New Authoritarian Practices in the Middle East and North Africa

384 Pages·2022·1.441 MB·English

by  Ozgun Topak (editor), Merouan Mekouar (editor), Francesco Cavatorta (editor)

NEW
AUTHORITARIAN
PRACTICES IN
THE MIDDLE EAST
AND
NORTH AFRICA
Edited by
Özgün E. Topak,
Merouan Mekouar
and Francesco Cavatorta
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© Özgün E. Topak, Merouan Mekouar and Francesco Cavatorta, 2022
© the chapters their several authors, 2022
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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The right of Özgün E. Topak, Merouan Mekouar and Francesco Cavatorta to be identified
as editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors v
Acknowledgements x
Foreword by May Darwich xi
1 Introduction: New Authoritarian Practices in the MENA
Region: Key Developments and Trends 1
Özgün E. Topak, Merouan Mekouar and Francesco Cavatorta
2 Maintaining Order in Algeria: Upgrading Repressive Practices
under a Hybrid Regime 30
Islam Amine Derradji and Merouan Mekouar
3 The Authoritarian Topography of the Bahraini State:
Political Geographies of Power and Protest 51
Ala’a Shehabi
4 Authoritarian Repression Under Sisi: New Tactics or
New Tools? 73
Kira Jumet
5 Deep Society and New Authoritarian Social Control in Iran after
the Green Movement 92
Saeid Golkar
6 Silencing Peaceful Voices: Practices of Control and Repression
in Post- 2003 Iraq 112
Irene Costantini
iv | contents
7 Israel/Palestine: Authoritarian Practices in the Context of a
Dual State Crisis 131
Hilla Dayan
8 Jordan: A Perpetually Liberalising Autocracy 152
Curtis R. Ryan
9 Libya: Authoritarianism in a Fractured State 171
Ronald Bruce St John
10 ‘The Freedom of No Speech’: Journalists and the Multiple
Layers of Authoritarian Practices in Morocco 189
Driss Maghraoui
11 New Authoritarian Practices in Qatar: Censorship by the State
and the Self 208
Alainna Liloia
12 Digital Repression for Authoritarian Evolution in Saudi Arabia 228
Robert Uniacke
13 The Evolution of the Sudanese Authoritarian State: The
December Uprising and the Unravelling of a ‘Persistent’
Autocracy 252
Yousif Hassan
14 Authoritarian Nostalgia and Practices in Newly Democratising
Contexts: The Localised Example of Tunisia 276
Giulia Cimini
15 An Assemblage of New Authoritarian Practices in Turkey 296
Özgün E. Topak
16 The United Arab Emirates: Evolving Authoritarian Tools 320
Christopher Davidson
17 Authoritarian Practice and Fragmented Sovereignty in
Post-uprising Yemen 340
Vincent Durac
Index 358
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Francesco Cavatorta is Professor of Political Science and Director of
the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur l’Afrique et le Moyen Orient
(CIRAM) at Laval University, Quebec, Canada. His research focuses on the
dynamics of authoritarianism and democratisation in the Middle East and
North Africa. His current research projects deal with party politics and the
role of political parties in the region. He has published several journal articles
and books.
Giulia Cimini is a Junior Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics at the
University of Bologna and a Gerda Henkel Research Fellow. Prior to her cur-
rent position, she was a Teaching Assistant of Politics at Università L’Orientale
of Naples, and Visiting Fellow at both the International University of Rabat
(UIR), and at the Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies Institute
at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research interests include
Maghrebi political parties, security assistance, dynamics of contention, and
environmentalism. She has published in several academic journals, includ-
ing The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Contemporary Politics,
Middle Eastern Studies, and The Journal of North African Studies.
