A decade since the eruption of Arab Spring protests in the Middle East and North Africa, the region continues to confront the primary causes of the popular disenchantment including economic deprivation, bad governance, corruption and limited avenues for political expression. Democratisation, the buzzword in 2011 has given way to debates around conflict management and resolution. Simultaneously, there are mounting economic challenges throughout the region that have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are some silver linings such as a focus on reforms, greater scrutiny against corruption, demand for better governance, and awareness regarding women empowerment and rights of minorities. The volume, Politics of Change in the Middle East and North Africa since Arab Spring: A Lost Decade?, commemorates the ten years of the eruption of Arab Spring protests. It captures some of the prevailing political, economic, strategic and social issues in MENA through thematic or country-specific essays that explore the ongoing transformations and underline how despite the hopelessness, the MENA societies have made progress on various fronts. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan).

Understanding the Syrian revolution is unthinkable without an in-depth analysis from below. Paying attention to the complex activities of the grassroots resistance, this book demands we rethink the revolution. Having lived in Syria for over fifteen years, Yasser Munif is expert in exploring the micropolitics of revolutionary forces. He uncovers how cities are managed, how precious food is distributed and how underground resistance thrives in regions controlled by regime forces. In contrast, the macropolitics of the elite Syrian regime are undemocratic, destructive and counter-revolutionary. Regional powers, Western elites, as well as international institutions choose this macropolitical lens to apprehend the Syrian conflict. By doing so, they also choose to ignore the revolutionaries' struggles. By looking at the interplay between the two sides, case studies of Aleppo and Manbij and numerous firsthand interviews, Yasser Munif shows us that this macro and geopolitical authoritarianism only brings death, and that by looking at the smaller picture - the local, the grassroots, the revolutionaries - we can see the politics of life emerge.

This volume examines Lebanon's post-2011 security dilemmas and the tenuous civil-military relations. The Syrian civil war has strained the Lebanese Armed Forces' (LAF) cohesion and threatens its neutrality - its most valued assets in a divided society. The spill-over from the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah's military engagement has magnified the security challenges facing the Army, making it a target. Massive foreign grants have sought to strengthen its military capability, stabilize the country and contain the Syria crisis. However, as this volume demonstrates, the real weakness of the LAF is not its lack of sophisticated armoury, but the fragile civil-military relations that compromise its fighting power, cripple its neutrality and expose it to accusations of partisanship and political bias. This testifies to both the importance of and the challenges facing multi-confessional armies in deeply divided countries.

While the 2011 Egyptian revolution has already become the subject of much debate, the roots of the socio-economic context which made the revolution possible have seldom been explored. Roberto Roccu addresses this gap and in doing this provides the first detailed study of the deeper causes of the Egyptian revolution. Relying on an innovative understanding of Antonio Gramsci's thought, He argues that economic reforms implemented since the late 1980s provided the conditions for both the emergence of a capitalist oligarchy within the regime and an unprecedented rise in socio-economic inequality in society at large. These two processes substantially eroded any remnants of hegemony, leaving the Mubarak regime ill-equipped to face the global economic crisis. By alienating sections of the ruling bloc while impoverishing vast strata of the population, neoliberal reforms provided a necessary, although by no means sufficient, condition for the Egyptian revolution to occur.

Initially published in French under the title Operation Nemesis, this revealing work is a study of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the individuals responsible for the execution of Turkish leaders involved in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Derogy's rigorous research and detective work bring to life the disciplined effort by Armenian nationalists to seek retribution for historic crimes against the Armenian people. The work richly details Turkish plans for the liquidation of the Armenian people, the individuals selected to assassinate the genocidists, and documents for the first time the role of the organized Armenian political opposition to Turkish rule. In doing so, Derogy brings to light the relationship between the legal party and its extra-legal arm; the mechanisms needed to implement the daring plan of assassination; and the special post-war circumstances in which the Armenian nation found itself torn asunder by a Turkish-Soviet detente, in which the independence of Armenia became the sacrificial pawn. Derogy worked closely with scholars around the world and interviewed first-hand survivors who had direct contact with the events described. His is a detective story of the first rank and a historical reconstruction of an obscured chapter of Armenian history.

