Stability at All Costs. The Case of Egypt in Al-Sisi Era

Stability at All Costs. The Case of Egypt in Al-Sisi Era PDF Author: Radwa El Sekhily
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346051587
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 16/20, University of St Andrews, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to understand to the extent strong-weak state dichotomy reinforces coercive power over legitimacy. The paper proposes an analytical perspective to assess what is described as a strong state as opposite to a failed or fragile state. It suggests that, in some empirical cases, the notion of strong state does not necessarily reflect legitimacy but rather, often times, oppression under the claim of maintaining stability and order amongst the citizens. The paper uses Ronald Paris’s theory on Institutionalisation Before Liberalisation (IBL) as one example of liberal peace literature discourse that supports state-centrism. It criticises Paris’s argument of institutionalisation as a mean towards a stable and peaceful state, differentiating between the stability of a state versus the stability of a regime. As an empirical evidence, the paper sheds light on the current status of Egypt under President’s Al-Sisi rule as a case study of how institutionalism reinforces coercion and violence. The field of International Relations has contributed to the understanding of the notions of strong and weak states especially as an element of peacekeeping on both the intrastate and interstate levels. Strong-weak states literature has been focusing on institutions-building as an indicator for the level of autonomy and good governance the state performs. War-shattered states and Third World countries are presumed to be mostly fragile, due to their lack of efficient institutions that regulate the political, social and economic lives of the citizens. Attempting to address such issue, over the past years the liberal discourse has been developing several models to help build strong states by establishing powerful institutions in those countries through different modes of assistance. One of those models is the Institutionalisation Before Liberalisation developed by Ronald Paris which argues that building strong state institutions is vital for maintaining peace before bringing in democracy.

Stability at All Costs. The Case of Egypt in Al-Sisi Era

Stability at All Costs. The Case of Egypt in Al-Sisi Era PDF Author: Radwa El Sekhily
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346051587
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 25

Get Book

Book Description
Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 16/20, University of St Andrews, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to understand to the extent strong-weak state dichotomy reinforces coercive power over legitimacy. The paper proposes an analytical perspective to assess what is described as a strong state as opposite to a failed or fragile state. It suggests that, in some empirical cases, the notion of strong state does not necessarily reflect legitimacy but rather, often times, oppression under the claim of maintaining stability and order amongst the citizens. The paper uses Ronald Paris’s theory on Institutionalisation Before Liberalisation (IBL) as one example of liberal peace literature discourse that supports state-centrism. It criticises Paris’s argument of institutionalisation as a mean towards a stable and peaceful state, differentiating between the stability of a state versus the stability of a regime. As an empirical evidence, the paper sheds light on the current status of Egypt under President’s Al-Sisi rule as a case study of how institutionalism reinforces coercion and violence. The field of International Relations has contributed to the understanding of the notions of strong and weak states especially as an element of peacekeeping on both the intrastate and interstate levels. Strong-weak states literature has been focusing on institutions-building as an indicator for the level of autonomy and good governance the state performs. War-shattered states and Third World countries are presumed to be mostly fragile, due to their lack of efficient institutions that regulate the political, social and economic lives of the citizens. Attempting to address such issue, over the past years the liberal discourse has been developing several models to help build strong states by establishing powerful institutions in those countries through different modes of assistance. One of those models is the Institutionalisation Before Liberalisation developed by Ronald Paris which argues that building strong state institutions is vital for maintaining peace before bringing in democracy.

"We Do Unreasonable Things Here"

Author: Human Rights Watch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781623135096
Category : Detention of persons
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
Recommendations -- Methodology -- I. Background -- II. The torture assembly line -- III. Legal analysis -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix I. Letter to General Magdy Abd al-Ghaffar -- Appendix II. Letter to Prosecutor General Nabil Sadek.

Dictators and Autocrats

Dictators and Autocrats PDF Author: Klaus Larres
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000467600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
In order to truly understand the emergence, endurance, and legacy of autocracy, this volume of engaging essays explores how autocratic power is acquired, exercised, and transferred or abruptly ended through the careers and politics of influential figures in more than 20 countries and six regions. The book looks at both traditional "hard" dictators, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and more modern "soft" or populist autocrats, who are in the process of transforming once fully democratic countries into autocratic states, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The authors touch on a wide range of autocratic and dictatorial figures in the past and present, including present-day autocrats, such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, military leaders, and democratic leaders with authoritarian aspirations. They analyze the transition of selected autocrats from democratic or benign semi-democratic systems to harsher forms of autocracy, with either quite disastrous or more successful outcomes. An ideal reader for students and scholars, as well as the general public, interested in international affairs, leadership studies, contemporary history and politics, global studies, security studies, economics, psychology, and behavioral studies.

The Buried

The Buried PDF Author: Peter Hessler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525559574
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Extraordinary...Sensitive and perceptive, Mr. Hessler is a superb literary archaeologist, one who handles what he sees with a bit of wonder that he gets to watch the history of this grand city unfold, one day at a time.” —Wall Street Journal From the acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones, an intimate excavation of life in one of the world's oldest civilizations at a time of convulsive change Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos. In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter's translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt's homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West's conventional wisdom. Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity--the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time.