Irene Costantini is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Politics and International
Relations at Università L’Orientale, Naples. Her research interests include the
politics of international interventions, the political economy of conflict and
post- conflict transition, and processes of state transformation in the Middle
v
vi | notes on contributors
East and North Africa (MENA) region, focusing on Iraq and Libya. She has
published in several academic journals, including International Peacekeeping,
Ethnicities, Ethnopolitics, the International Spectator and International
Migration, and she is the author of Statebuilding in the Middle East and North
Africa: The Aftermath of Regime Change (2018).
May Darwich is Associate Professor in International Relations of the Middle
East at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. She is author
of Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a
Turbulent Region (2019).
Christopher Davidson is a British academic with a long- standing interest
in the comparative politics of the Gulf states. He is an associate fellow of the
Henry Jackson Society, and was previously a reader at Durham University
and an assistant professor at Zayed University in the UAE. His books
include The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival (2005); Dubai: The
Vulnerability of Success (2008); Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond (2009); Persian
Gulf and Pacific Asia: From Indifference to Interdependence (2010); After the
Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (2013); Shadow Wars:
The Secret Struggle for the Middle East (2016); and, most recently, From
Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE
(2021).
Hilla Dayan is a political sociologist and lecturer at a liberal arts college,
Amsterdam University College. Her earlier research focused on the Occupied
Palestinian Territories and Israel’s regime of separation and is featured in
The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (2009). Other work includes surveillance in the con-
text of the global authoritarian turn (2017), and reflection on ‘Occupation
Studies’ (2018). Dayan is a co- founder of gate48 platform for critical Israelis
in the Netherlands and academia for equality, for the democratisation of
Israeli academia and society.
Islam Amine Derradji is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political
Science at the Université de Montréal. His Ph.D. project examines protest
coalitions in Algeria during the ‘Arab Spring’ mobilisations. He has recently
published ‘Le Hirak algérien: un laboratoire de citoyenneté’, with Amel
notes on contributors | vii
Gherbi, in Métropolitiques, and ‘Une si longue absence? Notes sur la poli-
ticité de la rue en Algérie, with Ratiba Hadj- Moussa’, in Maghreb-Machrek.
Vincent Durac is Associate Professor in Middle East Politics at University
College Dublin, Ireland and is a visiting professor at Bethlehem University.
He is co-a uthor (with Francesco Cavatorta) of Politics and Governance in
the Middle East (2015) and of Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab
World: The Dynamics of Activism (2010). His work has been published in
Democratization, Mediterranean Politics, Orient, Global Discourse, the British
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, the Journal of North African Studies and the
Journal of Contemporary African Studies.
Saeid Golkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science
and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His first
book, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Post-revolutionary
Iran (2015), was awarded the Washington Institute silver medal prize. His
publications can be found in Middle East Journal; Armed Forces & Society;
Politics, Religion & Ideology; Middle East Journal; Middle East Policy; Journal
of Contemporary Islam; and Middle East Quarterly.
Yousif Hassan is a scholar of Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the
STS department at York University and a fellow in the Harvard Kennedy
School’s Program on Science, Technology and Society. His areas of interests
are the political economy of technoscience, critical race theory, Black/African
studies, critical innovation studies, and information and communication
studies. His research focuses on the social, economic and political implica-
tions of technology. His work has appeared in several academic publications,
including Information Polity.
Kira Jumet is Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College. Her
research focuses on protest mobilisation leading up to and during the 2011
and 2013 Egyptian uprisings. She is the author of Contesting the Repressive
State: Why Ordinary Egyptians Protested during the Arab Spring in 2017.
Alainna Liloia is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona. Her disserta-
tion research examines the gendered political initiatives of the Qatari state and
Qatari women’s strategic negotiation of political, religious and social norms and
viii | notes on contributors
expectations in the context of rapid development and social change. Her article
‘Gender and Nation Building in Qatar: Qatari Women Negotiate Modernity’
was published in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies in 2019.
