FROM CHAOS TO CHAOS: SOUTH YEMEN 50 YEARS AFTER THE BRITISH DEPARTURE

Fifty years after the British departure the future of South Arabia or South Yemen is just as uncertain as it was on 30 November 1967, when the People's Republic of South Yemen (PRSY) came into existence. The old order was swept away in the revolutionary tide of the mid- 20^th century to be replaced by a Marxist state. Yet, within less than 23 years the new order was undermined by unresolved issues inherited from South Arabia and led to an ill-prepared union with the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) in 1990. Today, after over two and half years of war, Yemen is fragmenting and one outcome might be the return of a southern state which will have to confront the same unresolved issues. Are southerners Yemenis or South Yemenis? Can institutions be created to overcome tribal and regional differences with the South? Can a viable economy be created in a country with so few natural resources? This article provides a history of the region and the conflicts of the last 50 years, along with a consideration of the present situation and a discussion of the enduring issues.     

Fragmenting states,new regimes: militarized state violence and transition in the Middle East

Scholars working in the transitology tradition assume that authoritarian breakdown leads to movement towards democratization after an initial period of uncertainty. If a transition falls short of democratization, there is an assumption that a return to authoritarian normalcy has transpired. Yet, whether one looks at Egypt, Libya, Syria, or Bahrain, the emergent trend is neither democratization, a return to the old authoritarian order, or a delayed transition. Rather, the weakening and fragmenting of regimes by popular mobilizations stimulated elites’ militarization of the state apparatus and unprecedented levels of state violence against ordinary citizens in a process of regime re-making.     

Class forces,transition and the Arab uprisings: a comparison of Tunisia,Egypt and Syria

This article intervenes into an ongoing debate on authoritarian regimes in the Arab world following the uprisings of 2011, in particular addressing the perceived failure of those uprisings to bring about “transition” to liberal democratic models. Drawing upon the method of comparative historical sociology used in seminal analyses of democratization and dictatorship in Europe, Asia and the Americas, the article seeks to explain the varying trajectories of the Arab Uprising states in terms of several structural factors, namely the balance of class forces, the relative autonomy of the state and the geo-political context. The article provides an empirical comparison of the cases of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria as points on a continuum of outcomes following the Arab uprising. The article mounts a critique of the absence of class analysis in mainstream transition theory and hypothesises instead an important role for workers’ movements in bringing about even basic elements of liberal democracy. The empirical comparison is shown to support this hypothesis, demonstrating that in Tunisia, the state where the worker's movement was strongest a constitutional settlement has been reached while Syria, the state with the weakest and least independent workers’ movement has descended into counter-revolution and civil war: the case of Egypt lying between these two poles.     

从“阿拉伯之春”到“占领”运动——全球抗议周期中的框架转型及其效果

2010年年底以来发生在西亚北非的"阿拉伯之春"以及以美国"占领华尔街"运动为代表的系列"占领"运动,被国内外学术界视为构成新一轮全球抗议周期的组成部分。作者从社会运动理论有关主框架和抗议周期之间的关系出发,考察了"阿拉伯之春"和系列"占领"运动之间的联系与异同。"阿拉伯之春"中一个具有创新性的"变革"主框架的出现,构成此轮抗议周期兴起并具备强大动员能力的重要原因;而当系列"占领"运动在借鉴"阿拉伯之春"的话语和象征体系的基础上提出了一种"占领"主框架时,抗议周期在主框架上经历了从"变革"到"占领"的转型过程。然而,与"变革"主框架相比,"占领"主框架在经验的可信度、经历的可测量度和观念的重要性上存在明显不足,这是系列"占领"运动的动员能力无法与"阿拉伯之春"相比的重要原因。鉴于从"阿拉伯之春"到系列"占领"运动之间的意义和象征体系的转型并不成功,大致可以预料,除非新的社会运动对话语体系进行创造性的改造,否则,这一波全球抗议周期将趋于式微。     

The limits of authoritarian solidarity: The Gulf monarchies and preserving authoritarian rule during the Arab Spring

