Middle East Law and Governance最新文献

This article focuses on the transformations of Algerian Islamist parties, placing them in a dynamic context. Having undergone both phases since the fall of the ruling party in 1989, Algeria furnishes a case study for analyzing the conditions and challenges of the inclusion and exclusion of Islamist parties. The synchronic and diachronic construction of the Algerian case, combined with a comprehensive and inductive approach, thus allows us to contribute to the inclusion-moderation debate on multiple empirical, methodological, and conceptual levels. Only this dual approach makes it possible to grasp the changes and continuities in the ideology and modes of action of the Islamist parties as well as the evolution of how the regime integrated or excluded them from the political arena. On the level of defining moderation and radicalization, it allows us to differentiate between, on the one hand, political labelling by the various Islamist or non-Islamist actors and institutionally defined legal criteria and, on the other hand, academic concepts. This calls for adopting a dual analysis: what we term a radicalization within the institutional arena (by subverting the foundations of the state, i.e., the Islamic state project) and a radicalization from outside it (by armed violence). In this framework, the political exclusion of an Islamist party correlates closely not with its intrinsic radicality but with the crossing of an electoral threshold, which sets the stage for implementing its radical program. Knowing how the civilian and military authorities assess this threat is thus essential for understanding the exclusionary and inclusionary processes. Next, we must differentiate between inclusion in the electoral game, which is accepted, and inclusion in the executive branch, on which the Islamist parties are internally conflicted. Finally, it behooves us to show that the moderation of programs and modes of action does not stem from (prior) inclusion in the political game, but instead results from a new institutional constraint. It produces specific effects, namely partisan fragmentation, and ambivalence about the identity of Islamist parties.

This article focuses on how courts are represented in Iran’s contemporary cinema. Exploring Iranian movies made since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and more precisely movies of the past 25 years, reveals a concrete transition in the representation of courts and law: moving from an idealistic to a more critical view, and eventually to a realistic perspective. This shift can be understood as a response and an adjustment to the political and social changes in contemporary Iran. The ‘idealistic’ representation of courts portrayed them as a sacred place with a judge presiding over all parties and incidents, tackling dilemmas in the most righteous way and serving infallible justice. This portrayal is found most frequently in movies of the 1990s. The next decade saw the emergence of a critical perspective that included themes such as freedom of speech, women’s rights, or modern Iranian family structures; when it came to the law and the role of courts, movies attacked the legal system. This ‘oppositional representation’ would, for example, portray the judge as ignorant of certain facts, depicting the parties as desperate and helpless against the court, as well as other factors that prevent justice from being served or, even worse, cause the defendant to fall victim to the legal system. Almost simultaneously, in contrast, ‘realistic’ cinematic courtrooms are depicted in another set of movies, in which justice is achieved only to some extent. In this representation, the bench is neither sacred, nor is the judge omniscient, with parties capable of keeping the whole truth from him and of manipulating the court’s decision. Each of these representations requires a different set of narrative structures. This article shows how these narratives have emerged in Iranian cinema. It uses Vladimir Propp’s model for analysing narratives, according to which each narrative is fractionalized into ‘characters’ and ‘functions.’ Using Propp’s model, this article identifies three major cinematic narratives involving courts, namely the ‘idealistic narrative,’ the ‘oppositional narrative,’ and the ‘realistic narrative.’ The article also investigates the impact of social developments in the audiences’ perception of the law as they move away from unreal understandings of justice towards more nuanced and critical ones.