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This article examines the impact of the (de)securitization of the Kurds by regional and significant external securitizing actors on relations and cooperation between regional states, non-state actors and significant external actors engaged in Middle East politics. It argues that the security framings of the Kurds constructed by securitizing actors provide an epistemological and political base for conducting relations and establishing cooperation between regional states under the influence of the external actors. Considering multilateralism as an essentially cooperative activity based on certain principles or values, the article suggests that, by constructing contradictory or coherent visions of (in)security, (de)securitization affects relations and shapes multilateralism. Even if the (in) security framings of actors are conflicting, multilateral cooperation remains possible since these actors may not openly reject the other's securitization moves. However, such a framework challenges multilateralism, and further transforms it by making cooperation fragile, value-free, temporary, unreliable and informal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turki al-Faisal has long had access to some of the innermost circles of power in Saudi Arabia. Born into the Saudi royal family - out of the extended clan's estimated thousand or so members, he is number eight - the prince was head of the country's intelligence agency for more than two decades before becoming an ambassador to several countries. In this interview, al-Faisal talks with the Bulletin's Dan Drollette Jr. about the Saudi view of the Iran agreement, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, and the possibility of Saudi Arabia becoming a net energy importer in the coming decades - and what the country wants to do to counter that prospect. He also delves into recent politics, and gives his personal views on the Shia/Sunni divide, Israel's weapons program, and the Iran regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 has hit the world in an unprecedented way causing serious repercussions on several aspects of our life. Multiple determinants have affected various nations' level of success in their responses towards the pandemic. The Arab Levant region in the Middle East, notoriously known for repeated wars and conflicts, has been affected, similarly to other regions, by this pandemic. The combination of war, conflict, and a pandemic brings too much of a burden for any nation to handle.Methods: A descriptive analysis of data obtained from the health departments of various Arab Levant Countries (ALC) was performed. ALC include Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Palestine. The data collected involves incidence, recovery rate, case fatality rate and number of tests performed per million population, Global Health Security index, government stringency index, and political stability index. The information obtained was compared and analyzed among the ALC and compared to global figures. An extensive electronic literature search to review all relevant articles and reports published from the region was conducted. The 2019 Global Health Security (GHS) index was obtained from the "GHS index" website which was made by John Hopkins University's center for health security, the Nuclear threat Initiative (NTI) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Government stringency index and political stability index were obtained from the University of Oxford and the website of "The Global Economy", respectively. Other world governance indicators such as government effectiveness were obtained from the World Bank website.Results: In terms of incidence of COVID-19, Iraq has the highest with 9665 per one million population, Syria the lowest at 256 per million. Deaths per million population was highest in Iraq at 237, and the lowest in Syria at 12. As for number of tests per million population, Lebanon ranked first at 136,033 with Iraq fourth at 59,795. There is no data available for the tests administered in Syria and subsequently no value for tests per million population. In terms of recoveries from COVID-19 per million population, Iraq had the highest number at 7903 per million, and Syria the lowest at 68 per million. When compared as percent recovery per million, Palestine ranked first (84%) and Syria last (27%). The government response stringency index shows that Jordan had the highest index (100) early in the pandemic among the other countries. Palestine's index remained stable between 80 and 96. The other countries' indices ranged from 50 to 85, with Lebanon seeing a drop to 24 in mid-August. Even with improved stringency index, Iraq reported an increased number of deaths.Conclusion: In countries devastated by war and conflict, a pandemic such as COVID-19 can easily spread. The Arab Levant countries represent a breeding ground for pandemics given their unstable political and economic climate that has undoubtedly affected their healthcare systems. In the era of COVID-19, looking at healthcare systems as well as political determinants is needed to assess a country's readiness towards the pandemic. The unrest in Lebanon, the uprising in Iraq, the restrictions placed on Syria, and the economic difficulties in Palestine are all examples of determinants affecting pandemic management. Jordan, on the contrary, is a good example of a stable state, able to implement proper measures. Political stability index should be used as a predictor for pandemic management capacity, and individual measures should be tailored towards countries depending on their index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the policy failures from regime change efforts in the Middle East in the book "Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East" by Philip H. Gordon. Topics discussed include the implication of the failure of the U.S. to understand the Middle East culture, role of failure to prevent regime change in state stability, and the need for the administration of President Joseph Biden to determine the proper approach to Iran.

