Authoritarianism

Since the turn of the new century, urban mega-projects became a new growth strategy in Morocco. Yet, in contrast to their utopian promises, urban mega-projects do not solve the contemporary urban crisis in the region, but reproduce it in different ways. A paradigmatic case is the Bouregreg project in the valley between Rabat and Salé. This article considers the ways in which this megaproject represents a means to extract profits and privatize public wealth, but also how it represents an urban laboratory for the development of new modalities of government , control, and domination. Finally it assesses the social impact of the project on small-scale farmers and private landowners .

Since the 17th century, the parliamentary institution has been seen as a presumption for the existence of democracy. This
institution, in which the demands of the people were brought to the political field, discussed and enacted, also had a mission
to supervise the executive power. Every country that has been in the process of democratization desires to have this
institution and the number of parliaments has increased in the world since the beginning of the 20th century. However,
this golden age of parliament has been short-lived and criticisms have increased that it have been weakened in the face
of the executive power since the 1920s. These criticisms have become much more observable since the second half of the
20th century, and the “parliamentary decline thesis” has been expressed by many different observers. But since the beginning
of the 21st century, the parliamentary institution has entered a new moment. In this period, which corresponded
to the rise of populist and authoritarian regimes and the decline of democracies, the parliamentary institution continued
to decline. Populist’s majoritarian conception of democracy and their reaction to constitutional institutions, especially
the separation of powers, and their demonizing discourse against the opposition caused the moment of deparliamentarization.
This study therefore argues that the parliamentary decline thesis, which prevailed in the 20th century, has been
replaced by the deparlamentarization since the beginning of the 21st century. Although populist regimes, which began
to emerge in many countries in different regions such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, came to
power with the claim of consolidating democracy, they weakened democratic institutions over time and rendered them
dysfunctional. The study discusses this claim through three former Iron Curtain countries: Russia, Hungary and Poland.
These countries have made significant progress in democratization since the early 90s and during this process their parliament
gain power and autonomy. However, when populist autocrats came to power, -Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary
and Kaczynski in Poland- there regimes immediately turn to autocracy and their parliaments lost their significance.

En los últimos años en América Latina, y en el mundo occidentalizado en general, se ha suscitado un amplio debate en torno al llamado avance de las derechas. Las discusiones llaman la atención sobre el reposicionamiento institucional de los grupos conservadores, que ocupan espacios en los parlamentos, las cortes y, en los peores escenarios, en el poder ejecutivo. Para explicar las distintas versiones del fenómeno es recurrente hablar de fascismos, neofascismo, totalitarismos, etcétera, para tratar de construir coordenadas que ayuden a entender el cambio de época al que asistimos. En general estos términos son equívocos, pero no importa mucho a quienes los usan, aunque confundan periodos históricos, homologuen procesos disímiles y simplifiquen eventos; lo que importa es denunciar el "avance" de las derechas en el mundo, anunciando un peligro similar al que ocurrió en Europa en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Sin negar que hay un viraje institucional en el que las posiciones conservadoras ocupan cada vez más espacios −un proceso completamente distinto al de los fascismos europeos del siglo XX o los gobiernos autoritarios de seguridad nacional de los años sesenta y setenta en América Latina−, hacer la lectura desde la perspectiva de izquierdas contra derechas en el escenario estatal es un tanto estéril. En principio porque se siguen reforzando las cadenas del pensamiento liberal, que limitan la capacidad de la crítica radical, porque centran la atención en las querellas institucionales dando por sentado que lo que se disputa es neutro y necesario: la democracia y el estado como horizontes inevitables. La defensa a ultranza de la democracia liberal impide reconocer el núcleo autoritario que hay detrás de las formas estatales modernas y de la política institucional −de la que participaron y participan tanto las derechas como las izquierdas.

