scholarly journals Editorial

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. i-vi
Author(s):  
Malik Mufti ◽  
Katherine Bullock
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Green Revolution ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Opinion Poll ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
The Face ◽  
Election Results ◽  
To Come

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Muslim world is undergoing a political upheaval of historic proportions. The Arab Spring is one of the most recent and dramatic manifestations, with millions of men and women across the Arab world taking to the streets – often in the face of brutal repression ‒ to demand the reform or overthrow of their authoritarian governments.Their bravery has already led to the ouster of four dictators – in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen – and the process is still far from over. But this uprising is only part of a much broader phenomenon, as a reviewof just the past five years demonstrates. In late 2008, largely free and fairelections ended two years of military-backed emergency rule in Bangladesh,and put the country back on a democratic track. In 2009, similarelections in Indonesia consolidated the democratic regime that had beenin place there for just over a decade. That same year in Iran, by contrast, national elections, which were widely viewed as having been rigged, ledto the so-called “Green Revolution” – the biggest prodemocratic uprisingagainst the authoritarian regime there since the revolution of 1979. In2010, Iraq held its second, and far more representative, elections since theoverthrow of the Ba’athist regime. In 2011, national elections in Turkey that returned the AK Party to power with its largest electoral victory yet, coupled with ongoing judicial investigations into subversive activities byhard-line authoritarian elements, marked a decisive turning point in Turkey’s democratic evolution. In 2012, the willingness of Senegal’s president to step down peacefully after losing an election there seemed to confirm thevictory of democracy in that country as well.As the suppression of Iran’s Green Revolution, the 2012 military coupthat interrupted Mali’s democratic experiment, and the ongoing violencein several of the other transitioning polities, indicate the process is neithersmooth nor unidirectional. Several aspects of the current upheaval, however, are already clear. First and foremost, the political mobilization of theMuslim masses – the eruption of “people power” – is now an irreversiblereality for the foreseeable future, so that only regimes that are genuinelyrepresentative and accountable can hope to enjoy any legitimacy in thefuture. Second, as public opinion poll after poll has demonstrated, democracyhas become a hegemonic concept throughout the Muslim world aswell ‒ meaning that effective governance and opposition will need to take place within its institutional and normative parameters. Third, as Table 1shows, judging by the most recent election results, in most of the Middle Eastern states at least, political parties rooted in an Islamist background are likely to garner the lion’s share of electoral support for some time to come ...

Greece’s Syriza may lose 2019 vote to come back later

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Interest Rates ◽  
Opinion Poll ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Government Bonds ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Pension Reforms ◽  
International Investors ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Come ◽  
New Democracy

Significance The minority Syriza government has declared its intention to row back from tax and pension reforms to regain popularity ahead of the upcoming polls and the autumn national elections. Since its rushed-out programme, the 11-percentage-point opinion poll lead that opposition New Democracy (ND) had built up has nearly halved, but Syriza has angered its international creditors, who see it as having reneged on post-bailout commitments. Impacts EU partners could revoke debt repayment concessions forcing the government to call on reserves. Interest rates on government bonds will rise as international investors fear a return to fiscal uncertainty. The electorate could turn from Syriza over the longer term, because of its repeated policy U-turns.

Christian Martyrs under Islam

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian C. Sahner
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Mixed Marriages ◽  
Islamic Empire ◽  
To Come ◽  
Early Islamic

How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? This book explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, the book introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity; high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet; and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. The book argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. The book examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim–Christian relations in the centuries to come.

Clientelism, Constituency Services, and Elections in Muslim Societies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Corstange ◽  
Erin York
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Public Goods Provision ◽  
Successful Strategy ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Cross National

This chapter examines the prevalence and implications of clientelism and patronage in elections in Muslim societies. The authors use cross-national evidence to show that, while clientelism is common in the Muslim world, its presence is linked more to political and economic factors than to cultural attributes. They use case evidence from within the Arab world to examine the use of clientelism in practice, and find that this linkage strategy is especially advantageous for ruling parties, but also disadvantages poor and rural communities with its transactional nature and poor public goods provision. Finally, the authors argue that clientelism is not the only successful strategy for vote-seeking politicians, even in patronage-oriented settings, as political outsiders successfully use institutionalized constituency service to attract electoral support.

Human Rights and Cultural Difference: Middle Eastern Perspectives

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Zubaida
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
The West ◽  
Current Concerns

The idea of a universal doctrine of human rights is currently under attack in the name of cultural particularism and difference. Political leaders in China, Indonesia and Singapore have rejected Western expressions of concern about violations of human rights by their governments, with the argument that Western conceptions of human rights are not universal but culturally specific to the West, and the effort to impose these ideas on others is no less than arrogant cultural imperialism and interference in the affairs of sovereign states. In the Muslim world, too, we hear rejections of Western notions of human rights as culturally specific and the assertion that Islam has its own concepts of rights (which, for a believer, are universal). In this essay I shall explore some of the issues raised in this regard, with examples drawn mainly from Egypt and the Arab world, but which have obvious implications for current concerns in Turkey. I should make it clear at the outset that there is no one Islamic position on this issue, but many. In the Arab world, but more specially in Turkey, there are many Muslim thinkers and activists who have produced Muslim formulations of rights which are not different from the universal ideals.

Parliamentary Elections in Algeria, 2017

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Minakshi Sardar
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
National Liberation Front ◽  
Election Results ◽  
To Come

The Algerian parliamentary election held May in 2017 was an important event amidst the low voter turnout and public uproar over worsening economic conditions. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika regime will remain for some time as he despite his ill health and poor performance in the election compared to 2012 managed to come back to the power. Since 1962, Algerian tryst with electoral politics have been an interesting chapter of the very few democracies in Arab world. The constitutional framework has hugely contributed to maintain the political situation with major amendments. This article would look into the 2017 election results and will touch upon the Algerian journey of electoral politics since 1962. While the ruling coalition comprising National Liberation Front (FLN) and National Democratic Rally (RND) retained power, there has been a shift in their electoral successes. The election witnessed one of the lowest recorded voter turnouts reflecting lack of public interest.

Studying Modern Arabic Literature

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Face ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Modern Arabic

This book is devoted to the life and academic legacy of Mustafa Badawi who transformed the study of modern Arabic literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to the 1960s the study of Arabic literature, both classical and modern, had barely been emancipated from the academic approaches of orientalism. The appointment of Badawi as Oxford University's first lecturer in modern Arabic literature changed the face of this subject as Badawi showed, through his teaching and research, that Arabic literature was making vibrant contributions to global culture and thought. Part biography, part collection of critical essays, this book celebrates Badawi's immense contribution to the field and explores his role as a public intellectual in the Arab world and the west.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Oppression ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.

Populist Parties in Lithuania: Curious Case of Party Order and Justice and its Leadership

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mindaugas Jurkynas
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Leadership Selection ◽  
Political Careers ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Selection Rules ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
The Face

AbstractThe article discusses conceptualisation of populism, Lithuania’s party system and electoral dynamics and their relation to the sustainability of populist parties. Special attention is given to Party Order and Justice, a former populist and protest party, and its leadership, namely to the issues related to scope and competencies of a leader’s intra-partisan power, leadership selection rules and history, development of leaders’ political careers and their electoral activity. The L ithuanian party system now exhibits moderate fragmentation without centrifugal tendencies. Voter volatility is still relatively high, yet the share of new parties has dropped to zero. The protest and populist parties in Lithuania went into the margins of political establishment. Popularity of the Order and Justice party has long been connected to the formerly impeached president Rolandas Paksas. His long-term leadership in the face of plummeting electoral support and an emphasis on his political martyrdom resulted in poor electoral performances, ensuing internal squabbles and his departure. Party Order and Justice’s internal regulations, however, remained favourable to strong leadership.

Islamists between revolution and the state: an epilogue

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Ghani Imad
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
New Type ◽  
Political Realities

The problematic addressed in this article is the challenge initiated by the Arab revolutions to reform the Arab political system in such a way as to facilitate the incorporation of ‘democracy’ at the core of its structure. Given the profound repercussions, this issue has become the most serious matter facing the forces of change in the Arab world today; meanwhile, it forms the most prominent challenge and the most difficult test confronting Islamists. The Islamist phenomenon is not an alien implant that descended upon us from another planet beyond the social context or manifestations of history. Thus it cannot but be an expression of political, cultural, and social needs and crises. Over the years this phenomenon has presented, through its discourse, an ideological logic that falls within the context of ‘advocacy’; however, today Islamists find themselves in office, and in a new context that requires them to produce a new type of discourse that pertains to the context of a ‘state’. Political participation ‘tames’ ideology and pushes political actors to rationalize their discourse in the face of daily political realities and the necessity of achievement. The logic of advocacy differs from that of the state: in the case of advocacy, ideology represents an enriching asset, whereas in the case of the state, it constitutes a heavy burden. This is one reason why so much discourse exists within religious jurisprudence related to interest or necessity or balancing outcomes. This article forms an epilogue to the series of articles on religion and the state published in previous issues of this journal. It adopts the methodologies of ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘case studies’ in an attempt to examine the arguments presented by Islamists under pressure from the opposition. It analyses the experiences, and the constraints, that inhibit the production of a ‘model’, and monitors the development of the discourse, its structure, and transformations between advocacy, revolution and the state.

scholarly journals “Red Vienna” and the rise of the populist right

2021 ◽  
pp. 096977642110316
Author(s):  
Juergen Essletzbichler ◽  
Johannes Forcher
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Development ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Housing Costs ◽  
Ward Level ◽  
Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Municipal Housing

While research on the spatial variation in populist right voting focuses on the role of “places left behind”, this paper examines the spatial distribution of populist right voting in one of the fastest growing capital cities of Europe, Vienna. Combining detailed electoral data of the 2017 national elections at the statistical ward level and the location of municipal housing units, the paper examines why the populist right “Austrian Freedom Party” (FPOE) performs better in the former bulwarks of socialism, in the municipal housing areas of “Red Vienna”. The paper links the socio-demographic development of Vienna and its municipal housing policy with election results and explores three possible reasons for elevated FPOE shares in municipal housing areas: rising housing costs pushed an increasing number of socially and economically vulnerable into the municipal housing sector and so increased the FPOE voter pool in those areas; European Union accession and changes in regulation allowed foreign citizens to apply to and obtain municipal housing flats triggering a backlash from Austrian municipal housing residents; and municipal housing is located in disadvantaged neighbourhoods further enhancing the FPOE voter pool. The paper demonstrates that higher FPOE vote shares in areas with high municipal housing shares are due primarily to higher shares of formally less educated residents, neighbourhood context and they are marginally elevated in those municipal housing areas experiencing a larger influx of foreign residents.

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