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This report urgently addresses the summary of the presentations, dialogues and discussions that took place during the annual symposium for MESC that was held by the Middle East Studies Center on 21-22/9/2024 in Amman. The Symposium entitled "Trends of Transformations in the Arab World 2025-2035". It sheds light on the political, security, social and economic strategic transformations that the Arab world is currently witnessing at the internal, inter- and external levels, with the threats, challenges, and opportunities they entail. The researchers stopped at the crises, problems, foreign interventions, and the extensive Israeli aggression against the Arab world and the Palestinian people. The participants saw a great responsibility on the shoulders of experts and researchers alongside Arab governments to bring about a qualitative shift in the mechanisms of political reform and secure democratic transition in the Arab world. They emphasized on the responsibility of all parties to achieve stability, development, and independence and confront external aggression, mainly from Israeli side. The researchers emphasized that the current and expected changes during the next decade present significant opportunities for the Arab world to achieve a qualitative leap. Despite the new challenges and problems, they create at the same level, these changes shift the rules imposed on the Arab world, and give it an opportunity to liberate itself and make independent decisions that serve the supreme interests of the Arab world. The report presented the most important results and recommendations reached by the researchers in this symposium, the most important of which are: 1) The call to prepare clear strategies and visions to re-build an effective Arab security system that responds to current international changes and to deal with the influence of external actors in shaping future regional security dynamics, 2) Working to enhance the status of the Arab world and its regional and international role, 3) Studying the reasons for the decline in cooperation and joint Arab action, and the low levels of coordination and solidarity, 4) Providing strategies capable of responding to challenges and contributing to achieving the aspirations of Arab youth, 5) Investing in the components of successful political reform and democratic transition, in a way that enhances the strength and resilience of Arab countries and ensures their stability, to avoid Arab societies reaching a dead end as happened earlier in 2011 and 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches the Metapolitefsi as an international event and seeks to historicize the perceptions and concepts that drove Greek and Western policy-making after the fall of the junta. Its main argument is that from 1974 to 1976 and in conjunction with domestic democratization, a parallel process developed when it came to Greece's external relations, which entailed a significant reformulation of Greek foreign policy. The year 1974, then, should be seen as an important turning point not only in Greek domestic politics but in Greece's external relations as well. These two processes were mutually reinforcing and closely interdependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many contexts in the Mediterranean, Security Assistance (SA) is perceived to have contributed to state fracture or prolonged conflict. In Tunisia, in contrast, SA has increased the performance and capacities of the security forces in matters of counterterrorism and migration control. However, in this article, by analysing SA's reordering impacts, I argue that it has interacted with political developments to reconfigure Tunisia's volatile political landscape in two ways. Firstly, SA programmes have acted to reinforce the coercive capacities of Tunisia's security forces vis-à-vis the general population. Secondly, vertical SA practices contributed to the reconfiguration of power dynamics between different actors in Tunisia's security sector, helping consolidate power in the increasingly authoritarian hands of the executive as well as the increasingly politicized security forces. Furthermore, in the final section of this article, I reflect upon the entanglements between security assistance, Tunisian political economy and the economic interests of many provider states. In doing so, I make the case for a 'recoupling' of security studies and political economy in analysis of external interventions in the Mediterranean to better understand their reordering impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims at identifying reasons behind the retreat of Egyptian universities from the democratic track in selecting university leaders through direct and free elections. The study successfully implemented two research designs, the historical design by using original and secondary sources; and critical analytical auto-ethnography to collect and analyze data. The results have shown that the main reasons for this decline are rampant administrative corruption in Egyptian public universities and political and security control over them. The proliferation of electoral coalitions and old power structures in Egyptian universities adversely impacted the experience of electing leaders. Internal conflicts in universities and the tendency of elected leaders toward independence are reasons to refrain from following the democratic path. Lastly, the study suggests a genuine proposal for enhancing real democratic reforms within Egyptian universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article accounts for Ennahdha’s post-revolutionary trajectory and its role in paving the way for authoritarian reversal. Going beyond approaches in terms of (post)Islamism and moderation focusing on ideology, I argue that Ennahdha’s failure is not an ideological failure – the famous ‘failure of political Islam’ (Roy [1992]. L’échec de l’islam politique. Paris: Seuil.) – but a governance failure stemming from both structural obstacles and strategic mistakes. Far from intending to change the state’s nature, Ennahdha’s post-2011 trajectory is but an obsessive attempt to secure its inclusion and normalisation in the system, even if this meant sacrificing both reform prospects and electoral