Middle East Law and Governance最新文献

This article places the Thawra within recent waves of protest politics in so-called divided societies, particularly the Plenum (Bosnia 2014) and Tishreen (Iraq 2019) protests. It examines the thematic connections between protest waves in relation to contesting consociational power-sharing governance, which has been deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, and Bosnia in the aftermath of civil war or political violence. While protests have addressed a range of issues – corruption, weak and failing public services, and rising unemployment levels – these various strands have been successfully distilled into powerful critiques of the ethnosectarian elites who perpetuate polarization and of the system itself. Towards this, I identify three significant frames developed by protestors in relation to power-sharing: The “People” versus the “Elites”, Trans-sectarian Belonging, and Participatory Citizenship.

This paper focuses on the political economy of aid to determine its impact on Lebanon’s politics of sectarianism. I approach NGOization as a political process that normalizes a situation where citizens are accustomed to functioning without the state, and as an economic process creating a parallel economy. Both trends have expanded with the current crisis. I posit that politics of sectarianism feeds on NGOization: they allow sectarian elites to outsource aid, manage discontent and depoliticize ngo s and cso s, while silencing potential challenges to their order. Thus, organizations aiming to transform the political system lack visibility and leverage, while their space of operation has been shrinking. I also explore the role of international aid on the continuity and durability of the Lebanese state and its neo-patrimonial and clientelist governance mode. NGOization is further reinforced by the fact that national ngo s have been co-opted by foreign donors, which has the effect of depoliticizing their discourse and action.

To what extent is power-sharing theory, used as one of the key conceptual frameworks for Lebanon’s political system, still relevant for charting a way forward amid the country’s cumulative crises? This article heeds the call to position research on Lebanon’s power-sharing in a pluralist research agenda that speaks to a wider knowledge base and to a broader set of everyday policy problems. This agenda articulates itself around three axes: first, building on interdisciplinary research perspectives; second, looking at post-war Lebanon through multi-level and relational perspectives beyond the focus on power-sharing theory and “deeply divided societies” as focal paradigms for exploring conflict mitigation; and third, feeding into critical policy perspectives that probe people’s everyday struggles.

This paper captures women’s religious agency and their bonding with the mosque by taking a snapshot of the discourse and experiences of female preachers, appointed by the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments, who were confronted with the closure of mosques within the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Though these female preachers have managed to perform their preaching roles while being detached from the mosque, their spiritual affinity to the mosque could not escape notice. This paper argues that the detachment of the female preachers from the mosque due to covid-19 offers a novel conceptualization of ‘religious’ agency that could be partially ascribed to their attachment to the mosque, not as a locale for their ‘official’ or ‘semi-official’ affiliation with the state, but as a ‘sacred’ extension of the private space of the home.

This article examines how Lebanon’s power-sharing arrangements, embedded within the politics of sectarianism, entrench “recurring dilemmas” that undermine political change, reform, and accountability. The three dilemmas uncovered in this article include the propensity of Lebanon’s power-sharing system to political deadlock, its institutionalization of impunity, as well as its veritable disconnect from grassroots demands. This article focuses on the case of the Beirut blast and demonstrates how the tragedy represents a microcosm of the convergence of these power-sharing dilemmas. The analysis highlights the limitations of Lebanon’s power-sharing system. It suggests that as long as the current sectarian power-sharing system remains in place, the system’s endemic dilemmas will continue to manifest and preclude meaningful reform, effective policy making and justice.

Diasporas are often viewed as mirrors for their homeland’s politics. The Lebanese diaspora’s involvement in the 2019 Thawra, however, established the diaspora as a locus for autonomous and disruptive political action. Through an analysis of the spatialities of protest, this paper analyses the diaspora’s involvement in the Thawra, its implications for the protest movement, and for the diaspora itself. It argues that diaspora protests gave rise to new tactics and protest repertoires. These mirrored protest activity on the ground, supported protestors in Lebanon, and constituted the diaspora as a locus for contestation and claims-making. Moreover, the diaspora’s mobilization in the Thawra contributed to the consolidation of diasporic identity and the construction of alternative societal imaginaries and conceptions of citizenship that challenge Lebanon’s state-centric and sectarian citizenship regime. This paper thus makes the case for reassessing the autonomous political role of diasporas to gain a fuller understanding of transnational protest dynamics, solidarities, and citizenship beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.

Consociationalism is often perceived as a go-to response to ethnicized conflict, a form of ‘political prescription’ proffered by both external mediators and domestic constitutional designers alike. Power-sharing theory posits that extended periods of cross-community cooperation can lessen divisions, allowing the system to give way to more ‘normal’ politics. However, increasing evidence from Lebanon and elsewhere tracks a different set of incentives. Rather than facilitating a virtuous cycle of cooperation and consensus, a more vicious cycle of immobilism, intransigence, and institutional collapse emerges. In Lebanon, this has coincided with a set of intersecting political, economic, and humanitarian crises. This paper outlines how consociationalism’s causal logic has undergone a full reversal in Lebanon, maps the manifestations and implications for the country, and reflects on what power-sharing theory can learn from Lebanon’s consociational experience.

On-screen female advocates have been the subject of investigation in a growing body of literature over the past two decades. Celluloid depictions of women lawyers in the Middle East are less common. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining two films: In Between and The Accused. These films were chosen for two reasons. First, they constitute rare cinematic representations of female lawyers’ personal lifestyles and the way these lifestyles inform professional identity. Secondly, they evoke detraditionalized versions of gender while emphasising the construction of new on-screen femininities not that far off from modern day legal practice. This paper consists of three parts. The first part examines the striking similarities in the way both films portray female lawyers as role models and outsiders in the legal profession. The second part situates the discussion of the two films within the consumer-based, pleasure-seeking attitude associated with the new aesthetics of legal practice. The third part draws parallels between the fictional representations of the female lawyers in the two films and the reality of legal practice.

In the Greek region of Thrace, the category of Muslim “Minority” citizen has long had social and legal consequences. But is it possible to evade minority status by avoiding recognition as a Muslim? This paper analyzes two representations of “passing” – attempts to access majority status or rights by avoiding classification as Muslim. The first, a Greek tv drama, depicts a young man’s social passing as he struggles to conceal his Minority identity. The second – an example of legal passing – depicts a man avoiding legal classification as a Muslim to have his estate administered under Greek civil rather than Islamic inheritance law. Analyzing “passing” across these contexts illuminates anxieties around minority legibility and how legal and social practices intersect to regulate identity and rights. This analysis problematizes how popular culture representations may unsettle or reinforce the idea of Muslims as a discrete, separately administrable, population of citizens.