Legitimacy and the Politics of Opposition in the Middle East and North Africa PDF Download

Author: Gail Jeanne Buttorff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Algeria
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Authoritarian elections present a dilemma for opposition political parties. Should the opposition participate in elections that are largely unfair? Should the opposition boycott the elections or resort to extra-electoral means? What explains the choice of strategy among key opponents of a regime? The goal of this project is to further our understanding of the opposition's strategic choices in authoritarian elections. Focusing on a strategy - boycotting - that occurs more often under authoritarian regimes, this dissertation builds a framework for understanding the set of strategies adopted by opposition parties in authoritarian elections. In particular, I develop an incomplete information model of opposition strategies to explain when opposition forces willingly participate in elections, when they engage in an electoral boycott. The predictions of the model are evaluated with both qualitative and quantitative methods. I first examine the predictions of the model using case studies of Jordan and Algeria, constructing narratives of elections and opposition strategies in each country. Second, I test the propositions derived from the model cross-nationally using a unique dataset of every national-level election (both parliamentary and presidential) held between 1990 and 2008. A central argument of the dissertation is that the opposition's perceptions of regime legitimacy are an important determinant of its strategic decisions. Specifically, this dissertation demonstrates how changes in the opposition's beliefs concerning the legitimacy of the regime drive changes in the strategies adopted.

Author: Sean Yom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429756399
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
The latest edition of this renowned textbook explores the states and regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting heavily revised, fully updated chapters contributed by the world’s leading experts, it analyzes the historical trajectory, political institutions, economic development, and foreign policies of the region’s nearly two dozen countries. The volume can be used in conjunction with its sister volume, The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa, for a comprehensive overview of the region. Chapters are organized and structured identically, giving insightful windows into the nuances of each country’s domestic politics and foreign relations. Data tables and extensive annotated bibliographies orient readers towards further research. Whether used in conjunction with its sister volume or on its own, this book provides the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the region’s varied politics. Five new experts cover the critical country cases of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. All chapters cover the latest events, including trends that have remarkably changed in just a few years like the gradual end of the Syrian civil war. As such, this textbook is invaluable to students of Middle Eastern politics.. The ninth edition brings substantial changes. All chapters also have a uniform, streamlined structure that explores the historical context, social and economic environment, political institutions, regime dynamics, and foreign policy of each country. Fact boxes and political maps are now far more extensive, and photographs and images also help illustrate key points. Annotated bibliographies are vastly expanded, providing nothing short of the best list of research references for each country.

Author: Francesco Cavatorta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000293300
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
This comprehensive Handbook analyses the political parties and party systems across the Middle East and North Africa. Providing an in-depth, empirically grounded and novel study of political parties, the volume focuses on a region where they have been traditionally and often erroneously dismissed. The book is divided into five sections, examining: the trajectories of Islamist, Salafi, leftist, liberal, nationalist, and personalistic parties drawing from different countries; the role political parties play in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries; the centrality of political parties in democratic or democratising settings; the relationship between parties and specific social constituencies, ranging from women to youth to tribes and sects; and the policy positions of parties on a number of issues, including neo-liberal economics, identity, foreign policy and the role of violence. This wide-ranging and systematic analysis is a key resource for students and scholars interested in party politics, democratization and authoritarianism, and the Middle East and North Africa. Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780429269219

Author: Mark Gasiorowski
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 081334994X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
A comprehensive country-by-country examination of the history, domestic politics, and foreign policies of the Middle East and North Africa.

Author: Mark Gasiorowski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429974116
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 969

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Book Description
With recent upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, the eighth edition of The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa has been thoroughly revised to provide a necessary, comprehensive and current examination of the domestic politics and foreign policies of this crucial region. A newly expanded introduction provides students with a comparative and thematic overview of the region, from its political regimes and electoral institutions to its economic and social concerns. Each chapter, written by an invited specialist, uses a common framework to explore the historical background, social and political environment, political structure and dynamics, and foreign policy of a country. Chapters are augmented by a country map, a box providing key facts, and an annotated bibliography summarizing the major literature. The eighth edition provides vital new considerations of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the ongoing sectarian violence and rise of ISIS, and the growth of social forces like youth movements and women's rights groups. In addition, the inclusion of six new contributors brings fresh perspectives, ensuring that The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa remains an essential guide to the region's political landscape.