support. Internally, Ennahdha’s inability to carry out reforms in matters of leadership selection and decision-making and to clarify its economic vision was detrimental to its cohesion and its role in governance. Externally, its favoured ‘consensus politics (tawafuq)’, which translated into a ‘policy of the occupied chair’, led to freeze rather than solve conflicts and to hamper reforms, which paved the way for a populist interruption of the democratic process in July 2021. Ultimately, this meant that Ennahdha’s strategy of normalisation paradoxically clashed with the party’s self – preservation and the overall democratic transition. To unpack this process, the article relies on a body of 17 interviews, writings by Ennahdha leaders and close intellectuals, and an extensive literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does democratic transition affect party polarization? While previous literature on party politics in post-transition environments describes a fragmented political system marked by multi-partism and the rise of weakly institutionalized parties, party polarization in young democracies is underexplored. We argue that democratic transition reduces party polarization by introducing a new set of parties which have not consolidated their issue positions yet. The ambiguity of party positions makes ideological attributes less salient and renders a less polarized party politics. To assess the impact of the party polarization in young democracies, we employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD). We use the Manifesto Project data on right-left positions of parties from 58 countries to measure party polarization and the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) data on regime transition to identify democratic transitions. Our findings suggest that party polarization on right-left issue position decreases on average, following the democratic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biographical study through the lens of Mills' sociological imagination and Erikson's identity crisis provides a unique understanding of Dr Fauzi AR, a dedicated Islamist. Fauzi grew up in a devout Muslim family in Kauman, Yogyakarta, the heartland of the modernist Islamic organisation Muhammadiyah. He was educated in Muhammadiyah schools and eventually became a qualified medical doctor. He was politically active in the Islamic United Development Party and joined Laskar Jihad, a Salafi-Wahabi paramilitary group, during the inter-religious conflict in Maluku in 2000. This article argues that the political turbulence during the democratic transition in 1998--1999 led Fauzi to have an identity crisis, which spurred his desire to participate in jihad (holy war). Afterwards, Fauzi became a reformed "maverick post-jihadist," in that he was unpredictable yet competent. He was unorthodox in his methods, remaining active in mainstream political Islam through the United Development Party while also engaging in physical jihad, which is contradictory because participation in partisan politics is forbidden by the Salafi doctrine. He also remained a heavy smoker although smoking is forbidden by Salafi religious decree. He further defied Salafism by supporting his wife in an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the national parliament as a member of the secular-nationalist party Gerindra in the 2009 election. This case study of Fauzi AR reflects the complex and multifaceted nature of political Islam and Islamic movements in the post-Soeharto era, including those who resorted to extremism and violence to achieve greater Islamisation of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and journalism in the context of Serbia, a European country which has undergone politically turbulent transition from authoritarian to democratic rule over the past 20 years. Despite the long process of the EU integration, the country has been recently downgraded to a partly free hybrid regime with rapid decline of press freedom, high political and media polarization and raising political and economic instrumentalization of media. Against this background, the paper problematizes how the main structural transformations of the media environment, such as the transition from state to public broadcasting, the introduction of new media laws and the lengthy process of media privatization intersected and influenced different phases and outcomes of the digital transformation of journalism and news media in the country. Unlike the digital journalism development in established democracies of the West, the real systemic change and adaptation of Serbia's media market to easy-to-use technologies, newsrooms convergence, profitable content and participatory journalism has been largely limited and overpowered by the interplay between the state and the media over the past two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study examines whether and how political uncertainty affects the returns of the TUNINDEX index. The impact of the main political events is supported by parametric and non-parametric tests with an event-driven approach as well as regression analysis. These events are then classified into a typology at different levels to later conduct separate analyses on increasingly homogeneous types. To our knowledge, this work constitutes the first work that tries to tackle the impact of political uncertainty on the Tunisian stock market from this perspective. Our empirical results show that the market response varies according to event type. Thus, the popular uprising has a destructive effect on stock market returns. Democratic transition positively affects the market. The announcement of the election results leads, on average, to a positive reaction and stipulates, among other things, that the market prefers secularists rather than Islamists. Partisan conflicts are destructive to stock market returns. Tunisia offers us a real and rare field of experimentation for a battery of major political events, with the persistence of the state and its institutions. The results of our study are of direct interest to financial authorities and decision-makers who wish to assess the role of political uncertainty in triggering or exacerbating stock price movements and contribute to a better understanding of investor behavior.

