Law and Revolution

Author(s):  
Nimer Sultany

What is the effect of revolutions on legal systems? What is the role of constitutions in legitimating regimes? How do constitutions and revolutions converge or clash? Taking the Arab Spring as its case study, this book explores the role of law and constitutions during societal upheavals, and critically evaluates the different trajectories they could follow in a revolutionary setting. The book urges a rethinking of major categories in political, legal, and constitutional theory in light of the Arab Spring. The book is a novel and comprehensive examination of the constitutional order that preceded and followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, and Bahrain. It also provides the first thorough discussion of the trials of former regime officials in Egypt and Tunisia. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including an in-depth analysis of recent court rulings in several Arab countries, the book illustrates the contradictory roles of law and constitutions. The book also contrasts the Arab Spring with other revolutionary situations and demonstrates how the Arab Spring provides a laboratory for examining scholarly ideas about revolutions, legitimacy, legality, continuity, popular sovereignty, and constituent power.

Author(s):  
L. Fituni

The author presents his own original conception of the 2011 Arab upheavals. First, he tries to find parallels between the Arab Spring and the 19th century European Spring of Peoples. Second, he dwells on the idea of three types of transition in the Arab World: economic, demographic, and ideological. Third, he reflects on the issues of democracy and autocracy in the Arab countries emphasizing the role of youth. Fourth, he puts forward some new ideas as regards the relationship between Europe and the Arab World, offering such terms as “democratic internationalism” and “young democratic safety belt” in the Mediterranean region.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-71
Author(s):  
Marta Stempień

Nasheeds outpace the era of Internet and Youtube. Jihadist poetry in the Islamist hymns can be seen as an extension of the 19th-century anticolonial style of poetry called qaseeda. Presented article shows that nasheeds were not always a significant element in the jihadi culture. The increase of their role was observed quite recently, after the outbreak of the “Arab Spring”. This article is a case study. It attempts to fill a gap in research on the IS’s propaganda materials. The major objective of this article is to investigate the phenomenon of jihadist naseeds, including their role in the ‘jihadi culture’. The author seeks to answer to the question whether the presented facts may indicate the increase in their role occurred with the transfer of IS’ activities to cyberspace and whether it will be intensified in the future. The article takes into account historical conditions, briefly describing the genesis of the naseeds and their proliferation after the events of the “Arab Spring”. Then, using systemic analysis, the author presents their role in the activities of the Islamic State. In addition, theoretical and empirical research methods, such as: scientific literature analysis, case analysis, content analysis, classification, generalization were taken to solve the research problem.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 819
Author(s):  
Haitham A. Aldreabi

the events of the Arab Spring attracted the attention of many scholars from various disciplines. However, the general trend of existing literature seems to ignore the different cultural representations within the Arab world leading for assumptions that the uprisings share similar outcomes and/or motivations. This article attempts to deconstruct the terms Arab Spring and Arab world through shedding light on two of the most influential uprisings that brought about social, economic, and political changes. To do so, it combines CDA and narrative theory to address the subject of the thematic nature of the subsequent media messages during the Egyptian and Syrian uprisings to investigate the process of meaning-making and the role of language in social reality construction. The purpose is to motivate researchers to address the largely ignored issue of the different representations in media and narratives.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Rainer Grote

Abstract Part of a special issue devoted to the role of parliaments in contemporary Arab politics, this article gives an oversight of the evolution of the constitutional rules governing the status and powers of Arab parliamentary assemblies following the “Arab spring” and during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Parliaments have traditionally played a marginal role in Arab constitutional theory and practice. Although the strengthening of the role and powers of parliaments and a rebalancing of the executive-legislative relations in favour of the latter featured prominently in the reform agendas emerging from the protest movements of the “Arab spring,” these movements proved unable to produce lasting change. The reforms have either been rolled back by oppressive governments or given way to a political pactice of renewed presidential dominance which diverges considerably from the initial aspirations of the reformers. The highly unfavourable conditions existing in most Arab countries – with internally divided democratic reform movements, entrenched military, and political elites determined to resist genuine democratic change with all means available and powerful external actors supporting the domestic status quo – are likely to ensure that parliaments will remain confined to a largely ornamental role in Arab politics in the foreseeable future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-542
Author(s):  
Aleksey Mikhailovich Vasiliev ◽  
Natalia Aleksandrovna Zherlitsina

