6. The Puzzle of Political Reform in the Middle East

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-157
Author(s):  
Augustus Richard Norton
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter assesses the critical issue of political reform in the Middle East. The Arab world has been slow to respond to the global processes of democratization. The chapter then highlights the political economy of states, the persistence of conflict, regime type, and the ambiguity over the relationship between democracy and Islam. This relationship is not necessarily a contradictory one. Islamic discourse is marked by participation and diversity rather than by rigidity and intolerance. Further, as the Arab Spring has illustrated, civil society is vibrant and growing in many states across the region. Meanwhile, responses from the West to political reform have been lukewarm, with stability and regional alliances privileged over democracy. The evidence from the region, even before the Arab uprisings, is that peoples want better and more representative government, even if they remain unclear as to what type of government that should be.

6. The Puzzle of Political Reform in the Middle East

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augustus Richard Norton
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Arab States ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the issue of political reform in the Middle East. More specifically, it considers the enormous challenges that face proponents of political reform in the region. To this end, the chapter focuses on the legacies of state formation that shape the contemporary political systems, as well as the changing economic and social parameters of societies in today’s Middle East. After explaining the democracy deficit in the Middle East, the chapter shows that the Arab states have been slow to respond to the global processes of democratization. It also explores the political economy of Arab states, the persistence of conflict, regime type, and the ambiguity over the relationship between democracy and Islam. Finally, it analyses the Arab Spring as evidence of the vibrancy and growth of civil society in many states across the region.

Israel in the Middle East the Aftermath of the Arab Spring (2010-2017)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Eyal Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Arab Spring

This article describes how in the middle of the winter of 2010 the “Spring of the Arab Nations” suddenly erupted without any warning all over the Middle East. However, the momentum of the uprisings was impeded rather quickly, and the hopes held out for the “Spring of the Arab Nations” turned into frustration and disappointment. While many Israelis were focusing their attention in surprise, and some, with doubt and concern as well about what was happening in the region around them; suddenly, in Israel itself, at the height of the steamy summer of 2011, an “Israeli Spring” broke out. The protesters were young Israelis belonging to the Israeli middle class. Their demands revolved around the slogan, “Let us live in our land.” However, similar to what happened in the Arab world, the Israeli protest subsided little by little. The hassles of daily life and security and foreign affairs concerns once more became the focus of the public's attention. Therefore, the protesters' hopes were disappointed, and Israel's political, economic, and social order remained unshaken. Thus, towards the end of 2017, the memory of the “Israeli spring” was becoming faded and forgotten. However, while the Arab world was sinking into chaos marked by an ever deepening economic and social crisis that deprived its citizens of any sense of security and stability, Israel, by contrast, was experiencing years of stability in both political and security spheres, as well as economic growth and prosperity. This stability enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to remain in power and to maintain the political and social status-quo in Israel.

The Arab Spring: A View from Israel

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haim Bresheeth
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The West ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Arab Spring

The Arab Spring is one of the most complex and surprising political developments of the new century, especially after a decade of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab western propaganda. While is too early to properly evaluate the process and its various national apparitions, it is important to see it in a historical context. This article places the Arab Spring firmly within the history of pan Arabism, and the threat it posed to the west and Israel in its earlier, Nasserist phase. The work of Amin, Marfleet and others, is used to frame the current developments, and present the limited view offered from an Israeli perspective, where any democratisation of the Arab world is seen as a threat. This is so despite the obvious influence the Arab Spring had on protest in Israel in Summer 1011, a protest which has now seemingly spent itself; it is fascinating to note that the only protest movement in the Middle East not involving violent clashes with the regime it criticised, is also the one which has not achieved any of its aims.

scholarly journals Doing Politics in the Recent Arab Uprisings: Towards a Political Discourse Analysis of the Arab Spring Slogans

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 621-645
Author(s):  
Belqes Al-Sowaidi ◽  
Felix Banda ◽  
Arwa Mansour
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Political Discourse Analysis ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Persuasive Effect

The present paper aims to analyse a number of those slogans collected from the sit-in quarters in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Using political discourse analysis, it unravels various typical discourse structures and strategies that are used in slogans in the construction of a sub-genre of political discourse in the Arab world. Drawing data from several mediums, including banners, wall graffiti, audio-visual instruments, chanting, speeches and songs, this paper tries to show the extent to which the slogans serve as a medium by which political complaints and comments are dispensed and consumed. This paper draws on a rhetorical analysis to find out their persuasive effect on shaping the Arab intellect and on the change of the political atmosphere in the region. Lastly, this paper attempts to show to what extent the slogans meet the standards of political discourse and whether they can be considered as a sub-genre of political discourse or not.

scholarly journals Islamister i åpnere landskap: Hvilken rolle i det nye Midtøsten?

Politik ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjørn Olav Utvik
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Arab Spring

The political successes of Islamists following the Arab uprisings of 2011 makes understanding Islamism more important than ever. ey have long been central to oppositional politics in the Arab world. Now they may well become a dominant factor in the emerging new regimes. A necessary starting point is to recognise that the Islamists played a pivotal role in the Arab spring from the start. Furthermore, to grasp the possible ways in which the Islamists may in uence developments to come, research must turn away from essentialising their Islamic ideology and discover the contradictory impulses driving these complex and dynamic social movements. 