This article explores the response of the Spanish trade union Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) during the challenging period of economic crisis coinciding with Spain’s transition to democracy and concurrent technological advancements. It reveals that the deliberations within the union went beyond mere economic demands and resistance to industrial changes, embodying a variety of viewpoints in line with broader institutional shifts in the country. The investigation subsequently turns towards a comprehensive analysis of the definitions and ideas expressed within CCOO, particularly during the period from 1978 to 1987. Drawing upon documents from Confederation Secretariat sessions and publications in the Union Gazette (Gaceta Sindical), this research uncovers the nuanced perspectives and considerations driving the union’s stance amidst a backdrop of economic upheaval and technological transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Relações Internacionais is the property of Relacoes Internacionais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Observers proclaimed Malaysia's first-ever transfer of federal power through elections in 2018 as marking a democratic transition, only to see in the reversal of that change two years later evidence of backsliding. I argue instead that these concepts lack nuance: we should not read too much into a change of leadership. At best, the electoral-authoritarian regime wobbled; it neither transitioned convincingly in 2018 nor qualified as backsliding per se in 2020. That said, the regime has been edging toward liberalization, but less in the electoral sphere than in civil society and prevailing norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Archivos de Historia del Movimiento Obrero y la Izquierda is the property of Archivos de historia del movimiento obrero y la izquierda and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The relationship between social crises and religious cults in Romania is a topic neglected by the specialized literature. In this paper, we propose a series of analyses regarding how social crises have influenced religious life in Romania and the mechanisms by which religious cults have played a role in solving or amplifying them. We will refer to the Romanian Orthodox Church, the majority religious denomination, and some of its positions on events/stages of these social phenomena between 1990 and 2023. This text does not propose a thorough examination of these relationships but attempts to sketch perspectives of analysis in response to the following research questions: What do Romanians think about the Church's involvement in the life of society and implicitly in social crises? Why is it important to understand the position of religious actors on the evolution of social crises? How have religious denominations influenced the improvement/aggravation of some dimensions of social crises? Official stances of Religious Cults during different social crises were examined, alongside instances of informal religious practices aimed at enhancing societal conditions. In Romania, religious cults have been essential partners of the State in reducing social crises, providing support through their rich infrastructure and human resources or their symbolic position in society. However, there have also been cases in which religious cults have generated conflictual social states and tension, producing or aggravating social crises.

A biographical study through the lens of Mills’ sociological imagination and Erikson’s identity crisis provides a unique understanding of Dr Fauzi AR, a dedicated Islamist. Fauzi grew up in a devout Muslim family in Kauman, Yogyakarta, the heartland of the modernist Islamic organisation Muhammadiyah. He was educated in Muhammadiyah schools and eventually became a qualified medical doctor. He was politically active in the Islamic United Development Party and joined Laskar Jihad, a Salafi-Wahabi paramilitary group, during the inter-religious conflict in Maluku in 2000. This article argues that the political turbulence during the democratic transition in 1998–1999 led Fauzi to have an identity crisis, which spurred his desire to participate in jihad (holy war). Afterwards, Fauzi became a reformed “maverick post-jihadist,” in that he was unpredictable yet competent. He was unorthodox in his methods, remaining active in mainstream political Islam through the United Development Party while also engaging in physical jihad, which is contradictory because participation in partisan politics is forbidden by the Salafi doctrine. He also remained a heavy smoker although smoking is forbidden by Salafi religious decree. He further defied Salafism by supporting his wife in an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the national parliament as a member of the secular-nationalist party Gerindra in the 2009 election. This case study of Fauzi AR reflects the complex and multifaceted nature of political Islam and Islamic movements in the post-Soeharto era, including those who resorted to extremism and violence to achieve greater Islamisation of society.