In his exploration of the use of intelligence in Ireland by the British government from the onset of the Ulster Crisis in 1912 to the end of the Irish War of Independence in 1921, Grob-Fitzgibbon analyzes the role that intelligence played during those critical nine years. He argues that within that period, the British government lost power in Ireland because it failed to utilize the intelligence it received. Through its indifference, the British government contributed to the turning points of the Irish Revolution, and allowed a bloody guerrilla war to develop that was far from inevitable.

Paul Froelich was a key figure in the formative years of German Communism. From a working-class family, he was active in the Social Democratic Party from the late 1890s, a left radical opposed to the First World War, and a founder member of the German Communist Party (KPD). His previously unpublished memoir, only recently discovered, casts valuable new light on a key period, particularly the intervention by the Communist International that led to the disastrous 'March action' of 1921.

As in a number of France's major cities, civil war erupted in Lyon in the summer of 1793, ultimately leading to a siege of the city and a wave of mass executions. Using Lyon as a lens for understanding the politics of revolutionary France, this book reveals the widespread enthusiasm for judicial change in Lyon at the time of the Revolution, as well as the conflicts that ensued between elected magistrates in the face of radical democratization. Julie Patricia Johnson's investigation of these developments during the bloodiest years of the Revolution offers powerful insights into the passions and the struggles of ordinary people during an extraordinary time.

In The Longing for Total Revolution: Philosophic Sources of Discontent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche (1986), the eminent intellectual historian and political theorist Bernard Yack offered a sweeping reinterpretation of modern thought. Yack argued that Rousseau prompted a line of philosophy that continued through Kant, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, which viewed the essential spirit of modernity as dehumanizing, and therefore implied, in a matter that became increasingly clear over time, that a total revolution against modernity is necessary. In this volume, seven political theorists and historians, including Yack himself, reconsider the book's substantive and methodological innovations, its limitations, and its current relevance. Contributors to the volume discuss, inter alia, left Kantianism in historical context, the theological origins of the longing for total revolution, the question of whether the tradition identified by Yack is connected to twentieth-century totalitarianism, and the unique form of critical genealogy pioneered by Yack's book. The volume concludes with Yack's response to the other contributors' chapters. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review.

Winner of the African Studies Association 2016 Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize A lively account of the 1924 Revolution in Sudan and the way in which the colonial situation has affected its representation, a case in point inthe histories of nationalist anti-colonial movements in Africa and the Middle East. The 1924 Revolution was a watershed in Sudanese history, the first episode of anti-colonial resistance in which a nationalist ideology was explicitly used, and part of a global wave of anti-colonial movements after the First WorldWar that can be seen as the "spring of the colonial nations". This detailed account of the uprising, and its eventual failure, explores the cosmopolitan nationalism embraced by the White Flag League, the movement that sparked the revolution, and its ability to attract people from diverse origins, classes and professions. It examines the international genesis of the movement; the strategies put in place to spread it in different areas of Sudan and among different groups; the movement's inclusive ideology and its definition of the Sudanese nation, as well as the limitations to its inclusiveness; and the way in which this episode reveals deeper questions relating to origins, social hierarchies and power. The book also unravels the complex history of the memory of 1924, the politics of its representation and the underlying power struggles that saw 1924 largely lost from the historical record. ElenaVezzadini is a historian of modern Sudan affiliated to the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Bergen, and Institut des Mondes Africains, Paris.

Concerns about CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, Nuclear) weapons have featured prominently in both political debates and media reporting about the ongoing threat from al Qaeda since 9/11. This book provides a chronological account of al Qaeda's efforts to acquire a CBRN weapon capability, and the evolution of the al Qaeda leadership's approach to actually using CBRN weapons, set against the context of the politicisation of the threat of CBRN terrorism in US security debates. Ben Cole explores how the inherently political nature of terrorist CBRN threats has helped to shape al Qaeda's approach to CBRN weapons, and shows how the heightened political sensitivities surrounding the threat have enabled some governments to manipulate it in order to generate domestic and international support for controversial policies, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He assesses the relative success of the al Qaeda leadership's political approach to CBRN weapons, together with the relative success of efforts by the US, UK and Russian governments to exploit the al Qaeda CBRN threat for their wider political purposes. Shedding new light on al Qaeda's tactics and strategy, this book will be essential reading for scholars of terrorism and extremism studies.