Traditional understandings of Middle Eastern politics place tribes as critical supporters of ruling families; this dynamic is considered particularly strong within the smaller Gulf states, which are oftentimes even referred to as 'bedouinocracies'. While tribes undoubtedly hold political capital throughout the Middle East, it is uncertain to what extent they remain clients of Gulf regimes or are in fact independent, and potentially oppositional, actors. This paper examines electoral outcomes for the Kuwaiti legislature, Qatari municipal council, and Emirati consultative council to understand the extent to which major tribal groups take collective action through electoral campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions will individuals mobilize law to resist states that operate above the law? In authoritarian countries, particularly in the Middle East, law is a weapon the state wields for social control, centralizing power, and legitimation. Authoritarian legal codes are overwhelmingly more deferential to state authority than protective of citizens' rights. Nevertheless, people throughout the Arab world deploy law to contest a broad array of state abuses: land expropriations, unlawful arrests, denials of jobs and welfare, and so on. Using detailed interviews in Jordan and Palestine, I outline a theory of law as a tool for resisting authoritarian state actors. Integrating qualitative insights with survey experiments fielded in Egypt and Jordan, I test this theory and show that aggrieved individuals mobilize law when they expect courts are powerful and attainable allies in contentious politics. My results further demonstrate that judicial independence does not uniformly increase authoritarian publics' willingness to access courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-optation via elections in authoritarian regimes, in which leaders ward off threats to their rule by granting parties electoral access in exchange for their support, is a ubiquitous phenomenon that has received considerable attention from scholars. Two important questions that remain unanswered, however, are who exactly from among the opposition is being co-opted and why do parties accept offers of co-optation? We argue that among ethnopolitical minorities, authoritarian leaders co-opt parties that will acquiesce to their rule in exchange for patronage perks. However, due to limited information, leaders selectively legalize organizations with regime-friendly goals that make them potential candidates for co-optation, and then use elections strategically to allow the most viable candidates to self-select into the electoral process. In turn, this structure of co-optation shapes the electoral incentives of opposition parties. Using data on ethnopolitical minority organizations in authoritarian regimes across the Middle East from 1980–2004, we find support for the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The longevity and depth of regional challenges in the Middle East have elevated political and security concerns to a new level within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in recent years. Three conflicting worldviews have confronted one another, resulting in debilitating consequences for the region. Increasing fragmentation of Arab politics, in turn, has engendered attempts at enforced Arab unity that have ultimately failed, further dividing and destabilizing the regional order. This article delineates the background of the Gulf crisis of 2017 within the broader context of the Arab Spring and analyzes the ensuing attempts at mediation, the US role in the region, political developments in Kuwait and Oman, normalization efforts with Israel, and the recent resolution of the Gulf crisis by examining various actors' political roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the modern Russian press covers the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict, both historically and currently. Since print media are some of the most popular sources of information in Russia, such analysis helps us understand the media's priorities in presenting the conflict to Russian society. The article focuses on the inherently manipulative, albeit hidden, essence and layout of this material, which increases the likelihood of information bias. While the quality of the reporting on this conflict demonstrates the proximity of contemporary Russian media to the interests of the country's ruling powers, it also provides opportunities for the government to influence its audience's comprehension of Middle East politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution develops three major lines of argument. Firstly, it argues that identifying 'popular culture' is not simply a definitional exercise but is also purposeful and performative. Secondly, it contends that 'popular cultures' are always implicated in power relations in multiple ways. Finally, it maintains that using a performative lens adds to our understanding of the political dimensions of 'popular cultures'. Taking examples chiefly from the Middle East and North Africa, it avers that studying 'popular cultures' highlights the links between the political and the performative, understood both as acting out (theatrical) and as bringing into being (effective). The term 'culture(s) of the public(s)' is used to capture the idea of the public as a plurality of active citizens, distinct from the politically charged term 'the people'. These publics claim space as their right, experiencing agonistic encounters with the different generations, genders, classes, ethnicities that use their own repertoires to assert their claims. Thus, the cultures of the plural public can help to fashion the public self as citizen, but for that same reason can also provoke ferocious repression from those who feel most threatened by such a development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that autonomous militaries can play a balancing role during major internal political crises. However, when militaries' autonomy is curtailed by political leaders before the crisis, militaries cannot maintain the political balance between rulers and opponents, thereby increasing the risk of armed conflict. The article first explains the main concepts relevant to the discussion (autonomy, political crisis, balancing role), exploring their possible interlinkages and presenting several hypotheses. Subsequently, it discusses four relevant cases from the Middle East before and during the Arab revolts of 2010–2011: Egypt in 2011 and Lebanon in 1958, which demonstrate the balancing capacities of autonomous militaries during major political crises, and Lebanon in 1975 and Syria in 2011, which reveal that nonautonomous militaries cannot play a balancing role in such circumstances. The article concludes with several observations regarding the military's balancing role during major internal political crises in divided and homogenous states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Napoleon Bonaparte's attempt to reach India, firstly through Egypt and then through Qajar Persia, inaugurated the 'Middle East' as a coherent political space in international politics. The ostensibly existential threat posed by French schemes to British dominion over India prompted British Indian officials to perceive Egypt, Persia and the Gulf Emirates through the lens of Indian defence and European geopolitics for the first time. By the end of this period, these lands were imagined as a salient, somewhat coherent political space between "the Indus and Constantinople". This first 'Middle East' was the product of the globalization of European geopolitics and the need to defend British India, auguring the future of the region, in which its political importance, and even its location, was constructed in relation to the broader context of international affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a chronology of events that took place during April 16 – August 15, 2019 in Middle East including Israeli government's reduction of the permitted fishing zone in the Gaza Strip and Arab League's agreement to pay 100 million U.S. dollars to the Palestinian Authority.