Mass movements that are able to overthrow a dictator do not always lead to democracy. Transition periods present narrow windows of opportunity in which activists face difficult decisions to build democracy and prevent authoritarian relapse. Existing scholarship offers limited guidance for pro-democracy forces because it focuses on unchangeable structural factors and cases with a known outcome. We propose an innovative approach for finding informative comparisons for ongoing transitions after authoritarian breakdowns. We quantify the similarity between all breakdowns caused by mass uprisings since 1945 based on their structural preconditions. We then apply our approach to Sudan's ongoing transition and draw lessons from two similar cases: the Philippines in 1986 (successful democratization); and Burma/Myanmar in 1988 (failed democratization). Our analysis shows that structural factors are weak predictors of transition outcomes and that Sudan shares characteristics with cases of both failed and successful democratization. Therefore, democratic transition appears possible in Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the faltering experience of democratic transition in Morocco, by recalling the historical contexts in which constitutional deliberation was raised, especially after announcing that human rights violations will be overlooked and a “rotation government” will be installed. The paper will identify the weaknesses that prevent the completion of conditions necessary for reforms and the establishment of democratic institutions. The study is mainly concerned with tracking the stages of political and constitutional reforms, the progress of demands since independence until the amendment of the 2011 Constitution, reciting the turning points in the history of political conflicts between the royal authority and the opposition forces, and analyzing the major outcomes that resulted, whether in terms of the specificity of the approaches and the proposed exits to liquidate the legacy of the authoritarian past, towards adopting institutional consensuses and approaches to implementing transitional justice and a controlled democratic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article revisits and updates questions that guided research that analyzed the repertoires of action adopted by teachers in the face of democratic construction processes that reached their peak in the 1970s, in Brazil and Portugal (Xavier, 2013). Its central objective is to analyze the identity negotiations (Dubar, 2005) that permeated the political protagonism exercised by teachers in the actions and associations created in the influx of these movements. In the first topic, it locates the teaching movements in the space and time of the democratic transition and presents the questions that guided the writing of this article. In the second topic, it analyzes printed sources such as the mass circulation newspapers in Rio de Janeiro and the "O Professor" Magazine, with a view to observing the dissonant views regarding the establishment of an image of the teachers who participated in these movements. The third topic takes a statement relating to the experience of self-management lived in a Portuguese secondary school and highlights its reverberations in the interviewee's professional self-perception. In the final considerations, a brief reflection is developed on the disputes over the control of teaching identities and also on possible developments of this study. As a result of the analysis developed, it was possible to perceive the constitution of an engaged and autonomous teaching identity, through the analysis of the Magazine "O Professor". In turn, the mass circulation newspapers in Rio de Janeiro expressed the perspective of establishing a deviant identity in the face of teaching's political protagonism, triggering society's moral panic (Adorno, 1998), by condemning the collective actions that were part of the political repertoire of this professional group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between social crises and religious cults3 in Romania is a topic neglected by the specialized literature. In this paper, we propose a series of analyses regarding how social crises have influenced religious life in Romania and the mechanisms by which religious cults have played a role in solving or amplifying them. We will refer to the Romanian Orthodox Church, the majority religious denomination, and some of its positions on events/stages of these social phenomena between 1990 and 2023. This text does not propose a thorough examination of these relationships but attempts to sketch perspectives of analysis in response to the following research questions: What do Romanians think about the Church’s involvement in the life of society and implicitly in social crises? Why is it important to understand the position of religious actors on the evolution of social crises? How have religious denominations influenced the improvement/ aggravation of some dimensions of social crises? Official stances of Religious Cults during different social crises were examined, alongside instances of informal religious practices aimed at enhancing societal conditions. In Romania, religious cults have been essential partners of the State in reducing social crises, providing support through their rich infrastructure and human resources or their symbolic position in society. However, there have also been cases in which religious cults have generated conflictual social states and tension, producing or aggravating social crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arenal.Revista de Historia de las Mujeres is the property of Arenal. Revista de Historia de las Mujeres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On May 23, 1997, a victory of Muhammad Khatami in the presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran started a brief period of liberalization in the country long mired in a repressive and authoritarian political regime. The new government loosened the restrictions imposed on the public space, widened the scope of some civil liberties and under the slogans of "religious democracy", "rule of law" and "participation" aroused expectations of a further political change. Nevertheless these