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Over the last few decades, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have become very active in Northeast Africa. In addition to developing bilateral relations with countries in the region, they regard the area as the gateway to connections with the rest of the continent, although they are guided by different motivations. Turkey's expansion of its interests in Africa is both a reaction to the European Union's rejection of its membership and an opportunity to expand its trade, which has been hindered by instability in the Middle East in recent years. Like Saudi Arabia, it views Northeast Africa as a place to extend its cultural influence with that region's indigenous Sunni population. Saudi Arabia has used its wealth to curtail Iran's attempts to expand its influence in the region, while Turkey has provided on-the-ground technical assistance to enhance its political and economic connections in the region. In recent years the two countries have been drawn together by Iran's involvement in Yemen, although Turkey has sought to avoid becoming involved in local political disputes. Rather, it has served in multinational peacekeeping efforts and actions to prevent piracy in the sea lanes off the coast of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. However, since the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar over the latter country's relations [End Page 1] with Iran that began in June 2017, some tension has arisen between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. While Iran also wants those sea lanes to be freely open to traffic—as they were during the time of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi—it also wants to counteract Israeli involvement in Northeast Africa. Turkey has made great inroads politically and economically in Northeast Africa in recent years, while Saudi Arabia has gained the upper hand in its rivalry with Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Arab Spring, each regime that confronted mass protests selected from a range of repressive and concessionary tactics in the effort to remain in power. In five cases—Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen—regimes eventually resorted to using violent repression with participation from national military forces. However, these regimes experienced a variety of outcomes related to their ability to preserve their authority. These outcomes were greatly impacted by the interventionist strategies they faced from foreign powers. We argue that the nature of the international interventions best explains the outcomes for the regimes in question. Foreign powers intervened both to support and to confront existing regimes, providing explanations of why certain regimes survived, collapsed, or came to share territorial sovereignty with oppositional groups during civil wars. Thus, regime survival in the Middle East and North Africa following popular uprisings may depend on the effective management of international support as much as on regime control over national military forces or the repression of social opposition. [End Page 23] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse whether better governance rewards economic performance and facilitates the integration of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region into the world economy. In comparison with other regions in the world economy, MENA countries suffer from important institutional deficiencies, which generate insecurity and difficult international transactions. Despite this fact, the relationship between trade and institutional quality in MENA countries remains unexplored. A gravity model of trade augmented with governance indicators is estimated for the exports of 19 MENA countries, their 189 trading partners and for all exporters in the period from 1996 to 2013. The main results indicate that improvements in five of the six governance indicators increase exports from MENA countries, whereas better governance in destination countries does not affect MENA exports. Instead, each of the six governance indicators used has a positive effect on bilateral trade for the entire sample of exporters (189). Moreover, the effect of country‐pair similarity in governance indicators suggests that a similar level of regulatory quality and rule of law in exporting and importing countries increases exports from MENA countries. Similarities in voice and accountability also foster exports for the average exporter, but not for MENA exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past three decades have been highly climactic for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The advent of satellite television and the Web, coupled with emerging democratic orientations, marked the region’s first political engagement with digital communications at a global scale. The failure of the digital public sphere, however, to deliver on democratisation promises during the so-called Arab Spring suggested a broader failure of the region’s traditional elites to properly address emerging challenges. In this article, the writer argues that the MENA’s youth, with their progressive civic outlook and extensive digital social engagement, hold a good promise for better governance in the region. Research has shown Arab youth to be developing a hybrid identity that lends itself to both local and global features such as diversity, co-existence, women empowerment, innovation, freedom, national pride and tolerance. A review of an online sample of young Arab bloggers and influencers suggests a huge potential to leverage virtual space to promote civic culture in the region. The article concludes that a convergence of young demographics, cyber engagements and progressive orientations is likely to give rise to a sound civic culture with significant implications for good governance. As future leaders in media, education, culture, business and politics, Arab youth will most likely bring their progressive civic views to positively bear on the realities of their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new political geography has emerged in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) after the Arab Spring. The transformative impact of the popular upheavals appeared to put an end to long-term authoritarian regimes. Today, the region is far from stable since authoritarian resilience violently pushed back popular demands for good governance and is pushing to restore former state structures. However, the collective consciousness of the popular revolts endures, and a transformative prospect may emerge on the horizon. The chaotic situation is the result of an ongoing struggle between those who seek change and transformation and others in favour of the status quo ante. A critical evaluation of the Arab Spring after five years indicates a continuous process of recalculation and recalibration of policies and strategies. There are alternative routes for an eventual settlement in the MENA region, which are in competition against both regional and transregional quests for a favourable order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

