Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons^™

Societal Rather Than Governmental Change: Religious Discrimination In Muslim-Majority Countries After The Arab Uprisings, Yasemin Akbaba, Jonathan Fox

Political Science Faculty Publications

This study examines shifts in governmental religion policy and societal discrimination against religious minorities in Muslim-Majority states after the Arab Uprisings by using the Religion and State round 3 (RAS3) dataset for the years 2009-2014 and by focusing on 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories. We build on threads of literature on religious pluralism in transitional societies to explain the changes in governmental religion policy and societal discrimination against religious minorities after the Arab Uprisings. This literature predicts a rise in all forms of discrimination in Arab Uprising states as compared to other Muslim-majority states, and an even more significant rise …

Perspective: Arabia Infelix: The War Devouring Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

For many centuries, European cartographers labeled the southwest corner of the otherwise mostly desert Arabian Peninsula as Arabia Felix, or “Happy Arabia.” It was a place where towering mountains trapped clouds blown in from the Indian Ocean so that twice-annual monsoon rains blessed terraced slopes and lowland wadis with plentiful crops. Sadly, since fighting engulfed the country in late March 2015, Yemen has never been less felix.

Islamism In Western Europe: Milli Görüş In Germany, Gonul Tol, Yasemin Akbaba

Political Science Faculty Publications

This study is an inquiry into the nature of the Islamic Community Milli Görüş (Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüş -IGMG) movement in Germany. The movement has been identified as an “Islamist extremist group” by the German Ministry of the Interior in 2005. Germany has the highest number of Turkish immigrants in Western Europe and is home to Milli Görüş’s headquarters. We ask whether radicalization is a response to social, economic and political marginalization of Milli Görüş members in Germany. The data collected during the field research conducted in Germany between the years of 2004 and 2007 was used to explore radicalization …

Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

In February 2011, Tawakkol Karman stood on a stage outside Sanaa University. A microphone in one hand and the other clenched defiantly above her head, reading from a list of demands, she led tens of thousands of cheering, flag-waving demonstrators in calls for peaceful political change. She was to become not so much the leader as the figurehead of Yemen's uprising. On other days and in other cities, other citizens led the chants: men and women and sometimes, for effect, little children. These mass public performances enacted a veritable civic revolution in a poverty-stricken country where previous activist surges never …

What Does It Mean, "Promoting Democratization"?, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Political speeches and even policy analysis from Washington, Ottawa, and the capitals of Europe in the past two decades about promoting democratization tend towards generalities and platitudes. This research asks what Western and international agencies actually do, on the ground in the Middle East, by way of fomenting democracy. Taking my inspiration from the sociologist Albert Hirschman who decades ago observed that projects are “privileged particles”[i] of socio-economic development assistance, I’ve collected well over twelve hundred examples.[ii] This summary table illustrates the aggregate finding that most projects cluster around electoral representation, legal or judicial development, and support for …

Euro-Med: European Ambitions In The Mediterranean, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

The European Union is carving out a sphere of potentially vast influence in the Euro-Mediterranean basin, while also cultivating special relationship further south in the Arabian Peninsula. European ambitions do not directly challenge US security policy in the Middle East. Rather, they parallel US interests in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America: for a large regional free trade zone open to imports and foreign investment.

Mission: Democracy, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Incumbent national leaders invite foreign election monitors only when it is in their interest to do so. Rarely is significant financial assistance "conditional" on holding elections, although it does improve a regime's image abroad to do so. For governments being observed, the trick is to orchestrate the process enough to win, but not enough to arouse observers' suspicions.

Bidayat Al-Mujtama' Al-Madani Fi Al-Yaman, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Elections And Mass Politics In Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Yemen's experiment in popular parliamentary elections has shaken things up in the Arabian Peninsula, the last place on earth that the United States wants to see democracy flourish. But internal political differences, profound economic crisis and Saudi hostility puts this achievement at risk.

The Economic Dimension Of Yemeni Unity, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

In North and South Yemen, disparities in patterns of private and public ownership were far more subtle than the designations "capitalist" and "socialist" suggest. In contrast with Germany, their marriage was more a merger than a takeover.

A Tale Of Two Families: Change In North Yemen 1977-1989, Sheila Carapico, Cynthia Myntti

Political Science Faculty Publications

Virtually every aspect of life in North Yemen has changed dramatically since 1977, including those aspects of Yemeni society which represent continuity with the past: tribalism, rural life, and use of qat.¹ The driving force for change has been economic. By 1975, Yemen was caught up in the dramatic developments that affected all Arab countries. Rising international oil prices generated enormous surpluses in the producing countries, enabling them to initiate ambitious development plans and forcing them to import workers.

The Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) was in a good position to provide those workers. In the late 1970s, one …

Autonomy And Secondhand Oil Dependency Of The Yemen Arab Republic, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Recent scholarship on state autonomy in the Third World has been influenced by the dependency thesis that capital accumulation at the core of the world economy is associated with economic underdevelopment and political dependency at the periphery. Dependency reasoning is rooted in a devastating empirical critique of the once prevalent modernization paradigm, in which national state policy was the central independent variable. According to dependency theory, peripheral nations' subordinate structural positions in the international political economy results in sacrifice of authoritative policy making to foreign investors, bankers, experts, governments, and institutions or their local counterparts. Typically specializing in primary commodity …