This paper examines Egypt’s shift from socialism to neo-liberalism in the wake of the economic crisis of the late 1980s and the implications of this shift for its socialist legacy. It argues that the decline of the welfare state in Egypt since 1991 has contributed to the erosion of the social contract forged in the post-independence period, which was marked by state-led development and high social mobility and a prominent role for the middle class. Neoliberal ‘reforms’ dictated by economic crisis and pressures from transnational capital as well international financial institutions led to the alienation of the middle and lower classes and the emergence of a new economic elite, whose dubious links to the ruling class has undermined the regime’s legitimacy and helped fuel the 25 January 2011 uprising.
{"title":"Egypt’s Quest for Social Justice","authors":"Rasha S. Mansour","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.8","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines Egypt’s shift from socialism to neo-liberalism in the wake of the economic crisis of the late 1980s and the implications of this shift for its socialist legacy. It argues that the decline of the welfare state in Egypt since 1991 has contributed to the erosion of the social contract forged in the post-independence period, which was marked by state-led development and high social mobility and a prominent role for the middle class. Neoliberal ‘reforms’ dictated by economic crisis and pressures from transnational capital as well international financial institutions led to the alienation of the middle and lower classes and the emergence of a new economic elite, whose dubious links to the ruling class has undermined the regime’s legitimacy and helped fuel the 25 January 2011 uprising.","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87951427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.138
Lana Shehadeh
{"title":"Review: Education in East Jerusalem: Occupation, Political Power, and Struggle, by Samira Alayan","authors":"Lana Shehadeh","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.138","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87439549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.54
Sultan N. Alquraan, Muddather J. Abu-Karaki, Saddoon N. Al-Majali
The study identifies the contribution of Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of political trends that signify the beginnings of democracy. This leads to constructive and innovative thought by ensuring freedom of opinion and expression, while the absence of democracy generates a state of political and ideological despotism. The loss of basic rights and freedom of individuals negatively affects political stability of countries’ religious and moral trends, as well as developmental trends which represent an enhancement of ideological security. Ideological security is a key issue in any society due to its association with the concept of national security. The researchers in this study adopt a quantitative approach in which a questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. The study sample consisted of 1093 male and female students who were chosen by multistage sampling. The study instrument consisted of two parts: first, the demographic variables; and second, the 24 items that measured the process of enhancing ideological security with its three dimensions. The responses to the items were measured according to the Likert five-point scale. The study had several results. First, there is a low level of contribution from Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of ideological security on the whole, and enhancing each trend in particular. The first part addresses the formation of ideological conceptualization, while the second part focuses on analyzing the dimensions of societal processing with the contribution of religious, educational, familial, security, and media institutions, whereas the third part emphasizes several future recommendations that are suggested by the researcher. Second, there are no differences in the level of the contribution of Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of political, religious and, moral trends, while there is a difference regarding the level of contribution of Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of developmental trends according to the variable of gender in favor of females. Third, there are differences in the level of contribution of the Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of ideological security for each of the three domains: political, developmental, and religious, in particular, as well as all the domains as a whole in terms of the variable of membership of civil society institutions and these differences were in favor of the students who were not members of these institutions.
{"title":"Contribution of Jordanian Civil Society Institutions to the Enhancement of Ideological Security among University Students","authors":"Sultan N. Alquraan, Muddather J. Abu-Karaki, Saddoon N. Al-Majali","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.54","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.54","url":null,"abstract":"The study identifies the contribution of Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of political trends that signify the beginnings of democracy. This leads to constructive and innovative thought by ensuring freedom of opinion and expression, while the absence of democracy generates a state of political and ideological despotism. The loss of basic rights and freedom of individuals negatively affects political stability of countries’ religious and moral trends, as well as developmental trends which represent an enhancement of ideological security. Ideological security is a key issue in any society due to its association with the concept of national security. The researchers in this study adopt a quantitative approach in which a questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. The study sample consisted of 1093 male and female students who were chosen by multistage sampling. The study instrument consisted of two parts: first, the demographic variables; and second, the 24 items that measured the process of enhancing ideological security with its three dimensions. The responses to the items were measured according to the Likert five-point scale. The study had several results. First, there is a low level of contribution from Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of ideological security on the whole, and enhancing each trend in particular. The first part addresses the formation of ideological conceptualization, while the second part focuses on analyzing the dimensions of societal processing with the contribution of religious, educational, familial, security, and media institutions, whereas the third part emphasizes several future recommendations that are suggested by the researcher. Second, there are no differences in the level of the contribution of Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of political, religious and, moral trends, while there is a difference regarding the level of contribution of Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of developmental trends according to the variable of gender in favor of females. Third, there are differences in the level of contribution of the Jordanian civil society institutions to the enhancement of ideological security for each of the three domains: political, developmental, and religious, in particular, as well as all the domains as a whole in terms of the variable of membership of civil society institutions and these differences were in favor of the students who were not members of these institutions.","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73081937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-16DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.27
Ben Ahmed Hougua
For more than twenty years, politics in Morocco has been witnessing a change in the cycles of protests under the influence of the parameters linked to the economic liberalization and evolution of the processes of disenchantment with a conventional political culture. The frequent use of repertories of collective action has not failed to shake the political and social landscape to the point that the demobilization of an area is followed by uprisings in neighboring sites. The response of public authorities varies according to the intensity and objectives of the social uprisings. This research is to study the evolution, over time, of the links between repression, the index of consumer prices of basic foodstuffs, and social uprisings. It covers about twenty years from January 1997 to November 2018. In addition to the descriptive temporal evolution, the work applies autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling to examine whether there are short- and long-term associations between the variables mentioned above.
