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Between the military takeover of 1952 and the collapse of the Mubarak regime in 2011, the political system of Egypt depended upon a variety of mechanisms and structures to establish and consolidate its powerbase. Among those, an intricate web of what could be described as ‘patronage politics’ emerged as one of the main foundations of these tools. Throughout the post-1952 era, political patrons and respective clients were influential in Egyptian politics, shaping the policies implemented by Egypt's rulers, as well as the tactics orchestrated by the wider population. On a macro level Patronage Politics in Egypt examines the activities of the NDP (ruling party from 1978-2011) and its opposi...
Stephen J. King considers the reasons that international and domestic efforts toward democratization have failed to take hold in the Arab world. Focusing on Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Algeria, he suggests that a complex set of variables characterizes authoritarian rule and helps to explain both its dynamism and its persistence. King addresses, but moves beyond, how religion and the strongly patriarchal culture influence state structure, policy configuration, ruling coalitions, and legitimization and privatization strategies. He shows how the transformation of authoritarianism has taken place amid shifting social relations and political institutions and how these changes have affected the lives of millions. Ultimately, King's forward-thinking analysis offers a way to enhance the prospects for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.
The idea that developing all sectors of the educational palette is influential for socio-economic development was adopted later in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other world regions. Most efforts went primarily into developing the first stages of education, and rightly so, for many children could not access education at all. Today, all African governments recognize the importance of higher education and increasingly invest in it. They are facing two major, interlinked challenges: rapid population growth and decline in the quality of education. Indeed, despite fertility decline, the region has been confronted with substantial population growth, which will continue for many decades; as such, there is a necessity to increase investment in education. This, in a situation of limited resources, has been at the expense of the quality and the burgeoning of private institutions of higher education. The contributions here discuss the development, quality, and outcomes of higher education in Africa, with a specific focus on relations between Africa and Europe. Issues related to the mobility of African students and scholars are discussed in several national and international case studies.
The effects of neoliberal economic reforms in the Southern Mediterranean are now widely regarded as a main underlying cause of the Arab uprisings. An often neglected dimension is that of the reforms’ implications for local governance. The contributions to this edited volume examine how state power is being re-articulated but also challenged at sub-national levels in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey. They explore the effects of neoliberal economic and local governance reforms such as decentralization, public-private partnerships, and outsourcing in the area of public service delivery, poverty alleviation, and labor market reforms on local patronage networks, public account...
A definitive overview of what political scientists are working on within the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Uprisings of 2011-12 catalyzed a new wave of rigorous, deeply informed research on the politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In The Political Science of the Middle East, Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, and Sean Yom present the definitive overview of this pathbreaking turn. This is a monumental stocktaking organized around a singular theme: new theorizing from the MENA has advanced the frontiers of comparative politics and international relations, and the close-range study of the region occupies a core place in mainstream political science. Its dozen chapters cover...
Contrary to the expectations of the secularization theorists, religious political movements rose to prominence in numerous countries across the globe in the past three decades. By examining the conditions that underlie the electoral fortunes of religious actors in democratic regimes, this book contributes to our understanding of this worldwide religious resurgence. Employing a social movement theory framework, Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics explores the macro and micro dynamics of successful political mobilization by Sephardic Torah Guardians (Shas) in Israel and the National Outlook Movement in Turkey in the recent decades. In a comparative framework, the book demonstrates how ...
The Formation of Kurdishness in Turkey examines political violence, the politics of fear and the Kurdish experience of pain through an analysis of life stories, personal narratives and testimonies of Kurdish subjects in contemporary Turkey. It traces the physical and psychological impacts of the war between the state security forces and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) guerrillas in the last three decades, in Kurdish populated areas in the south-eastern part of Turkey. Focusing on the instrumentalization of violence, the ensuing and manufactured culture of fear, gendered experiences of state violence, pain, incarceration, and corporeal punishment, Ramazan Aras argues that these phenomena...
Ethnicity and Elections in Turkey attempts to understand the mobilization strategies of incumbent parties to consolidate and increase their support among swing voters of an ethnic group. By analyzing the strategy of AKP on voters of Kurdish origin, it investigates the conditions under which it can mobilize them through the clientelistic network and its effectiveness in increasing support for the party. This investigation is conducted through a district and neighborhood level case study conducted in the districts of Beyoğlu, Sancaktepe and Beykoz situated in Istanbul. The main hypotheses are tested through five different steps. Firstly, an examination of electoral results identifies a large ...
Investigating the transformation of the Kurdish liberation movement in Iraq this book explores its development from an armed guerrilla movement, engaged in a war for liberation with the government in Baghdad, into the government of a de facto Kurdish state known as the Kurdistan Regional Government. The book seeks to better explain the nature and evolution of the Kurdish liberation struggle in Iraq, which has had important implications over regional geopolitics. Despite attracting growing international attention, the struggle remains understudied. By applying the theoretical framework of de facto statehood to the post-1991 Kurdish liberation movement, the book offers a new approach to understanding the struggle, with a thorough empirical investigation informed by International Relations theory. Identifying international legitimacy, interaction and identity as significant themes in the politics of de facto states and important variables shaping the evolution and policies of these actors, at both the domestic and international levels, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Middle East Politics and Political Science.
Given the recent inertia in EU-Turkey relations in the midst of regional economic and political upheavals, Europeanization of Turkey takes a step back from the latest headlines to provide a comprehensive stocktaking of EU-inspired reform efforts in Turkey with an eye to understanding how effective or ineffective EU conditionality has been in making Turkey's key political institutions, actors and culture more compatible with European norms. In addition to contributing to the theoretical literature on the differential effects of Europeanization on the domestic realm, this volume also expands the existing scope of research to include questions of how socialization through the accession process ...