ONN WINCKLER, Demographic Developments and Population Policies in Ba⊂thist Syria (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999). Pp. 223. $100.00 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Rabo

The globe is estimated to have 6 billion people today. The rapid increase of the human population has for decades been a common Western bogeyman. Now, at the turn of the millennium, the threat is brought out again. Today “the human time bomb” connotes uncontrolled fecundity in the Other, the non-Western or non-European. Demographic research shows that many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have among the highest rates of population growth in the contemporary world. Unlike Europe, where the nightmare of demographers and politicians is the aging and decreasing population, the Middle East still has a rapidly increasing and young population. Quite clearly, many politicians in the European Union are worried about the “uncontrollable overflow” of populations over its borders from the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores.

Author(s):  
Ruth Hanau Santini

This paper looks at the qualitative change in the foreign policy discourse by the European Union towards the Middle East, as well as the EU’s overall degree of consistency between words and deeds. By looking at European Council Conclusions as well as General Affairs Council conclusions, it will be argued that on a discursive level the Union has taken stock of the emergence of new threats to its security, and has started shifting its attention from state failure and regional conflicts to the threats posed by terrorism and non-conventional proliferation. Secondly, by differentiating among three kinds of coherence, it will be shown that the main source of incoherence in the Union external action in the Middle East is not to be found in its institutional or horizontal dimensions, but in its vertical level, that is between the Union and member states. Examples will be provided in order to substantiate an overall claim: the EU security discourse might have changed; its policies however remain driven by the difficult balancing exercise between Brussels and national capitals.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v3i2.184


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 230-240
Author(s):  
Sara Salem

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.


Modern Italy ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffaella A. Del Sarto ◽  
Nathalie Tocci

Focusing on Italy's Middle East policies under the second Berlusconi (2001–2006) and the second Prodi (2006–2008) governments, this article assesses the manner and extent to which the observed foreign policy shifts between the two governments can be explained in terms of the rebalancing between a ‘Europeanist’ and a transatlantic orientation. Arguing that Rome's policy towards the Middle East hinges less on Italy's specific interests and objectives in the region and more on whether the preference of the government in power is to foster closer ties to the United States or concentrate on the European Union, the analysis highlights how these swings of the pendulum along the EU–US axis are inextricably linked to a number of underlying structural weaknesses of Rome's foreign policy. In particular, the oscillations can be explained by the prevalence of short-term political (and domestic) considerations and the absence of long-term, substantive political strategies, or, in short, by the phenomenon of ‘politics without policy’ that often characterises Italy's foreign policy.


2019 ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Hazem Hanbal ◽  
◽  
Saad Metawa ◽  

Globally, Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) are considered the main contributors to economic activities. In the European Union, SMEs account for around 67 percent of the overall employment by the private sector and were considered the cushion that protected the economy during the recent financial crisis in 2008 [2]. While in the USA, and according to the Small Business Administration and Small Business House, SMEs are responsible for more than half of the private sector non-farm GDP of the nation. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, a recent study by the World Bank revealed that SMEs employ around 40 percent of the workforce in the formal sector (non-agriculture). This number would increase if the informal sector were included. Generally, SMEs are seen as the potential for economic development and a significant source for jobs creation, especially when looking into developing countries. In Egypt, with the declining role of the government being the primary employer until the nineties of last century, and the private sector taking over this role, and the fact that SMEs are the significant portion of the private sector, it is significantly essential to support SMEs for the creation of new jobs, and overall social stability. Constrains facing SMEs are many and are usually different from those facing large businesses. It is also observed that rates of business failure within SMEs are generally higher than with large corporates. This paper aims to seek to identify the reasons behind the failure of SMEs, with a look into the Egyptian and Middle East situations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 97-121
Author(s):  
Thomas Klikauer ◽  
Norman Simms ◽  
Helge F. Jani ◽  
Bob Beatty ◽  
Nicholas Lokker

Jay Julian Rosellini, The German New Right: AfD, PEGIDA and the Re-imagining of National Identity (London: C. Hurst, 2019).Simon Bulmer and William E. Paterson, Germany and the European Union: Europe’s Reluctant Hegemon? (London: Red Globe Press, 2019).Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).Stephan Jaeger, The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum: From Narrative, Memory, and Experience to Experientiality (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020).Robert M. Jarvis, Gambling under the Swastika: Casinos, Horse Racing, Lotteries, and Other Forms of Betting in Nazi Germany (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2019).


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