8. Islam and International Relations in the Middle East: From Umma to Nation State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mandaville
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic Revival ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the issue of identity in the Middle East from an Islamic perspective. It shows how Islam, in a variety of forms, has interacted with the domestic, regional, and international politics of the region. The chapter first provides an overview of the history and concepts of Islam and international relations in the Middle East before discussing the relationship between pan-Islam, colonialism, and the establishment of modern nation states in the Middle East, using Egypt and Saudi Arabia as case studies. It then explores the political economy of Islamic revival as well as the role of Islam in Cold War geopolitics and in foreign policymaking. It also considers how globalization has acted as a facilitator of transnational Islam and concludes by assessing how the Arab Spring has created new opportunities and challenges for the Islamic movement, along with their implications for Arab states’ foreign policies.

scholarly journals REVIEW: Noted: Questions of great intricacy opened up to non-Arabic audience

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 280
Author(s):  
Philip Leslie Cass
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Arab Media ◽  
Political Messages

Media and Political Contestation in the Contemporary Arab World, edited by Lena Jayyusi and Anne Sofie Roald. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2016. 327 pages. ISBN 978-1-137-5252-2-2.MEDIA and Political Contestation in the Contemporary Arab World explores the extremely complicated reality of the Arab media and its place in the political and cultural debates that are rarely recognised or understood in the west. In the Middle East, media of all kinds, from clothes to pop songs, carry heavily loaded political messages that simply cannot be avoided and which can cause political explosions.

scholarly journals A “New Middle East” Following 9/11 and the “Arab Spring” of 2011?—(Neo)-Orientalist Imaginaries Rejuvenate the (Temporal) Inclusive Exclusion Character of Jus Gentium

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Khaled Al-Kassimi
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
The Arab Spring

The resurgence of a deterministic mode of representation mythologizing Arabs as figuring (threatening) Saracen by judging their epistemological commitments as hostile to Enlightened reason-based ideals is demonstratively identifiable after 9/11, and more so following the Arab uprisings in 2011, when we notice that the Arab in general, and Muslim in particular, was historicized as the “new barbarian” from which (liberal-secular) Westphalian society must be defended. Such neo-Orientalist representations disseminate powerful discursive (symbolic) articulations (i.e., culture talk) —in tandem with the (re)formulation of legal concepts and doctrines situated in jus gentium (i.e., sovereignty, immanence, and pre-emptive defense strategy)—legally adjudicating a redemptive war ostensibly to “moralize” a profane Arabia. Proponents of neo-Orientalism define their philosophical theology as not simply incompatible with Arab epistemology (Ar. نظريةالمعرفةالعربية), but that Arab-Muslims are an irreconcilable threat to Latin-European philosophical theology, thus, accentuating that neo-Orientalism is constituted by an ontological insecurity constituting Arab-Islamic philosophical theology as placing secular modern logic under “siege” and threatening “civil society”. This legal-historical research, therefore, argues that neo-Orientalism not only necessitates figuring the Arab as Islamist for the ontological security of a “modern” liberal-secular mode of Being, but that such essentialist imaginary is a culturalist myth that is transformed into a legal difference which proceeds to argue the necessity of sanctioning a violent episode transforming a supposed lawless “Middle East” receptive to terror, into a lawful “New Middle East” receptive to reason. This sacrilegos process reveals the “inclusive exclusion” temporal ethos of (a positivist) jus gentium which entails maintaining a supposed unbridgeable cultural gap between a (universalized) sovereign Latin-European subject, and a (particularized) Arab object denied sovereignty for the coherence of Latin-European epistemology.

scholarly journals Political reforms in Jordan following the events of the Arab Spring

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-17
Author(s):  
Mazen Hussien Faleh Hawamdeh ◽  
Ahmad Saher Ahmad Al-Qteishat
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Constitutional Amendments ◽  
Political Reforms ◽  
The Arab Spring

Following the events of the Arab Spring and the popular protests that broke out in some countries in the Arab world in 2011, including Jordan, extended political reforms were carried out in Jordan, including major constitutional amendments and developments in political life, political parties and civil society institutions. The study aims to identify the reality of the political reform process in Jordan that took place after the events of the Arab Spring. The importance of the study stems from the depth of the effects of the variables of this period on Jordan and its reform programs and its transformations towards democracy. The study aims to achieve the following objectives: To identify the nature of the factors and reasons that contributed to the outbreak of the current Arab revolutions, and identifying the reality of the process of political reform in Jordan before the events of the Arab Spring, and to study and analyze the political reforms in Jordan after the events of the Arab Spring.

Iran and the Democratic Struggle in the Middle East

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 126-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramin Jahanbegloo
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
The West ◽  
Green Movement ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Middle Easterners

Many commentators in the West have referred to the uprisings sweeping the Middle East and the Maghreb as the “Arab Spring”. If we take a closer look at the young Middle Easterners who launched these democratic demands, it is clear that the Arab Spring started in Iran back in June 2009. As such, the Arab Uprising had a non-Arab beginning in Iran’s Green Movement, and in what was known as the “Twitter Revolution” of young Iranians. Furthermore, the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have reenergized Iranian civil society, helping it become fi rmer and more outspoken in its demand for democratization in Iran.

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