State failure, sovereignty disputes, non-state territorial structures, and revolutionary and counter-revolutionary currents, among others, are intertwined within the Arab Spring process, compelling old and emerging regional actors to operate in the absence of a regional order. The emergent geopolitical picture introduces the poisonous mix of loss of state authority spiralling toward instability, defined by sectarianism, extremism, global rivalries, and ultimately irredentism within interdependent subregional formations. This assertion is substantiated by detailed and specific evidence from the shifting and multi-layered alliance formation practices of intra- and inter-state relations, and non-state and state actors. Analysis of the relations and alliances through a dichotomous flow from domestic to regional and regional to global also sheds light on prospective future order. A possible future order may take shape around a new imagination of the MENA, with porous delimitations in the form of emerging subregions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars have recently begun to examine how authoritarian rulers cooperate with each other in order to fend off popular challenges to their power. During the Arab Spring the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council ( GCC) supported fellow authoritarian regimes in some cases while backing opposition movements in others. Existing theoretical approaches fail to explain this variation. Advancing the study on authoritarian cooperation, this article develops a theoretical approach that sets out to explain how authoritarian regimes reach their decisions. Drawing on poliheuristic foreign policy analysis, it argues that perceptions of similarity serve as a filter for estimating threats to regime survival at home. If regimes perceive the situation in other countries as similar to their own, supporting other authoritarian regimes becomes the only acceptable strategy. In contrast, if perceptions of similarity are low, regimes also consider other options and evaluate their implications beyond the domestic political arena. Applying this framework to the example of the GCC states during the Arab Spring, the analysis reveals covariation between perceptions of similarity and threat among GCC regimes, on the one hand, and their strategies, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have been widely celebrated but in the West they have generated concern and apprehension. Most of this concern involves the future role of religion in the politics of the Arab world. In this essay, I make two broad observations. First, concern in the West about the rise of mainstream Islamist parties is partly based not on the illiberal orientation of these groups but the fact that they are politically independent actors who challenge Western geo-strategic interests in the region. Second, the role of religion in government has never been democratically negotiated en masse in the Arab world. To assume that this issue has been resolved and a broad consensus exists is to project a Western understanding of religion-state relations on the Arab-Islamic world. Doing so is both erroneous and analytically distorted. The battles over the role of religion in politics have yet to begin in the Arab world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares US and EU efforts at democracy assistance in the Middle East and North Africa. Although the substantive content of what the US and the EU view as the type of democratic institutions to promote does not differ greatly, some puzzling variations are found in the area of funding party development and decentralization, a balanced top-down/bottom-up versus a top-down approach and slightly different thematic foci. The actors use similar implementation methods, but have differing approaches to partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on regional studies and comparative politics in the Middle East and North Africa. The logic of a regional approach to comparative politics is clear: by limiting comparison to a geographical area composed of countries with more or less important shared characteristics, the researcher is able to control many variables and to concentrate on fewer. Geographical contiguity is evidently neither the only nor necessarily the best means to define a relatively homogeneous universe. Yet, geographical contiguity often also implies certain shared cultural, historical and socio-economic similarities. This is particularly the case for the Middle East and North Africa, extending from Morocco to Afghanistan; where there are twenty-two independent states, eighteen of which are Arab countries, the others being Turkey, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel, and Afghanistan. Despite the enormous extent of the area and its obvious diversity, the countries within it share important common characteristics. One such characteristic is Islam; all the countries of the region, except Israel are populated by Muslim majorities, and whatever its variations, Islam is a powerful factor in their politics. The second is shared historical experience. Thirdly, all of the countries of the region, again with the possible exception of Israel, can be broadly defined as developing or "modernizing" societies. The socio-economic modernization, which these societies are undergoing has obvious implications for their political systems.

The author discusses the failure of democratization across North Africa and the Middle East after the Arab Spring revolts. She believes that while the 1989 anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe has resulted to stability and strengthening of democratic institutions, the post-Arab Spring has led to a faltered economic reform and short-lived political stability. What remains as an ideal post-Arab Spring transition are discontent, anti-election and anti-government protests and violence.

The article presents the author's insights on the global effects of the Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. The author states that the uprisings were caused by the public's infuriation over the blatant theft by dictators and their cronies. Moreover, the results of earlier revolutions including the war in the U.S. between Alexander Hamilton's Federalists and Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans, the French Revolution, and the Chinese revolution are discussed.

The article discusses the Australian Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies' "Military Sciences - Security Sciences - Conceptual Landmarks" workshop which was held on October 19, 2017, the Satellite as an enabler for C4ISR" workshop on November 14, 2017 at the Palace of the National Military Circle, and International Scientific Conference STRATEGIES XXI event on December 7-8, 2017. National security developments and trends in the Middle East and North Africa are assessed.