In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, the difference between monarchies and republics appears more profound than ever. Aside from Bahrain, all of the Middle Eastern monarchies avoided major anti-governmental protests, and no armed conflict has occurred in any of them since 1979. Inspired by Middle Eastern case studies, this article argues that traditional legitimacy contributes to peace in Middle Eastern monarchies. The article explores the argument with time-series cross-sectional data covering 19 Middle Eastern countries from 1947 (or independence) to 2009. Traditional legitimacy is not measured directly but assumed to be embedded in the monarchical regime type, and the results show that alternative covariates are unable to fully explain the monarchical peace. Moreover, the study finds that horizontal discrimination increases the risk of intrastate conflict in authoritarian republics but that discrimination has no effect in monarchies. Future conflict studies should therefore consider legitimacy connected to authoritarian regime types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1979, Edward Said attended a colloquy on Middle East politics hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre and Les Temps Modernes in the apartment of Michel Foucault. He would later go on to publish his reflections on this experience in a short piece titled “Diary.” Reading this piece alongside Said’s larger oeuvre, as well as those of his predecessors Foucault and Antonio Gramsci, this article attempts to offer a theory of intellectual responsibility that may be applied to the BDS movement today. In turn, Orientalism and The Question of Palestine, published in the same year as the colloquy, offer a salient political allegory for the relation of the United States to the question of Palestine writ large when read as a dyad as they are intended to be. In closing, the article attempts to apply the theory of intellectuals derived from Said’s work by reflecting on the potential for the particular case of BDS to speak to a set of universal concerns on the Left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In article the author criticizes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to convert Hagia Sophia museum into an Islamic mosque. Topics include that the action inspires right wing Islamists who aspire for a caliphate; and Turkey's military campaigns in the Middle east especially in Iraq, Syria and Libya that have caused instability.

The article looks on the current position of the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East and its possibilities of transformation by the decision of administration of Donald Trump, president of the U.S. Topics include rivalry between Russia and the U.S. for power, geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and end of dual leadership of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and ascension of leadership of Saudi Arabia in Arab world. It also discusses the Kurdish independence movement in Syria.

This article argues that part of the reason why some Middle Eastern states remain democratically challenged is the emergence, operation, and political influence of "security networks" and "deep states" -- informal actors in the area of national security. The article explains what these actors are, situates them in a broad theoretical and comparative perspective, assesses their impact on democratic development, and provides examples from Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictions about the future of the Middle East have proliferated in step with recent events and escalating tensions in the region. This paper highlights the usefulness of historical comparative research for addressing predictive questions and, specifically, those relating to the current Islamic revival. It challenges assumptions that have prevented researchers from exploring this avenue of research; and describes a generally overlooked chapter in modern European history: Europe's nineteenth century revival of militant, literal, religion, and the region-wide, battle it unleashed between religious and secular forces through the region. It then highlights similarities, both in the nature of revivals in Europe and the Middle East and of the socio-economic structures which sustained them. Finally, it suggests how and why the battle between religious and secular forces in Europe came to an end. While, it does not offer predictions for the Middle East, it suggests how comparative insights might contribute to producing better ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We analyse the nature of robust determinants of differences in democracy levels across countries taking explicitly into account uncertainty in the choice of covariates and spatial spillovers. We make use of recent developments in Bayesian model averaging to assess the effect of a large number of potential factors affecting democratisation processes and account for several specifications of spatial linkages. Our results indicate that spatial spillovers are present in the data even after controlling for a large number of geographical covariates. Addressing the determinants of democracy without modelling such spillovers may lead to flawed inference about the nature of the determinants of democratisation processes. In particular, our results emphasise the role played by Muslim religion, population size, trade volumes, English language, natural resource rents, GDP per capita, being a MENA country and the incidence of armed conflicts as factors affecting democracy robustly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the state of sociopolitics in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and focuses on the likelihood a Palestinian state would not develop into a failed state. It discusses the concept of a failed state and how these political conditions exist in the Arab territorial nation-state system created after World War I. The article goes on to cover Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's claims that the Palestinian Authority has failed.

This article applies the concept of securitization to the Middle East with a focus upon the securitization of the Shi’a other. Such processes occur across time and space and are not restricted to state borders, escaping the Westphalian straitjacket. As a consequence, one must consider the construction of space and political structures across the region in order to understand the traction that such moves can find. It appears then, that in seeking to maintain short-term survival, regimes have sacrificed long-term stability, but the impacts of such moves transcend the typically linear constructed audiences within securitization moves. A key contribution of this article is to consider the extent to which audiences within the Middle East, both intended and unintended, transcend the linear audiences found within conventional processes of securitization. The article uses two case studies as a means of exploring the extent to which securitization can be applied to the Middle East. Such an approach helps us to identify the logics that are involved within the process of securitization, with consideration of the idea that we can populate a broad framework about the universal application of securitization to context specific cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]