Scholars have recently begun to examine how authoritarian rulers cooperate with each other in order to fend off popular challenges to their power. During the Arab Spring the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) supported fellow authoritarian regimes in some cases while backing opposition movements in others. Existing theoretical approaches fail to explain this variation. Advancing the study on authoritarian cooperation, this article develops a theoretical approach that sets out to explain how authoritarian regimes reach their decisions. Drawing on poliheuristic foreign policy analysis, it argues that perceptions of similarity serve as a filter for estimating threats to regime survival at home. If regimes perceive the situation in other countries as similar to their own, supporting other authoritarian regimes becomes the only acceptable strategy. In contrast, if perceptions of similarity are low, regimes also consider other options and evaluate their implications beyond the domestic political arena. Applying this framework to the example of the GCC states during the Arab Spring, the analysis reveals covariation between perceptions of similarity and threat among GCC regimes, on the one hand, and their strategies, on the other.     

Contesting Citizenship in the Arab Revolutions: Youth,Women, and Refugees

Focusing on youth, women, and refugees in the context of the ongoing Arab revolutions, this article explores how constructions of citizenship are being challenged. More than 40 percent of the population in the Arab world is under the age of eighteen, and youth are expressing a strong civic motivation and agency for change. Second, with regard to women’s participation in the Arab revolutions, while highly visible on the Arab streets, to date they have been largely excluded from participating in subsequent more formal political processes. Third, the ensuing large refugee populations in the Arab world further challenge understandings of citizenship. This article proposes that exploring the role of youth, women, and refugees in contesting citizenship in the ongoing revolutions of the Arab world challenges not only conceptions of citizenship in the Arab world but also how we understand conceptions of civil society.     

The End of Regional Middle Eastern Exceptionalism? The Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council after the Arab Uprisings

Up to the Arab uprisings, Middle Eastern exceptionalism served as an important paradigm for analyzing politics in the Arab world. With the numerous upheavals of the Arab uprisings, which caused fundamental political change in significant parts of the Arab world, this paradigm has been challenged for analyzing the domestic affairs of contemporary Middle Eastern politics. The present article aims at contributing to the debate by focusing on the regional dimension of Arab Middle Eastern exceptionalism. The Arab uprisings vitalized regional institutions, particularly the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Two main arguments are critically discussed. First, in sharp contrast to the revolutionary period of the 1950s, the conservative Gulf monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia, have been spearheading regional politics since the Arab uprisings. Second, in striking difference to the conservative character of the Gulf States’ domestic agenda, the means that the Arab League (and the Gulf Cooperation Council) has recently used are innovative—for instance, policies of softening the principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states. However, despite the recent animation of regional institutions under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, it is unclear whether the recent trend of new regionalism will be sustained.     

A Transition without Players: The Role of Political Parties in the Arab Revolutions

Academic scholarship regarding the role of political parties in the Arab world remains largely underdeveloped in comparison to analyses focusing on the role of political Islam or on authoritarian resilience. Although both of these fields of research contain useful paradigms for explaining aspects of the region’s political development, this overemphasis means that there is a lack of meaningful analysis of political participation. This article seeks to analyze the role of political parties in the light of regional transition processes since the Arab uprisings, claiming that the region’s political history and sociocultural makeup can help in explaining that much of the popular mobilization in the Arab world following the Arab revolutions took place outside of institutionalized politics. First, the article reviews and analyzes relevant theories of political parties. Second, the article presents a comparative analysis of existing theories and case studies of political parties being part of transition processes in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Taking this as starting point, the article, by looking at the Egyptian and Tunisian cases, demonstrates the limited role of political parties in connection with the regional transitory processes, with the ambition of presenting some relevant analytical tools as well as useful hints for further analyses of political transformation processes in the Middle East.     

Eastern and Western Perceptions on EU Aid in Light of the Arab Spring

The European Union welcomed the demonstrators’ demands wholeheartedly during the Arab Spring, trying to maximize the assistance that it could offer to support genuine democratic transition, at least at a rhetorical level. This article reflects on the changes in the neighborhood policy by focusing on public perceptions measured in Europe and in countries in close proximity to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. European views on solidarity are compared to local public opinion on EU involvement in the region. Recipient views in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and Israel are explored by analyzing relevant results of the Arab Barometer and Neighborhood Barometer surveys. Findings indicate that the Middle Eastern public opinion tends to appreciate the EU’s gestures with the exception of Egypt, but conditionality is more in line with European public opinion.