expectations were futile and the widely popular reform movement was stifled by a repression on the part of the conservative core of the regime. This study attempts to analyze these events as a failed attempt to democratic transition, leaning on the theory of Guillermo O'Donnell and Philipe Schmitter. It demonstrates that the transitive period under Khatami's presidency followed the typical path of the disintegration of the post-World War II authoritarian regimes, which usually begins by the split within the governing elite of the regime itself and proceed through gradual and contingent introduction of liberalizing and democratizing reforms by its "soft-liner". On this basis it attempts to capture the overall dynamic of the transitive process, define its turning points, identify the causes of its ultimate successful obstruction by the "hard-line" conservatives and derive from this experience implications for a possibility of democratic change in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Anuario de Historia Regional y de las Fronteras is the property of Universidad Industrial de Santander and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Educación Física y Ciencia is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This mixed-methods study examines the human rights and human rights education and training (HRET) perspectives and practices of law educators in Myanmar during the democratic transition that ended with the 2021 coup. "Contextual, Theoretical, and Methodological Framing" provides an overview of legal and human rights education in Myanmar, discusses the potential of human rights education in law schools during democratic transitions, addresses why educators' human rights and human rights education perspectives and practices are important to examine, and presents the research methodology. "Findings" presents findings based on the two phases of research during the transitional period: phase 1 (2015–2017)—law instructors' perspectives and practices after participating in a multi-year HRET program; and phase 2 (2019–2020)—law instructors' perspectives on the goals, challenges, and potential of HRET in Myanmar. The third section—"Discussion and Implications"—examines the contextual challenges and opportunities for human rights education as related to (1) critical human rights education, (2) practice-oriented HRET, and (3) administrative policies and practices for human rights and HRET within universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tunisia was the last surviving democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring, and had recently enacted legislation to combat racial discrimination. But President Kais Saied, since coming to power in a 2019 election, has returned the country to authoritarian rule. He has also rolled back progress on race relations, scapegoating sub-Saharan African migrants for Tunisia's economic troubles. The failure of previous governments to root out corruption and consolidate the democratic transition with a new socioeconomic pact opened the way for a return to dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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International reports by human rights organizations coincide that the government of Dina Boluarte in Peru has responded to social mobilization with disproportionate actions by public forces. Whereas recent scholarship explains the rising authoritarianism in the country to the weakness of political actors, this article provides a different interpretation by focusing on the political and economic legacies of the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). Post-Fujimori governments have been unable to complete a double transition: a transition to consolidate democracy and a transition to advance towards a postconflict society. Rather, they have empowered economic elites and have deepened stigmatization and repression of social mobilization. To understand current authoritarianism, it is important to identify where concrete power resides and how state practices respond to the influence and needs of powerful actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the question of whether democratic transition causes more foreign aid inflow to recipient countries. By focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, a novel econometrics method, the synthetic control method (SCM) developed by Abadie et al. (2010), is applied to assess the causal effect of a “treatment”, i.e., democratization. The treatment unit is Senegal, which underwent democratization in 2000 and has since been a stable democracy; the untreated units are five other Sub-Saharan countries. The results indicate that democratization resulted in the “treated” country, that is, Senegal receiving significantly more foreign aid than it would have received if it had remained an autocracy, a finding that is robust to various robustness checks. Converting the detected extra foreign aid into an extra growth rate indicates a substantial (3.217 percentage points) additional growth rate for Senegal, ceteris paribus. However, the results should be interpreted with great caution, as they may not be generalizable and applicable to all cases; that is, general policy implications cannot be drawn based on a single case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary states take a variety of measures, ranging from economic, social, cultural, and health to legal ones, to ensure the protection of the individual and the family. Social protection is substantially a form or a field of fulfilment of human needs. Economic assistance, social services and social care are considered social programs which aim to alleviate poverty, eliminate social exclusion, provide social care, enable the reintegration of all individuals, families and groups in need. The Republic of Kosovo, through positive law, has undertaken a series of economic and social measures which ensure the protection of the individual and the family. Social protection in the Republic of Kosovo is not defined by a special law, but it is defined by a package of laws. Thus, currently, in Kosovo there is necessary legal infrastructure for social protection beneficiaries, although not complete in the desired form and quality.