Author: Raymond Hinnebusch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000710874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 895

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Book Description
Conflict and instability are built into the very fabric of the Middle East and North African (MENA) state and states system; yet both states and states system have displayed remarkable resilience. How can we explain this? This handbook explores the main debates, theoretical approaches and accumulated empirical research by prominent scholars in the field, providing an essential context for scholars pursuing research on the MENA state and states system. Contributions are grouped into four key themes: • Historical contexts, state-building and politics in MENA • State actors, societal context and popular activism • Trans-state politics: the political economy and identity contexts • The international politics of MENA The 26 chapters examine the evolution of the state and states system, before and after independence, and take the 2011 Arab uprisings as a pivotal moment that intensified trends already embedded in the system, exposing the deep features of state and system—specifically their built-in vulnerability and their ability to survive. This handbook provides comprehensive coverage of the history and role of the state in the MENA region. It offers a key resource for all researchers and students interested in international relations and the Middle East and North Africa.

Author: Paul J. Magnarella
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351917714
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
This collection contains articles by highly regarded scholars assessing governance, democratisation and human rights in the contemporary Middle East and North Africa. It also assesses the role that Islam plays in these areas. In the spirit of the 50th anniversary year of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the authors examine the interrelationships among Islam, politics and human rights and evaluate each country’s contemporary record. The book contains in-depth articles on Islam and politics, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, the Gulf States, Turkey, Egypt and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania). The authors discuss recent political developments in each of these countries and point out their accomplishments and shortcomings in the area of human rights.

Author: Inmaculada Szmolka
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474415296
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Taking a comparative approach, this book considers the ways in which political regimes have changed since the Arab Spring. It addresses a series of questions about political change in the context of the revolutions, upheavals and protests that have taken place in North Africa and the Arab Middle East since December 2010, and looks at the various processes have been underway in the region: democratisation (Tunisia), failed democratic transitions (Egypt, Libya and Yemen), political liberalisation (Morocco) and increased authoritarianism (Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria). In other countries, in contrast to these changes, the authoritarian regimes remain intact (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Arab United Emirates.

Author: Dara Conduit
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811088217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
This book uses a Contentious Politics lens to examine patterns of contestation since 2009 and 2011 among the Middle East's most important opposition actors. The volume is comprised of seven chapters that ask questions in relation to the responsiveness of opposition groups to their political environments, the long-term legacies of authoritarianism, and whether the post-2009/2011 political environment is better or worse for Middle Eastern oppositions. It interrogates the ways in which oppositions have morphed in relation to this changed operating environment, subjectively interpreting the costs and benefits of contestation in order to maximise political opportunities. To some oppositions, changes in the power balance between regime structures and opposition agents led to unprecedented opportunity for political action, while for others, structures were galvanised to restrict opposition activities. In total, the volume shows that even though the Arab Uprisings and Green Movement achieved few of their overt goals, the events unleashed smaller shifts across the region that have led to a fundamental change in the politics of contestation amongst the region’s oppositions. These patterns echo experiences in other parts of the world, including the coloured revolutions in post-Soviet states, and the political environment in Chile after Pinochet.

Author: Hendrik Jan Kraetzschmar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317967364
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Within the democratisation literature, opposition unity is widely seen as an important requisite to successfully pressure authoritarian rulers into liberalising reforms and in bringing about democratic change. Taking up on this theme, this book examines the myriad ways in which opposition groups across the Arab world have sought to coalesce into broader reform coalitions at the local, national and transnational levels to challenge authoritarian incumbents and their policies. Drawing on original case studies from the region, it sheds light on the diverse nature and objectives of these reform coalitions, and explores the challenges opposition groups face in Arab states in uniting behind a common reform agenda and in driving this agenda forward. Be they electoral pacts, local government coalitions, broader opposition alliances or networks of resistance, this book demonstrates that, although widespread, the record of collective opposition activism in the Arab world is mixed, with many reform coalitions lacking the necessary cohesion and mass appeal to effectively mobilise for change. This book was originally published as a special issue of British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies