Indonesian Democracy as A Model for Egypt after The Arab Spring

The Arab Spring in 2011 opened the way for democratization in some Arab countries, including Egypt. Egypt succeeded in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak as the president, but Egypt failed in consolidating democracy after holding a general election in 2012. The main factors of the failure in consolidating democracy in Egypt come from internal and external factors. The internal factor was that Egypt had not been ready for democracy , whereas the external factor was foreign intervention due to national interest. This article analyzes the failure of democratization in Egypt by using Jack Snyder and Georg Sorensen’s theory. In the last part of this article, the writer suggested that Egypt should have learned how to consolidate democracy from Indonesia. Indonesia is the best model of democracy for Egypt due to some reasons. The first one is Indonesia and Egypt near a culturally (religious approach), and the second one is Indonesia's success, as the majority Muslim state, in consolidating democracy since 1998.

Blowback or overblown? Why civilians under threat support invasive foreign intervention

How do military tactics shape civilian support for foreign intervention? Critics contend that invasive tactics undermine popular support by alienating the civilian population. Counterexamples suggest that civilians will support invasive tactics when foreign counterinsurgents are willing and able to mitigate a proximate threat. I reconcile these divergent findings by arguing that civilian support is a function of threat perception based on three interacting heuristics: social identity, combatant targeting, and territorial control. To evaluate my theory, I enumerate a survey among Iraqi residents in Baghdad during the anti-ISIS campaign. Respondents preferred more invasive tactics when foreign counterinsurgents assisted the most effective local members of the anti-ISIS coalition. Across sectarian divides, however, respondents uniformly opposed the deployment of foreign troops. These findings suggest that in regime-controlled communities, civilians will support counterinsurgents who are invasive enough to mitigate insurgent threats, but not too invasive as to undermine local autonomy.

AN OTTOMAN ARAB MAN OF LETTERS AND THE MEANINGS OF EMPIRE, c. 1860

This paper returns to one of the germinal texts of nineteenth-century Arab political thought, Butrus al-Bustani's Nafir Suriyya (‘The Clarion of Syria’). A series of broadsides published between September 1860 and April 1861, these reflected on the confessional violence that had rent apart Mount Lebanon and Damascus in mid-1860. As scholars have suggested, Bustani – now regarded as one of the pre-eminent thinkers of the nineteenth-century Arab nahda, or ‘awakening’ – here offered a new vision of Syrian patriotism, which formed part of a longer reflection on political subjectivity, faith, and civilisation. But, this paper argues, these texts can also be read as reflections on the changing workings of empire: on the imperial ruler's duties and attributes and his subjects’ obligations and rights; on the relationship between state and population and capital and province; on imperial administrative reform; and on the dangers foreign intervention posed to Ottoman sovereignty. Drawing on the languages of Ottoman reform and ethical statecraft, as well as on imperial comparisons, Bustani argued against the autonomy some counselled for Mount Lebanon and for wholesale integration with the Ottoman state. These texts offer grounds for methodological reflection and for writing Ottoman Arab thought into broader histories of imperial political thought.

From the Time of Troubles to the Unity Day: Memory, Forgetting and Re-imaging the Past in Russian History

This article examines how the memory of one of the largest sociopolitical crises in the history of Russia (called the Time of Troubles) modified over 400 years. This process is considered as an example of rethinking the traumatic experience of the past and forming a national-patriotic myth on its basis. Several stages of the evolution of the memory of the Time of Troubles are issued: the XVII century – when the interpretation of these events was mainly religious; the XVIII century – when heroic and patriotic ideas about the time of troubles were formed in accordance with the ideals of classicism; the XIX century – the time of the development of the monarchical myth of the Romanov dynasty coming to power; the XX century – when the peasant war and the struggle against foreign intervention became the main dominant in the understanding of events; Modern Russia and the annual celebration of the National Unity Day – a public holiday established in 2005 in memory of the liberation of Moscow in 1612, the main idea of which is the unification of all peoples on the territory of the Russian Federation. It is noted that for centuries in the cultural memory of Russian society, two layers of ideas about the Time of Troubles coexisted. One of them – negative – was the memory of social upheavals and civil war, the other – positive – the memory of victory and overcoming the Troubles, evoking a sense of national pride and hopes for the future.

INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS IN CAMBODIA AND AFGHANISTAN

A civil war marked by the intervention of foreign military troops is known as an internationalized non-international armed conflict.' This type of armed conflict happens often and presents a number of issues of concern to international lawyers. The scope of this article is confined to the application of international humanitarian law in such circumstances, and it does not address the validity of foreign involvement in a civil war. In civil conflicts involving foreign intervention, the sides seldom agree on the facts or their interpretation. As a result, this article is dependent on certain factual assumptions, assumptions for which evidence cannot always be provided.

North Korean Miracle: 30 Уears of Surviving Crisis and Isolation

The article examines those factors that allowed the Kim family regime to stay in power in extremely unfavorable environment. In political science literature, it is generally accepted that an authoritarian regime faces three major threats: an elite conspiracy/coup, a mass protest, a foreign invasion. The article demonstrates that in the case of the DPRK, which is a much poorer part of a divided country, the potential threat of mass popular protests might be higher than in many other authoritarian regimes. However, the autocrat and his entourage successfully counter this threat by exercising an unusually thorough policy of informational self-isolation, further reinforced by strict administrative control and police surveillance. On the other hand, the ever present threat of Seoul-led “unification-by-absorption” strengthens the elites’ unity and reduces the likelihood of conspiracies. This is important since elite conspiracies and coups have constituted the major danger for post-1945 autocracies. North Korean elites understand that even a successful coup can eventually provoke the outbreak of popular discontent, followed by the collapse of North Korean statehood and German-style unification under Seoul’s control. Under this scenario, conspiracy’s winners and losers will perish alike, with all members of the current elite having little chance to retain their power and privileges. Hence, the elite has reasons not to “rock the boat.” Finally, the threat of a foreign invasion (or foreign intervention into a domestic crisis) is successfully neutralized by the existence of a nuclear deterrent. Since the North Korean faces a grave existential threat which is created by the existence of the South, it is ready to sacrifice the economic development for the sake of political stability. Hence, the elite is willing to invest large resources into military programs and overlook the difficulties the self-isolation and other survival-oriented policies create for the economic development of the country.