Taking to the Streets

Taking to the Streets PDF Author: Lina Khatib
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421413132
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Debunks the simplistic narratives of youth-driven, social media revolutions in the Arab Spring. Taking to the Streets critically examines the conventional wisdom that the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings happened spontaneously and were directed by tech-savvy young revolutionaries. Pairing first-hand observations from activists with the critical perspectives of scholars, the book illuminates the concept of activism as an ongoing process, rather than a sudden burst of defiance. The contributors examine case studies from uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, evaluating the various manifestations of political activism within the context of each country's distinct sociopolitical landscape. The chapters include a country-specific timeline of the first year following the uprisings and conclude with lessons learned. First-hand observations include those of Libyan activist Rihab Elhaj, who reflects on how the revolution gave birth to Libyan civil society, as well as Syrian writer and human rights activist Khawla Dunia, who discusses how Syrians have tried to remain steadfast in their commitment to nonviolent resistance. A foreword by Prince Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui—third in succession to the Moroccan throne and consulting professor at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)—provides a historical overview of activism in the Middle East and North Africa. A postscript from CDDRL director Larry Diamond distinguishes the study of activism from that of democratization. Taking to the Streets will be used in courses on Middle East politics and will be relevant to scholars and the general public interested in democratization, political change, and activism.

EGYPT ON THE EDGE: HOW EUROPE CAN AVOID ANOTHER CRISIS IN EGYPT.

EGYPT ON THE EDGE: HOW EUROPE CAN AVOID ANOTHER CRISIS IN EGYPT. PDF Author: Yasser El-Shimy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


False Dawn

False Dawn PDF Author: Steven A. Cook
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190611413
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In False Dawn, noted Middle East regional expert Steven Cook offers a sweeping narrative account of the past five years, moving from Turkey to Tunisia to Yemen to Iraq to Egypt and beyond, ultimately presenting a powerful theoretical analysis of why the Arab Spring failed.

The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring

The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring PDF Author: Charles Villa-Vicencio
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1626161984
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring addresses the often unspoken connection between the powerful call for a political-cultural renaissance that emerged with the end of South African apartheid and the popular revolts of 2011 that dramatically remade the landscape in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Looking between southern and northern Africa, the transcontinental line from Cape to Cairo that for so long supported colonialism, its chapters explore the deep roots of these two decisive events and demonstrate how they are linked by shared opposition to legacies of political, economic, and cultural subjugation. As they work from African, Islamic, and Western perspectives, the book’s contributors shed important light on a continent’s difficult history and undertake a critical conversation about whether and how the desire for radical change holds the possibility of a new beginning for Africa, a beginning that may well reshape the contours of global affairs.

Egypt's Housing Crisis

Egypt's Housing Crisis PDF Author: Yahia Shawkat
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1649030339
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
A provocative analysis of the roots of Egypt’s housing crisis and the ways in which it can be tackled Along with football and religion, housing is a fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian life: it can make or break marriage proposals, invigorate or slow down the economy, and popularize or embarrass a ruler. Housing is political. Almost every Egyptian ruler over the last eighty years has directly associated himself with at least one large-scale housing project. It is also big business, with Egypt currently the world leader in per capita housing production, building at almost double China’s rate, and creating a housing surplus that counts in the millions of units. Despite this, Egypt has been in the grip of a housing crisis for almost eight decades. From the 1940s onward, officials deployed a number of policies to create adequate housing for the country’s growing population. By the 1970s, housing production had outstripped population growth, but today half of Egypt’s one hundred million people cannot afford a decent home. Egypt's Housing Crisis takes presidential speeches, parliamentary reports, legislation, and official statistics as the basis with which to investigate the tools that officials have used to ‘solve’ the housing crisis—rent control, social housing, and amnesties for informal self-building—as well as the inescapable reality of these policies’ outcomes. Yahia Shawkat argues that wars, mass displacement, and rural–urban migration played a part in creating the problem early on, but that neoliberal deregulation, crony capitalism and corruption, and neglectful planning have made things steadily worse ever since. In the final analysis he asks, is affordable housing for all really that hard to achieve?

Bending History

Bending History PDF Author: Martin S. Indyk
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815724470
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
By the time of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States, he had already developed an ambitious foreign policy vision. By his own account, he sought to bend the arc of history toward greater justice, freedom, and peace; within a year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely for that promise. In Bending History, Martin Indyk, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Michael O’Hanlon measure Obama not only against the record of his predecessors and the immediate challenges of the day, but also against his own soaring rhetoric and inspiring goals. Bending History assesses the considerable accomplishments as well as the failures and seeks to explain what has happened. Obama's best work has been on major and pressing foreign policy challenges—counterterrorism policy, including the daring raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden; the "reset" with Russia; managing the increasingly significant relationship with China; and handling the rogue states of Iran and North Korea. Policy on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, has reflected serious flaws in both strategy and execution. Afghanistan policy has been plagued by inconsistent messaging and teamwork. On important "softer" security issues—from energy and climate policy to problems in Africa and Mexico—the record is mixed. As for his early aspiration to reshape the international order, according greater roles and responsibilities to rising powers, Obama's efforts have been well-conceived but of limited effectiveness. On issues of secondary importance, Obama has been disciplined in avoiding fruitless disputes (as with Chavez in Venezuela and Castro in Cuba) and insisting that others take the lead (as with Qaddafi in Libya). Notwithstanding several missteps, he has generally managed well the complex challenges of the Arab awakenings, striving to strike the right balance between U.S. values and interests. The authors see Obama's foreign policy to date as a triumph of discipline and realism over ideology. He has been neither the transformative beacon his devotees have wanted, nor the weak apologist for America that his critics allege. They conclude that his grand strategy for promoting American interests in a tumultuous world may only now be emerging, and may yet be curtailed by conflict with Iran. Most of all, they argue that he or his successor will have to embrace U.S. economic renewal as the core foreign policy and national security challenge of the future.