Osmanlı Devleti’nin yıkılışının artık mukadder hale geldiği son yarım yüzyıllık devresinde, dört ana cereyanın yıkımdan kurtuluş reçetesi olarak toplumun ve elitlerin önüne konulduğu genellikle bilinen ve kabul gören bir husustur. Bu çözüm yolları kabaca, Türkleşme, İslamlaşma, Osmanlıcılık ve Batıcılık olarak tasnif edilir. Dönemin İslami hassasiyeti yüksek aydınları, çoğunlukla İslamlaşma ve Osmanlıcılık üst şemsiyesi altında değerlendirilebilecek görüşler ileri sürmüş, bilhassa Arap aydınlarda ise İslamcılık eğilimi daha gözle görünür bir çizgi takip etmiştir. Topluma kurtuluş reçetesi sunduğu diğer kitaplarındaki çizgisine paralel şekilde, öncelikle ve önemle despotizm / istibdat düşüncesiyle mücadeleyi ön plana çıkaran Abdurrahman el-Kevâkibî de bu buhranlı dönemde yaşamış ve eserlerini vermiş bir Arap entelektüelidir.

Kevâkibî’nin yaklaşık bir asır önce despotizme dair ortaya koyduğu fikirler ve devrimci yaklaşım, insan ve toplum dinamiklerinin derin dönüşümlere uğradığı günümüzde de önemini halen muhafaza etmektedir. Çağdaş Arap düşüncesinde artık klasik kaynaklar arasında kabul edilen Tabâiü’l-İstibdâd ve Mesâirü’l-İsti’bâd, Osmanlı’nın son döneminde Arap aydınlarının İstanbul’a bakışına dair tarihsel bir vesika olmanın ötesinde; Arap Baharı sürecindeki halk hareketlerinin sosyolojik dinamiklerini anlamak ve Arap toplumlarının sosyo-politik hususiyetlerini yakından görebilmek açısından da ışık tutucu bir perspektif sunmaktadır.

Las municipales de octubre de 2020 serán el primer termómetro real que tengan tanto el presidente de Brasil, Jair Bolsonaro, como su principal rival político, el recientemente liberado expresidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), para medir el respaldo popular que tienen. Ambos ya tejen sus posibles alianzas políticas. Sputnik Mundo BUSCAR

This article focuses on the structural impediments to authoritarianism in Ukraine during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. First, it argues that the prospect of Ukraine to descend into authoritarianism is complicated by low-level structural factors. That is why the regime, in a year and a half of Yanukovych's presidency, became no more than quasi-authoritarian. Second, the quick concentration of the president's powers was the result of the decline of constitutionalism — the conscious destruction of laws by all key players. Third, the authorities artificially promote the slogan “the re¬building of stability.” The author proposes two scenarios for the authorities' actions with possible consequences for society and government.

In this volume, Manfred Elfstrom and Yao Li provide an in-depth overview of Chinese contentious politics. They examine why protest occurs in China, how it plays out, how authorities react to it, and what social and political implications it has.

Some fifty years after the 1967-war, the former Defence Minister Hafez al-Assad's role in Syria's military tactics that lead to the loss of both the war and Syrian territory and which impacts these decisions had for Assad's subsequent acquisition of power (usually dated at 1970) are still largely unknown. Drawing from the most rigorous secondary material on the former Syrian Ba'th regimes, this article argues that a post-defeat fear of regime breakdown and frustration created conditions that allowed Assad to successively gain ruling power with the aid of loyal friends and family members over the course of the following five years.

The volume opens with a chapter by David Matijasevich, who through a study of Thailand and Singapore, notes that post-political conditions in Asia are enforced by quasi-democratic and authoritarian rule, departing from existing literature linking post-politics with liberal democracies. He thus questions the extent to which Asian cities can truly be 'post' political, and in doing so, also discusses what the 'political' means in Asia.

The principals of what I call Big Digital—the purveyors of mega-data services, media, cable, and internet services, social media plat­forms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, apps, and the develop­ing Internet of Things (or Things of the Internet, as I describe the relation in what follows) are not only monopolies or would-be monopolies but also will either continue to be incorporated by the state, or become elements of a new corporate state power.

