of Dutch healthcare executives and an ontological exploration of the concept “gap” was provided. The study empirically investigates the meaning given to the concept of “distance” in healthcare governance practices. Findings – The study reveals that healthcare executives have to fulfil a dual role of maintaining distance and creating proximity. Coping with different forms of distances seems to be an integral part of their work. They make use of four potential mechanisms to cope with distance in their healthcare organization practices. Originality/value – The relationship between managers and professionals is often defined as a dichotomous gap. The findings in this research suggest a more dynamic picture of the relationship between managers and professionals than is currently present in literature. This study moves “beyond” the gap and investigates processes of distancing in-depth.

Christians in and from the Middle East: Lessons from the World Christian Encyclopedia

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Deanna Ferree Womack
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Church History ◽  
Demographic Information ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Eastern Christianity ◽  
Global Christianity ◽  
The World ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The Relationship

This article considers the history and contemporary reality of Middle Eastern Christianity in light of new demographic information available from the World Christian Encyclopedia. For readers interested in church history and World Christianity, it identifies key lessons to be learned about Christians in and from the Middle East today. It focuses on understanding the region’s Christian diversity, the complexities of recent demographic decline, the relationship between Middle Eastern and global Christianity, and the interreligious realities of Christian life in the region.

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