Recent history has documented a phenomenal surge in global unrest. From Missouri to the Middle East, the world has watched waves of momentum build, peak, and dip around events such as the shooting of Michael Brown and the acquittal of Hosni Mubarak. There have been waves of mass protests of resistance, vivid expressions of human agency through the use of technology and social media, and the clear search for finding voice in spaces where the culture of silence has been the norm for decades. This quest for humanization has led, in some cases, to macro-level changes such as the fall of governments, the collapse of economic stability, and the production of immense refugee populations. It has also led to micro-level changes within individuals' decisions to no longer be silenced or accept the status quo. Although separated by vast geographic space, this book serves to link these struggles through developing understandings of common patterns within and interconnections across oppressive societal structures. While these dynamic forms of human agency can be studied from multiple perspectives, this book is guided through the powerful ideological frameworks of culture and social reproduction and looks specifically to the role of schooling as a vehicle for catalysing change.

This book traces the role of the UGTT (the Tunisian General Labour Union) during Tunisia's 2011 revolution and the transition period that ensued - Tunisia being the Arab country where trade unionism was the strongest and most influential in shaping the outcomes of the uprising. The UGTT; From its role as the cornerstone of the nationalist movement in the colonial era, has always had a key place in Tunisian politics: not so much a labour union but as an organisation that has always linked social struggles to political and national demands. Examining the role played by the UGTT in Tunisia's revolution and more generally in the restructuring of the Tunisian political arena during the three years following the popular uprising. This book asks searching questions such as; how did UGTT interact with the popular uprising that led to the departure of Ben Ali? What was the role played by the UGTT in the "political transition" leading to the adoption on January 26, 2014 of the first democratic constitution in the country's history? How successful was the UGTT in neutralizing the risk of self- implosion caused by the different political and social crises? And what are the challenges that the UGTT faces in the new political landscape? This volume will be of key reading interest to scholars and researchers of social movements, labour movements, organizational studies, political transitions and Arab revolutions and also likely to be of interest to practitioners especially among activists, unionists and advocates within civil society.

This book looks at conflict zones in the Asia Pacific with a special focus on secessionist groups/movements in the Indian Northeast, Tibet, Chinese Xinjiang, the Burmese borderlands, Kashmir in South Asia, CHT in Bangladesh, South Thailand, and Aceh in Indonesia. These conflict zones are predominantly ethnic minority provinces, which by and large do not share a sense of one-ness with the country that they are currently a part of; most of these insurgencies have had strong linkages with separatist nationalist groups in the region. Methodologically, the author uses extensive fieldwork, interview data, and participant observation from these conflict zones to take a bottom-up approach, giving importance to the voices of ordinary people and/or the residents of these conflict zones whose voices have generally been ignored. Although the book looks at both the historical background and contemporary dimensions of these conflicts, the author focuses on exploring how the role of race, ethnicity and religion in these conflicts can be both direct and indirect. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conflict and security in contemporary Asia with a background in politics, history, IR, security studies, religion, and sociology.

This innovative volume makes a key contribution to debates around the role of the university as a space of resistance by highlighting the liberatory practices undertaken to oppose dual pressures of state repression and neoliberal reform at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua. Using a critical ethnographic approach to frame the experiences of faculty and students through vignettes, chapters present contextualized, analytical contributions from students, scholars, and university leaders to draw attention to the activism present within teaching, research, and administration while simultaneously calling attention to critical higher education and international solidarity as crucial means of maintaining academic freedom, university autonomy, oppositional knowledge production, and social outreach in higher education globally. This text will benefit researchers, students, and academics in the fields of higher education, educational policy and politics, and international and comparative education. Those interested in equality and human rights, Central America, and the themes of revolution and protest more broadly will also benefit from this volume.

Presenting case studies and comparisons across seven countries, this book addresses key questions as to the nature of state fragility, policies used to mitigate it, assessment of outcomes and prospects. It offers a novel empirical contribution in examining a range of distinct but interdependent dimensions of state fragility, not only focusing on questions of state legitimacy, capacity and authority, but also involving the economy and resilience to political and economic shocks, as well as at vital questions of context and diversity. Examining Afghanistan, Lebanon, Burundi, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea and Rwanda within the context of their different local circumstances, and within broader questions of global security, the book identifies unique factors that have played a part in their specific context and explores key drivers and dominant features. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of state fragility and more broadly to students of politics, public policy, development studies, state-society relations, political economy, state building, peace and conflict studies, international studies, security studies regional studies., as well as NGOs and international organizations.

