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This book offers a comparative perspective on the new wave of revolutions in the MENA region. Recently, a new wave of revolutions has swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, comparable in some respects to the events of the Arab Spring. Revolutionary events have significantly changed the political regimes in Sudan, Algeria and Mali, while Lebanon and Iraq have also witnessed serious revolutionary episodes. Further, a new quality of protests has manifested in Iran, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan. Presenting a variety of country studies, this book identifies similarities and differences between the events of the Arab Spring and the current upheavals in the MENA region and examines thei...
This book examines the projects of administrative and territorial reconstruction of Arab countries as an aftermath of the “Arab Spring”. Additionally, it looks into an active rethinking of the former unitary model, linked by its critics with dictatorship and oppression. The book presents decentralization or even federalization as newly emerging major topics of socio-political debate in the Arab world. As the federalist recipes and projects are specific and the struggle for their implementation has a pronounced variation, different case studies are presented. Countries discussed include Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. The book looks into the background and prerequisites of the federalist experiments of the “Arab Spring”, describes their evolution and current state, and assesses the prospects for the future. It is, therefore, a must-read for scholars of political science, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of previous and current developments in the Arab countries.
This book sheds light on Russia’s motives in the Middle East, examining its growing role in the region and its efforts to defend its national interests. As one of the first volumes to address both domestic and external drivers, it provides a valuable multi-dimensional account of Moscow’s foreign policy. Russian Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East also traces the historical evolution of Russia’s presence in the region, comparing Moscow’s current vision of its diplomatic priorities with the strategic goals of the Soviet Union. Diverse case studies reveal areas of both divergence and convergence between Russia and various Middle Eastern players on a range of issues, including the Syr...
Three decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia has transformed from a fringe player to a resurgent great power in Africa. The October 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi highlighted the appeal of Russia's normative agenda, the ubiquity of Russian military technology, and the breadth of Moscow's presence on the continent. Beneath the pageantry, a darker side of Russia's African resurgence looms large. From Libya to Madagascar, Russia has used sinister tactics to expand its influence, such as private military contractors, shadowy mining and energy deals with authoritarian regimes, and election interference campaigns. This book presents a chronological examination of Russia's post-Cold ...
The 2008 economic and financial crisis marked the beginning of a period of social transformation and uncertainty that continues to characterise present and future social development in unplanned and unexpected ways, with frequently harmful effects. It has highlighted the need for a deeper understanding of crises phenomena and how these affect the overall course of human development. On the one hand, the social sciences constitute a means for acquiring a better understanding of the character of the rapid and complex social transformations associated with crises. On the other hand, they can orientate people and social practices on how a greater degree of collective and democratic control can b...
This book offers insight into the motives behind Moscow’s behaviour in the Persian Gulf (with a specific focus on the GCC member states and Iran), considering Russia’s growing role in the Middle East and its desire to protect national interests using a wide range of means. The book explores the drivers and motivations of the Russian foreign policy in the Gulf region, thus, helping the audience to generate informed prognosis about Moscow’s moves in this area over the next years. In contrast to most studies of Russia’s presence in the region, this book considers the Russian involvement in the Gulf from two standpoints – the Russian and foreign. The idea of the book is to take several key problems of Moscow’s presence in the Gulf, each of these to be covered by two authors—Russian and non-Russian scholars, in order to offer the readers alternative visions of Moscow’s policies towards Iran and the GCC countries
In 2011, Egypt witnessed more protests than any other country in the world: the beginning of a revolutionary process that would unfold in three waves of revolution, followed by two waves of counterrevolution. In addition to providing new and unprecedented empirical data, the book makes two theoretical contributions. First, a new framework is presented for analyzing the state apparatus in Egypt that is based on four pillars of regime support which can either prop upor press upon whoever is in power: the Egyptian military, the business elite, the United States, and the multi-headed opposition. Secondly, the book brings together the literature on bottom-up revolutionary movements and top-down military coups, and introduces the concept of a coup from below incontrast to the revolution from above that took place under Gamal Abdel Nasser.
This book discusses the role of political narratives in shaping perceptions of instability and conceptions of order in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The authors illustrate how, in times of socio-political turmoil and outbursts of discontent such as the Arab Spring, political entrepreneurs explain and justify their political agendas by complementing hard power solutions with attractive ideas and discursive constructions that appeal to domestic constituencies and geopolitical allies. The book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on non-state actors, such as confessional communities and ideological movements, who aim to develop narratives that are convincing to their respective polities. It also studies regional powers that seek to determine their positions in a competitive environment via distinctive narrations of order. In part two, the authors investigate the narratives of global players that aim to explain and justify their role in an evolving international order.