Introduction

Author(s):  
Luis Martinez

This chapter is the general introduction to The State in North Africa. After the Arab Uprisings. Until the Arab revolts, the process of state consolidation in North Africa was believed to be completed, and territory and border control came under state sovereignty. The governments of North Africa discovered with dismay that they were facing challenges that undermined this long task of territorial unification as well as the cultural and administrative harmonization undertaken in the wake of their independence. The introduction ends by presenting the general outline of the book.

Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This book presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon's use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Muʾtaman Ibn Hūd's extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron's Theorem and Ceva's Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī's interesting proof of Euclid's parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references.


This collection brings together scholars of jurisprudence and political theory to probe the question of ‘legitimacy’. It offers discussions that interrogate the nature of legitimacy, how legitimacy is intertwined with notions of statehood, and how legitimacy reaches beyond the state into supranational institutions and international law. Chapter I considers benefit-based, merit-based, and will-based theories of state legitimacy. Chapter II examines the relationship between expertise and legitimate political authority. Chapter III attempts to make sense of John Rawls’s account of legitimacy in his later work. Chapter IV observes that state sovereignty persists, since no alternative is available, and that the success of the assortment of international organizations that challenge state sovereignty depends on their ability to attract loyalty. Chapter V argues that, to be complete, an account of a state’s legitimacy must evaluate not only its powers and its institutions, but also its officials. Chapter VI covers the rule of law and state legitimacy. Chapter VII considers the legitimation of the nation state in a post-national world. Chapter VIII contends that legitimacy beyond the state should be understood as a subject-conferred attribute of specific norms that generates no more than a duty to respect those norms. Chapter IX is a reply to critics of attempts to ground the legitimacy of suprastate institutions in constitutionalism. Chapter X examines Joseph Raz’s perfectionist liberalism. Chapter XI attempts to bring some order to debates about the legitimacy of international courts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-340
Author(s):  
Ridwan Al-Sayyid

This paper tackles the relationship between Islam and the state in light of the ongoing revolutions. It focuses on two perspectives: the Islamists' claim that the Shari'a and not the umma (community) are the source of legitimacy in the evolving regimes; and that it is the duty of the state to protect religion and apply the Shari'a. The main disadvantage of these propositions is that they preclude the Umma both from political power and Shari'a, thus pitting it against these two assets which become manipulated to its disadvantage by those holding power. On the other hand, an open-minded and reformist Islamic perspective believes in people regaining the prerogative to rule themselves, guided by their intellect and the public good. The main call for the Arab uprisings is to quit political Islam, which seems to be the major threat to religion, and dangerously divisive for societies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Fennell

High rates of desertion and surrender during the battles in North Africa in the summer of 1942 were a major factor in Eighth Army’s poor combat performance. At the time, some suggested that these problems were symptomatic of a lack of courage or even of cowardice. There are two broad strands to the conceptualization of courage and cowardice. One focuses on the willingness of the person to fight; the other puts emphasis on how actions express an individual’s ability to cope with fear. Whichever conceptualization is used, high morale motivates the soldier to fight and shields the ordinary recruit from his fear, preventing it from overcoming him in battle. Where morale fails, the soldier is left demotivated and burdened with his terror and, therefore, and is therefore prone to desertion or surrender. Because it is extremely difficult to maintain morale at a continuously high level in an environment governed by chance and managed by humans, all soldiers can find themselves in situations where their actions may be judged as cowardly. Alternatively, if they are properly motivated to fight and prepared by the state and military to deal with the unavoidable fear of combat, all soldiers can be labelled courageous. Accordingly, emotive terms should be avoided when attempting to describe rationally explainable outcomes. The undoubtedly negative connotations attached to cowardice in battle and the positive ones attached to courage are, therefore, arguably unhelpful in understanding Eighth Army’s performance in the summer of 1942 and the human dimension in warfare more generally.


2021 ◽  
pp. 83-88
Author(s):  
Anna Turenko

Economic sovereignty and its elements are analyzed in the article. It is emphasized that a significant step for rethinking approaches to the characteristics of the sovereignty of the state, in particular, the economic became European integration processes. On the example of tax sovereignty as a basic component of economic sovereignty, it is argued that state sovereignty and its realization depends not only on the right of state to independently decide on tax-legal regulation, but also on the nature of those measures selected by the state to carry out regulatory influences.


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