{"title":"Intermittent Breaks of Public Order in the Moroccan Political Context","authors":"Ben Ahmed Hougua","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.27","url":null,"abstract":"For more than twenty years, politics in Morocco has been witnessing a change in the cycles of protests under the influence of the parameters linked to the economic liberalization and evolution of the processes of disenchantment with a conventional political culture. The frequent use of repertories of collective action has not failed to shake the political and social landscape to the point that the demobilization of an area is followed by uprisings in neighboring sites. The response of public authorities varies according to the intensity and objectives of the social uprisings. This research is to study the evolution, over time, of the links between repression, the index of consumer prices of basic foodstuffs, and social uprisings. It covers about twenty years from January 1997 to November 2018. In addition to the descriptive temporal evolution, the work applies autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling to examine whether there are short- and long-term associations between the variables mentioned above.","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73806164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-01DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.100
M. Haddad
This study compiles historical information to highlight the role played by both East and West European countries in the creation of Israel since before World War I. East European countries, especially Russia, Poland, and Romania, were as effective in this regard as the West Europeans. While racial policies were paramount in East Europe, including Germany, religious and strategic policies were as effective in the West, especially in Britain. Two points can be redrawn in this regard: That the question of Palestine was a Western question on both sides of the continent; it had nothing to do with the Eastern question that engulfed the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I. Additionally while World War II did not start the process of creating Israel, it accelerated it since the United States became an active supporter of the Zionist project. The second conclusion explains why all major powers give so much latitude to Israel, regardless of its constant neglect of international law to this very day.
{"title":"Colonizing Palestine","authors":"M. Haddad","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.100","url":null,"abstract":"This study compiles historical information to highlight the role played by both East and West European countries in the creation of Israel since before World War I. East European countries, especially Russia, Poland, and Romania, were as effective in this regard as the West Europeans. While racial policies were paramount in East Europe, including Germany, religious and strategic policies were as effective in the West, especially in Britain. Two points can be redrawn in this regard: That the question of Palestine was a Western question on both sides of the continent; it had nothing to do with the Eastern question that engulfed the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I. Additionally while World War II did not start the process of creating Israel, it accelerated it since the United States became an active supporter of the Zionist project. The second conclusion explains why all major powers give so much latitude to Israel, regardless of its constant neglect of international law to this very day.","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82431414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-01DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.121
Antonio‐Martín Porras‐Gómez
The study re-examines the phenomenon of “Arab exceptionalism” from the perspective of human rights’ recognition. The formal changes introduced since 2004 in the new Arab bills of rights (comprising the Arab Charter on Human Rights plus the bills of rights of the new constitutions of Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt) are presented and analyzed with the purpose of answering the following questions: From a descriptive–analytical perspective, are the new Arab bills of rights adopting similar designs? From a formal perspective, do these new designs imply a shift with respect to previous patterns of Arab exceptionalism? Finally, from an explanatory perspective, is there an evolutionary rationale accounting for the specific designs adopted in the new Arab bills of rights?
{"title":"The “Arab Exceptionalism” Re-examined from the Legal Perspective of Human Rights","authors":"Antonio‐Martín Porras‐Gómez","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.121","url":null,"abstract":"The study re-examines the phenomenon of “Arab exceptionalism” from the perspective of human rights’ recognition. The formal changes introduced since 2004 in the new Arab bills of rights (comprising the Arab Charter on Human Rights plus the bills of rights of the new constitutions of Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt) are presented and analyzed with the purpose of answering the following questions: From a descriptive–analytical perspective, are the new Arab bills of rights adopting similar designs? From a formal perspective, do these new designs imply a shift with respect to previous patterns of Arab exceptionalism? Finally, from an explanatory perspective, is there an evolutionary rationale accounting for the specific designs adopted in the new Arab bills of rights?","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72482038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Commentary","authors":"Luna Abuswaireh","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.2.3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82254338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lebanon, a multi-confessional state, is undergoing a deep socioeconomic change that could trigger a review of its constitutional arrangement. The tiny republic on the Mediterranean was born in 1920 as a liberal democracy with a market economy, where the Christians had the upper hand in politics and the economy. In 1975, Lebanon witnessed a major war that lasted for fifteen years, and a new political system emerged in 1989, dubbed the Ta’ef Accord. The new constitutional arrangement, also known as the “second republic,” transferred major powers to the Muslims. Under the new republic, illiberal policies were adopted in reconstruction, public finance, and monetary policy, coupled with unprecedented corruption at the highest levels. On 17 October 2019, the country exploded in a social revolution which could precipitate the death of the second republic or the demise of the country as another victim of predator neoliberalism.
