Resilient Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	March 2011

While celebrating a historic turning point in Egypt and Tunesia, it is also clear that authoritarianism will remain a prominent feature of Middle East politics. The spectrum of regime types in the region will expand. It may even come to include democracies. Yet as the cases of Syria and Iran demonstrate, not all regimes will experience political openings. Eventhough the region might be transformed in the years ahead, the cases of Syria and Iran remind us that the political landscape of the Mi...

1: Moth or Flame: The Sunni Sphere and Regime Durability in Syria

Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	November 2009

This paper investigates relations between the Syrian regime and the Sunni sphere by providing a brief policy oriented analysis of regime - sphere relations and their role in the resilience of the Syrian authoritarian regime. It adds to the emerging appreciation amongst scholars and practitioners in the field of civil society that civil activism does not necessarily have a positive impact on processes of democratization and/or socio-political liberalization. It does this by questioning the ext...

2: Civil Society Activism in Morocco: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’?

Author:	Francesco Cavatorta
Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	November 2009

This working paper outlines the current theoretical debate about civil society and democratisation and examines how such general debates have informed studies of civil society in the Arab world. It analyses in depth the case of Morocco, where civil society activism has greatly increased in the course of the last decade, coinciding mainly with the arrival to power of King Mohammed VI. More specifically, this study examines three areas of civil activism in the Kingdom: women’s rights and the 20...

3: Civil Society and Democratization in Contemporary Yemen

Author:	Laurent Bonnefoy , Mairine Poirier
Publisher:	Hivos , University of Amsterdam
Date:	November 2009

Working paper 3 discusses Civil Society en Democratization in Yemen. One part describes and analyzes the persistence in Yemen of what could be called a traditional civil society comprising of tribal and religious actors, who traditional as they may be, are also engaged in modernization processes. The second section will highlight the emergence of more modern actors since unification who, often benefiting from foreign support, are developing a new agenda and, in their own way, are responding t...

4: The Downfall of Simplicity

Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	November 2009

Many articles have been written on democratization. The focus often lies on the ‘pluralist’ notion, in which civil society is believed to be the most important stimulus for democratization. Much less, though increasing, attention is paid to the ‘critical’ notion, in which political society is considered to be the main driver of democratic reform. Recently however, scholars have come to understand that both notions, in which concepts are studied isolated, fall short in explaining democratic tr...

5: Democratization through the Media

Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	April 2010

Working paper 5 is the result of a review of the work of IKV Pax Christi in Morocco in the period 2007 – 2009. The review is commissioned by IKV Pax Christi to the University of Amsterdam and conducted by Dr. Francesco Cavatorta. IKV Pax Christi has co-organized a series of debates between Islamists and secularists in Morocco as part of a programme with Press Now entitled ‘Democratization through the media’. In these debates, participants discussed about various actual political problems in M...

6: State-Business Relations in Morocco

Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	June 2010

Working Paper 6 studies how the relationship between the state and the business community in Morocco has changed over the past two decades. Recent scholarship by social scientists on political change in the Middle East and North Africa has mostly focused on civil society. Relatively less attention has been paid to the role of business associations. Given the more prominent role for the private sector in a market economy it is of interest to examine how the relationship between the state and t...

7: Civil Society and Democratization in Jordan

Author:	Curtis R.Ryan
Publisher:	Hivos , University of Amsterdam
Date:	June 2010

Working Paper 7 provides an analysis of the state of civil society and democratization in Jordan. It analyzes the nature of the governing system and its institutions, examines the state of democracy in the kingdom, the nature of the regime and the ruling elite (including key ethnic components), the status of economic liberalization, the role of religion in political life, the nature of political opposition and the question of deliberalization.

8: Package Politics: Antagonism, Resistance, and Peace in Syrian Political Discourse

Publisher:	Hivos/University of Amsterdam
Date:	June 2010

Working Paper 8 examines ways in which regional conflicts, especially the relationship with Israel, have an influence on the resilience of the Syrian regime. It does so based upon the analytical notion of discourse, which examines the role of discursive assumptions and norms in framing social practices. The norms and mechanisms inbuilt within discourse contribute to the shaping of the choices and practices of political actors in many ways: by determining the range of possible action, by legit...

9: East European and South American Conceptions of Civil Society

Author:	Marlies Glasius
Publisher:	Hivos , University of Amsterdam
Date:	June 2010

Working Paper 9 focuses on those countries in Eastern Europe and South America where civil society emerged as a cause celebre in the successful transition to democracy: Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.It offers a theoretical analysis of precisely how civil society was conceptualized by its protagonists in their pre-democratic contexts by studying their writings from the pre-democratic period. The latter have been largely ignored in later narratives which chart...