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Explaining The Sectarian Violence In The Middle East: A Conflict Analysis Of The Case Study Of Saudi Arabia And Iran, Ahmed Elsayed Eltally
Explaining The Sectarian Violence In The Middle East: A Conflict Analysis Of The Case Study Of Saudi Arabia And Iran, Ahmed Elsayed Eltally
Dissertations and Theses
The Middle East has been rife with conflicts, extremism, and sectarianism in recent decades. Many explanations attribute the rise of sectarianism in the Middle East to the historical divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims, while others attribute it to power or identity concerns. This thesis explores the factors that contributed to the rise of contemporary sectarianism in the Middle East through the case study of Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Drawing on the literature on the history of the Middle East, Islam, theories of international relations, and conflict studies, it underlines how Saudi Arabia and Iran use sectarianism to further their interests. This …
How Does Wasta Bolster Regimes? The Case Of Tunisia, Issrar Chamekh
How Does Wasta Bolster Regimes? The Case Of Tunisia, Issrar Chamekh
Dissertations and Theses
This paper aims to highlight the impact of democratization on wasta by examining the everyday performance of wasta, or the use of connections and informal networks to acquire services. Despite its widespread use, I find that it is understudied as an explanatory variable in the literature on democratization and authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa, with Tunisia as a case study. In this paper, I argue that wasta can potentially have a consolidating effect on regimes. I examine the ways that wasta is encoded in everyday language. Using literature from Pragmatics, specifically Goffman's dramaturgical model, I find that …