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the tenth anniversary of the revolutionary events in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), called the Arab Spring. The relevance of the study of the consequences of political transformations in Arab countries is due to the incompleteness of the modernization processes in such areas as public administration, justice and human rights, which gave rise to the discontent of the active part of society, which had initiated the protests. The idea of the research was to compare the causes of popular uprisings, the methods of political struggle, the main actors and the results of the Arab Spring for most of the countries affected by this process. Particular attention has been paid to the growing popularity of Islamist political forces, which have given their answers and pseudo-answers to acute societal issues. With the help of comparative and typological analysis, the peculiarities of different models of political development in the Middle East and North African countries have been studied. Over the past decade, world science has accumulated a significant layer of research on the Arab Spring phenomenon. The authors have taken into account a wide range of opinions of scholars from Europe, the United States, Turkey, Israel, and the Arab states. Aiming to assess the political transformation of the MENA region over the past 10 years, this study analyzes changes in the position of external actors such as Russia and the USA. The authors conclude that the influence of the US as a whole in the region has decreased, while the influence of Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia has increased. Israel has managed to strengthen its own security by establishing normal relations with a number of Arab states in the region. The popular unrest that erupted again in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Algeria, and Tunisia in 2018-2021 was objectively caused by the same conditions that had given rise to the Arab Spring and with the same uncertain results so far.


Islamology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Irina Tsaregorodtseva

The pivotal goal of the study is to reveal the role of the Islamist parties and movements in politics in Egypt and Tunisia before and after the protests of the ‘Arab spring’. In addition, author  explains how various Islamist groups interacted with each other and which factors determined the nature of their interaction. According to preliminary observations, there were several common features in the character of Islamists’ participation in politics in Egypt and Tunisia after the Mubarak and Ben Ali. By means of comparative analysis this research shows why Tunisian Islamists appeared to be more successful in politics than their Egyptian counterparts. The method of case-study was employed to investigate the relations between Islamist groups in 20 and 21 centuries. Eventually, the following conclusion was reached: these relations were highly determined not by common goals and ideological closeness of the Islamists, but rather by historical hostility towards each other and pragmatic interests.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174619792098136
Author(s):  
Sansom Milton

In this paper, the role of higher education in post-uprising Libya is analysed in terms of its relationship with transitional processes of democratization and civic development. It begins by contextualising the Libyan uprising within the optimism of the ‘Arab Spring’ transitions in the Middle East. Following this, the relationship between higher education and politics under the Qadhafi regime and in the immediate aftermath of its overthrow is discussed. A case-study of a programme designed to support Tripoli University in contributing towards democratisation will then be presented. The findings of the case-study will be reflected upon to offer a set of recommendations for international actors engaging in political and civic education in conflict-affected settings, in particular in the Middle East.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 1194-1209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwan M Kraidy

Islamic State’s (IS) image-warfare presents an auspicious opportunity to grasp the growing role of digital images in emerging configurations of global conflict. To understand IS’ image-warfare, this article explores the central role of digital images in the group’s war spectacle and identifies a key modality of this new kind of warfare: global networked affect. To this end, the analysis focuses on three primary sources: two Arabic-language IS books, Management of Savagery (2004) and O’ Media Worker, You Are a Mujahid!, 2nd Edition (2016), and a video, Healing the Believers’ Chests (2015), featuring the spectacular burning of a Jordanian air force pilot captured by IS. It uses the method of ‘iconology’ within a case-study approach. I analyze IS’ doctrine of image-warfare explained in the two books and, in turn, examine how this doctrine is executed in IS video production, conceptualizing digital video as a specific permutation of moving digital images uniquely able to enact, and via repetition, to maintain, visual and narrative tension between movement and stillness, speed and slowness, that diffuses global network affect. Using a theoretical framework combining spectacle, new media phenomenology, and affect theory, the article concludes that global networked affect is projectilic, mimicking fast, lethal, penetrative objects. IS visual warfare, I argue, is best understood through the notion of the ‘projectilic image’.


Author(s):  
I. Labinskaya

Political developments in North Africa and the Middle East that have begun in January 2011 are gaining strength and involve an increasing number of Arab countries. The participants of the Roundtable – experts from IMEMO, Institute of Oriental Studies (RAS), Institute of the USA and Canada (RAS) and Mrs. E. Suponina from “Moscow News” newspaper analyzed a wide range of issues associated with these events. Among them are: 1) the reasons for such a large-scale explosion, 2) the nature of the discussed developments (revolutions, riots?) and who are the subjects of the current “Arab drama”, 3) the role of Islam and political Islamism, 4) the role of external factors.


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