Driss Maghraoui is an Associate Professor of history and international
relations at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn
University in Ifrane, Morocco. He is the co- editor of Reforms in the Arab
World: The Experience of Morocco (Mediterranean Politics special edition,
2009), the editor of Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco (Routledge, 2013)
and, more recently, co- editor with Noureddine Harrami and Khalid Mouna
of L’immigration au Maroc: les défis de l’intégration (Fondation Heinrich
Bölland Rabat Social Studies Institute, 2017). His publications are found in
several international academic journals and edited books.
Merouan Mekouar is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science
at York University, Canada. Most of his writing has focused on social move-
ments, authoritarianism and democratisation in the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA), as well as the diffusion of social norms. His first book, titled
Protest and Mass Mobilization: Authoritarian Collapse and Political Change
in North Africa, was published by Routledge in 2016. He has received
numerous awards and grants including the Abner Kingman Fellowship, the
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Grant, the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Connection Grant,
SSHRC Small Fund, York University Faculty Association Teaching Grant and
the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Seed Grant, among others.
Curtis R. Ryan is a Professor of Political Science at Appalachian State
University in North Carolina. He has written extensively on international
relations in the Middle East, on inter- Arab relations and alliance politics,
and on Jordanian domestic politics and foreign policy. He has published arti-
cles in several reviews, including, among others, Middle East Journal, Middle
East Policy, British Journal of Middle East Studies and Middle East Review of
International Affairs, and online with Foreign Policy, the Washington Post and
Middle East Report Online. Dr Ryan is also the author of three books: Jordan
in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah (2002), Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime
Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (2009) and, most recently, Jordan and
the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics beyond the State (2018).
notes on contributors | ix
Ronald Bruce St John is an independent scholar specialising in the political
economies of developing states. He has served as a commentator on Alhurra
TV, Al Jazeera International, BBC World Service, CNN News and NBC
News, as well as as a consultant to the US government and several Fortune
500 companies. He has published twenty- five books and monographs and
contributed to thirty-f our others, and has authored more than 400 articles
and reviews. Recent publications include Libya: Continuity and Change (2nd
edition, 2015) and Libya: From Colony to Revolution (3rd edition, 2017).
Ala’a Shehabi is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity at
University College London. She is a trans- disciplinary researcher working on
alternative ways of thinking about development and prosperity in the Middle
East. Most recently she was the co- investigator for the Citizen Assembly
on Energy Justice in Lebanon and sits on the planning committee for the
Social Science Research Council’s Transregional Collaboratory on the Indian
Ocean. She is the co-e ditor of Bahrain’s Uprising: Resistance and Repression in
the Gulf (2015).
Özgün E. Topak is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social
Science at York University, Canada, where he is primarily affiliated with
the Criminology undergraduate programme and the Socio- legal Studies
graduate programme. His degrees are from Istanbul University (BA), the
Middle East Technical University of Turkey (MA) and Queen’s University of
Canada (Ph.D.). Dr Topak is an interdisciplinary social scientist interested in
topics of surveillance, authoritarianism, migration and human rights. He has
published extensively in these areas. He was awarded the 2019 Surveillance
Studies Network Early Career Researcher Prize, and is currently an Associate
Editor of Surveillance & Society.
Robert Uniacke is a political analyst and researcher specialising in authori-
tarian politics, disinformation and civil–military relations in the Arab World
– p rimarily in the Gulf, Libya and Tunisia. He holds an MA in Arab Studies
from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. His
work on online authoritarian strategies in the Gulf has appeared in the British
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T
his work was supported by a grant (number 611- 2019- 0360) from
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We
would like to thank the Department of Social Science and the Faculty of
Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University for their support.
We would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments of the editorial
team and the anonymous reviewers selected by Edinburgh University Press.
Last, but certainly not least, we especially wish to acknowledge the outstand-
ing work completed by our contributors. All were exceptionally patient with
us throughout the three years needed to complete this project. We are truly
grateful for their commitment, the thoughtful comments shared during our
discussion workshop, and their excellent research.
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