{"title":"Predator Neoliberalism","authors":"Kamal Dib","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.3","url":null,"abstract":"Lebanon, a multi-confessional state, is undergoing a deep socioeconomic change that could trigger a review of its constitutional arrangement. The tiny republic on the Mediterranean was born in 1920 as a liberal democracy with a market economy, where the Christians had the upper hand in politics and the economy. In 1975, Lebanon witnessed a major war that lasted for fifteen years, and a new political system emerged in 1989, dubbed the Ta’ef Accord. The new constitutional arrangement, also known as the “second republic,” transferred major powers to the Muslims. Under the new republic, illiberal policies were adopted in reconstruction, public finance, and monetary policy, coupled with unprecedented corruption at the highest levels. On 17 October 2019, the country exploded in a social revolution which could precipitate the death of the second republic or the demise of the country as another victim of predator neoliberalism.","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88720360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.123
B. Farhat
The Role of Abdul Hamid II in Facilitating Zionist Hegemony Over Palestine by Fadwa Nusairat (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2019. 255 pp., US$14.00. ISBN 978-9953-82-860-2 The question of how the Zionists managed to take control of Palestinian lands has been a subject of heated debate
{"title":"Review: The Role of Abdul Hamid II in Facilitating Zionist Hegemony Over Palestine, by Fadwa Nusairat","authors":"B. Farhat","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.123","url":null,"abstract":"The Role of Abdul Hamid II in Facilitating Zionist Hegemony Over Palestine by Fadwa Nusairat (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2019. 255 pp., US$14.00. ISBN 978-9953-82-860-2 \u0000\u0000The question of how the Zionists managed to take control of Palestinian lands has been a subject of heated debate","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88914339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.46
Youssef Mohammad Sawani
Since the fall of Gaddafi’s forty-two years of rule, Libya has been facing tremendous challenges of instability and insecurity reflecting and characterized by both a political impasse and a lack of legitimate state institutions. Ad-hoc and non-state formations grew outside the legitimate state boundary and became the real actors, polarizing politics and society while rendering any political dialogue ineffective, especially when confined to exclusionary power-sharing arrangements. Official bodies remain weak and divided, while peripheral actors reject/resist submitting to its authority. While acknowledging that the current Libyan crisis is the product of the interaction of several factors including the Islamists and non-Islamist contestation, regional and tribal dimensions, and foreign interventions, this paper concentrates on the effects of the state approach of the Gaddafi era as well as the failure to adopt and implement reconciliation post the 2011 conflict. Therefore, it is argued that the first step towards realizing peace, security, and development is a departure from the current approach and the necessity of bringing in the real players to agree on a roadmap to reclaim the state by launching state-building processes that have national reconciliation as an essential component at their core. State-building cannot be purely a technical exercise of defining, designing, building, or reforming public institutions, while ignoring reconciliation. No matter how successful such technical state-building processes may be, some parts of the population will remain excluded and major segments of the population are likely to remain highly mistrustful of the (new) state and its institutions. Therefore, addressing this gap is central to a transformative approach to state-building that includes reconciliation in which dealing with the Gaddafi legacy is central to preventing future conflict relapse.
{"title":"Gaddafi’s Legacy, Institutional Development, and National Reconciliation in Libya","authors":"Youssef Mohammad Sawani","doi":"10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.46","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2020.13.1.46","url":null,"abstract":"Since the fall of Gaddafi’s forty-two years of rule, Libya has been facing tremendous challenges of instability and insecurity reflecting and characterized by both a political impasse and a lack of legitimate state institutions. Ad-hoc and non-state formations grew outside the legitimate state boundary and became the real actors, polarizing politics and society while rendering any political dialogue ineffective, especially when confined to exclusionary power-sharing arrangements. Official bodies remain weak and divided, while peripheral actors reject/resist submitting to its authority. While acknowledging that the current Libyan crisis is the product of the interaction of several factors including the Islamists and non-Islamist contestation, regional and tribal dimensions, and foreign interventions, this paper concentrates on the effects of the state approach of the Gaddafi era as well as the failure to adopt and implement reconciliation post the 2011 conflict. Therefore, it is argued that the first step towards realizing peace, security, and development is a departure from the current approach and the necessity of bringing in the real players to agree on a roadmap to reclaim the state by launching state-building processes that have national reconciliation as an essential component at their core. State-building cannot be purely a technical exercise of defining, designing, building, or reforming public institutions, while ignoring reconciliation. No matter how successful such technical state-building processes may be, some parts of the population will remain excluded and major segments of the population are likely to remain highly mistrustful of the (new) state and its institutions. Therefore, addressing this gap is central to a transformative approach to state-building that includes reconciliation in which dealing with the Gaddafi legacy is central to preventing future conflict relapse.","PeriodicalId":39004,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Arab Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76371489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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