The article addresses various strategies of recreation of the political enemy in graphic representations of the PCE and PCI, mainly of the sixties and seventies. The introduction highlights the iconographic tradition about otherness present in the communist visual culture of both countries, then analyzing the dominant features of the Italian and Spanish imaginary in relation to different semantic and formal tactics (simplification, degradation, brutalization...). The text underlines the link between representations of the enemy and qualification of the communist identity, as well as its continuities, modulations or ambiguities in the contexts of "historical compromise", late franquismo and the democratic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Desarrollo Económico is the property of Instituto de Desarrollo Economico y Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Contemporary states take a variety of measures, ranging from economic, social, cultural, and health to legal ones, to ensure the protection of the individual and the family. Social protection is substantially a form or a field of fulfilment of human needs. Economic assistance, social services and social care are considered social programs which aim to alleviate poverty, eliminate social exclusion, provide social care, enable the reintegration of all individuals, families and groups in need. The Republic of Kosovo, through positive law, has undertaken a series of economic and social measures which ensure the protection of the individual and the family. Social protection in the Republic of Kosovo is not defined by a special law, but it is defined by a package of laws. Thus, currently, in Kosovo there is necessary legal infrastructure for social protection beneficiaries, although not complete in the desired form and quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines two outcomes of demobilization in post-revolutionary contexts, democratic transition and counter-revolution. Complementing elite-driven approaches, we argue that the way demobilization ends is conditional upon the capacity of challengers to promote enduring alliances. Following a paired controlled comparison, we analyse two cases, Egypt and Tunisia and processes of alliance building and fragmentation preceding the 2013 coup d'Etat in Egypt, and the adoption of a new Constitution in 2014 in Tunisia. Data from semi-structured and in-depth interviews were collected through fieldwork in multiple localities of Egypt and Tunisia between 2011 and 2019. Results show that the fragmentation of the challengers' coalition in post-revolutionary Egypt contributed to a counter-revolution while, in Tunisia, challengers' alliances rooted in the pre-revolutionary period lasted throughout the phase of demobilization and supported a democratic transition. We conclude by discussing some alliance-based mechanisms accounting for a democratic transition: intergroup trust-building, brokerage and ideological boundary deactivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economic-financial performance of public enterprises under the Sindicatura General de Empresas Públicas (SIGEP), during the Argentine democratic transition (1983-1989). For this purpose, the performance often state-owned firms is examined in four indicators: sales revenues, prices and tariffs, real fixed investment, and level of internal and external indebtedness. The statistical analysis was carried out with secondary sources, based on the balance sheets and publications of the syndicate. In conclusion, two decouplings are observed in the indicators examined, which significantly eroded the financial capacities of the companies, continuing with the dynamics installed during the last civil-military dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an approach to studying the impact of the Internet on political culture through the concept of collective memory. Departing from the traditional approaches that confine political culture to knowledge, orientations, and behavior, to constructive and interpretive frameworks that define it through the process of "meaning-making," collective memory emerges as an essential component of political culture with its meanings, symbols, and narratives about political life. The paper concludes – from examining the case of the Egyptian Revolution of January 25, 2011 – that the development of the Internet may limit the role of the state and the elite in shaping political culture and collective memory, but it may also increase the severity of political and social polarization and weaken the culture of tolerance towards the other, and the chances of achieving social reconciliation, which is what we call the "paradox of collective memory." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article unpacks the normative and structural challenges facing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in responding to and preventing atrocity crimes, focusing on Myanmar. It argues that ASEAN has been ineffective in dealing with the atrocities occurring in Myanmar, particularly after the 2021 coup, due to its adherence to its traditional norms and the "ASEAN Way". However, faced with the defiance of the junta in Myanmar, ASEAN leaders may be forced to move away from its non-interference principle, and should in fact consider difficult options such as suspension of Myanmar membership in the organisation. By adopting the principle of non-indifference and holding the Myanmar military accountable for its continuing atrocities against civilians, ASEAN could strengthen its credibility not just before the international community but, more importantly, among the people of Myanmar who are no longer willing to tolerate a return to military rule and impunity by security forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being part of the former Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia, according to the Constitution and applicable legislation, Kosovo had social ownership expressed through social enterprises, state properties and ownership by private owners. This system was unique to former Yugoslavia and differs from other former socialist countries. In this aspect, Kosovo, in the democratic transition process, faced the challenges of transforming the first two types of ownership to adapt to the market economy. Social ownership (social enterprises) was presented for privatization through the competent institution (Kosovo Trust Agency, Privatization Agency of Kosovo), while state enterprises received a new status - public enterprises which were transformed into joint-stock companies. This paper elaborates on the privatization process of social and state property according to the model of the free market economy. The paper analyses the legislation and the role of competent institutions as carriers of the property transformation process in the Republic of Kosovo. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the difficulties and challenges of the process of democratic transformation of the society and state institutions of Kosovo from the Socialist System to the Liberal Democracy expressed through the transformation of ownership - the process of privatization of social enterprises and the transformation of state enterprises into public joint stock companies. The paper is analysed by a methodological framework expressed through analysis and synthesis, descriptive method, statistical and comparative method. The paper highlights the difficulties which Kosovo has been passing and continues to face as a new state in the process of privatization and the unwanted effects that this process has had on the economic development of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]