The socio-political context of Egypt is full of the affectual burdens of history. The revolutions of both 1952 and 2011 proclaimed that the oppressive, colonial past had been overthrown decisively. So why has the oppression perpetrated by previous regimes been repeated? What impact has this had on the lives of 'ordinary' citizens? Egyptian Revolutions looks at the impact of the current events in Egypt on citizens in relation to matters of belonging, identification and repetition. It contests the tendency within postcolonial theory to understand these events as resistance to Western imperialism and the positioning of activists as agents of sustainable change. Instead, it pays close attention to the continuities from the past and the contradictions at work in relation to identification, repetition and conflict. Combining postcolonial theory with a psychosocial studies framework it explores the complexities of inhabiting a society in a state of conflict and offers a careful analysis of current theories of gender, religion and secularism, agency, resistance and compliance, in a society riven with divisions and conflicts.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

Since the first wave of uprisings in 2011, the euphoria of the "Arab Spring" has given way to the gloom of backlash and a descent into mayhem and war. The revolution has been overwhelmed by clashes between rival counter-revolutionary forces: resilient old regimes on the one hand and Islamic fundamentalist contenders on the other.In this eagerly awaited book, foremost Middle East and international affairs specialist Gilbert Achcar analyzes the factors of the regional relapse. Focusing on Syria and Egypt, Achcar assesses the present stage of the uprising and the main obstacles, both regional and international, that prevent any resolution. In Syria, the regime's brutality has fostered the rise of jihadist forces, among which the so-called Islamic State emerged as the most ruthless and powerful. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's year in power was ultimately terminated by the contradictory conjunction of a second revolutionary wave and a bloody reactionary coup. Events in Syria and Egypt offer salient examples of a pattern of events happening across the Middle East.Morbid Symptoms offers a timely analysis of the ongoing Arab uprising that will engage experts and general readers alike.Drawing on a unique combination of scholarly and political knowledge of the Arab region, Achcar argues that, short of radical social change, the region will not reach stability any time soon.

This innovative volume makes a key contribution to debates around the role of the university as a space of resistance by highlighting the liberatory practices undertaken to oppose dual pressures of state repression and neoliberal reform at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua. Using a critical ethnographic approach to frame the experiences of faculty and students through vignettes, chapters present contextualized, analytical contributions from students, scholars, and university leaders to draw attention to the activism present within teaching, research, and administration while simultaneously calling attention to critical higher education and international solidarity as crucial means of maintaining academic freedom, university autonomy, oppositional knowledge production, and social outreach in higher education globally. This text will benefit researchers, students, and academics in the fields of higher education, educational policy and politics, and international and comparative education. Those interested in equality and human rights, Central America, and the themes of revolution and protest more broadly will also benefit from this volume.

In Friendship and Politics in Post-Revolutionary France, Sarah Horowitz brings together the political and cultural history of post-revolutionary France to illuminate how French society responded to and recovered from the upheaval of the French Revolution. The Revolution led to a heightened sense of distrust and divided the nation along ideological lines. In the wake of the Terror, many began to express concerns about the atomization of French society. Friendship, though, was regarded as one bond that could restore trust and cohesion. Friends relied on each other to serve as confidants; men and women described friendship as a site of both pleasure and connection. Because trust and cohesion were necessary to the functioning of post-revolutionary parliamentary life, politicians turned to friends and ideas about friendship to create this solidarity. Relying on detailed analyses of politicians' social networks, new tools arising from the digital humanities, and examinations of behind-the-scenes political transactions, Horowitz makes clear the connection between politics and emotions in the early nineteenth century, and she reevaluates the role of women in political life by showing the ways in which the personal was the political in the post-revolutionary era.

The book interprets the Cuban revolutionary movement from 1868 to 1959 as a continuous process that sought political independence and social and economic transformation of colonial and neocolonial structures. Cuba is a symbol of hope for the Third World. The Cuban Revolution took power from a national elite subordinate to foreign capital, and placed it in the hands of the people; and it subsequently developed alternative structures of popular democracy that have functioned to keep delegates of the people in power. While Cuba has persisted, the peoples of the Third World, knocked down by the neoliberal project, have found social movement and political life, a renewal that is especially evident in Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement. At the same time, the capitalist world-economy increasingly reveals its unsustainability, and the global elite demonstrate its incapacity to respond to a multifaceted and sustained global crisis. These dynamics establish conditions for popular democratic socialist revolutions in the North.