"Wide-ranging agreement exists today that a good business climate is central to economic growth and poverty alleviation. But questions remain open about the role of the state in creating a good business climate. This study is intended to answer some of these questions. The Arab Human Development Report 2004 stresses that sustainable economic growth cannot be achieved in the MENA countries without improved governance. One of the core dimensions of good governance is transparency and the control of corruption. The latter in particular is important for a good business climate (World Bank 2005f). Corruption can take different forms, one of them being favouritism which is very widespread in the MENA region. It is usually referred to there as 'wasta', which is Arabic for 'relation' or 'connection', and describes the use of personal relations for preferential treatment. The present study focuses on the economic effects of wasta. It has a twofold aim: first to f...

The European Union (EU) faces an existential crisis. The ‘liberal core’, which played an
important role in transforming the ‘illiberal-authoritarian periphery’ in much of the post-war period, suffers from a series of setbacks. What we experience today is a process of ‘reverse transformation’ in European integration, where the pendulum swings in the direction of the illiberal-authoritarian periphery. This paper argues that the possibility of reverse transformation, i.e., the power of the illiberal periphery to influence the liberal core, emerged as a real possibility for the first time in the history of European integration. The present paper makes a contribution to the growing debate on the sources of the EU’s crisis and its future from a global political economy perspective. We suggest that a refined ‘core-periphery framework,’ located at the intersection of global push-and-pull dynamics, provides a better analytical toolkit to explain the properties and nature of reverse transformation in European integration with its potential implications on the future of Europe.
Keywords: Multiple crises of the EU, reverse transformation, illiberal periphery, global
political economy, de-Europeanization.

The Białowieża case was first and foremost an environmental catastrophe, perpetrated for the sake of material interest and in blatant disregard of the modern approach to the protection of nature. However, the important legal nature and precedent of this case should not be ignored. Obviously, the case will be remembered in future records of EU law as the first act of open disrespect by a Member State of a CJEU''s ruling on interim measures which met with the Court's innovative
reaction – admitting the possibility of imposing a financial penalty for
violating the interim measures order.
Yet behind the strictly legal layer of the case lies another important aspect concerning the very foundation of the legal discourse and the possibility of dialogue. For 11 months between February 2017 and January 2018, the Polish authorities undertook a deliberate campaign to dismantle the very possibility of dialogue with and the judicial authority of the CJEU. Owing to the information chaos, a seemingly easy case stumbled upon a complex web of contradictory claims from the government. Recourse to nationalism presented the EU as essentially
foreign to Poland and Polish interests.
For all those who investigate the challenges to EU law the Bi łowieża case is an ominous augur of what may need to be confronted in future attacks on the rule of law in the EU: not tacit non-compliance with EU law and the CJEU's judgments (which has a long history), not even an argued opposition to EU law, but the muddy waters of populist (un)reasoning that turn courts into parties and dialogue into an echo of unlinked and contradictory statements. In this sense, European populism consists not (only) in open confrontation with the EU and its norms, but with the very form of discourse that underpins contemporary liberal democracies.
Simultaneously, this case displays the limits of EU law's effectiveness. While the case ended with Poland's complying with the CJEU's judgment, the compliance was to a great extent forced by political circumstances. As a consequence, the Białowieża case should be studied as a warning of what may soon happen in populist-ruled European countries. The system of sanctions established by Part 6, Title 1, Section 5 TFEU is efficient, but as long as penalties imposed by the Court are willingly paid by the state. If, however, the Member State decides to disregard the CJEU's judgments and EC's decisions altogether, there is no actual means of enforcing sanctions. Resort to the sanctions of Article 7 TEU
is now effectively blocked by the requirement of unanimity. For this reason, it is of utmost urgency to introduce new mechanisms which would make payment of structural funds dependent on Member States' respect for the rule of law and, even more importantly, EU law.
The current populist upsurge in Europe, especially in Central and Eastern
Europe, is a major challenge to the EU's functioning, if not its existence. It is not just a new wave of euro-scepticism, but a profound disruption of the Enlightenment tradition on which post-war liberal democracies have been built.

The paper describes the history of the emergence and outcomes of a "culture war" in Hungary and the efforts of the Hungarian right-wing government of Viktor Orbán to dominate the public and cultural sphere through symbolic politics. I argue that the conservative government is not really interested in a specific aesthetics or concept of culture although it tries to dominate the public discourse through references to Christianity and beyond-border Hungarians.