To appropriately understand and operationalize the concept of “personalist rule,” this article separates the institutional arrangements of the (de)centralization of executive power into three components: the organizational foundation of the ruling elites, executive-legislative relations, and constitutional authority and partisan power. This article is divided into four sections. First, it indicates that previous studies on “personalist rule” have focused on its two primary features: the long-standing rule and centralization of executive power. Second, based on the above three aspects of the (de)centralization of executive power, it explores the institutional arrangements of the Egyptian third republic, which was established in the 2014 constitution and reformed in 2019 to coexist with the second chamber, the vice presidency, and presidential term limits under semi-presidentialism. Third, it discusses the institutional implications of extensive constitutional reform and suggests that the introduction of the vice presidency and second chamber, with the simultaneous relaxation of presidential term limits, can give an impression of strengthening the decentralization of executive power when in fact weakening it. Finally, it concludes that such an argument contributes to broadening the institutionalist perspective on authoritarian regimes and constructing a measurable and reproducible indicator of “personalist rule.”

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From the perspective of critical discourse studies (CDS), this paper examines how the Palestinian leadership internalized the concept of self-determination in 1918, when the concept gained international recognition, and shortly thereafter. This is a particularly important period to consider with regard to how Palestinians felt about the emergence of the concept and how it was incorporated into their discourses. First, this paper shows that discourse in Palestinian leadership can be understood at three levels: identity, subject of demand, and international legitimacy. The analysis shows how the discourse, which initially appealed for protection of individual rights to residence and ownership, gradually transformed itself into one that sought collective independence and even made the right to national self-determination itself a goal. Furthermore, such discourse is found to have merged with that of the League of Nations and the Allies for strengthened legitimacy. In other words, international discourse clearly played an ideological role in the formation of discourse for the Palestinians and contributed to the reduction of discourse’s dialogicality. Moreover, the roles of the Muslim Christian Association in Palestine, the Palestinian Arab Council, and the Palestinian delegation dispatched by the Council to London were particularly important as actors in the formation of discourse.

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The article departs from a key assumption: rejection of master discourses, which seek to standardize, and universalize, democratization experiences into “one-size-fits-all” theorizing. By refocusing discussion on democratic knowledge, it revisits Bloom’s taxonomy and blends it with Heidegger’s conceptions of learning and unlearning, relating it to his notion of Dasaein or “Being.” The gist of the exercise is to create a quasi-conceptual framework [a kind of democratic learning loop] speaking to rich and diverse specificities. The framework uses five underlying constructs, cognitive/meta-cognitive, affective, value-ative, constructive and reflective, for interpreting democratic learning and unlearning. Accordingly, the article departs from a normative standpoint. It seeks to capture the democratic moment, in the context of the Arab Spring. Democracy is a moral project and involves a great deal of normative substance that angles at the acts of “what should be” in politics. In so doing, the article speaks to the ideal of democratization, with stress on its didactic content and value. A key concept forms a focal point in the analysis: democratic learning and unlearning. It merits scholarly attention for its normative potentiality not only on ontological and epistemological grounds of how to do democratization, but also for its stress on the didactic, in the quest for democratic identities and futures, in the Arab world. This approach adds nuance to the study of democratization, in general. In attempting to normativize learning and unlearning as inherent to democratic knowledge and acquisition, three lines of investigation frame the analytical agenda: i] considering knowledge-making and revisiting issues of Orientalism; ii] outlining and contextualizing democratic learning; and iii] framing a democratic learning loop.

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I seek to illustrate in this article the process of democratic learning among Islamists, specifically past and current members of the Muslim Brotherhood [MB], in Egypt between 2011 and 2013. These activists participated in a process of political learning that did not occur along a linear sequence from radical or moderate. I interviewed Islamists who were involved in various political activity through either the Freedom and Justice Party [FJP] or other parties such as Egyptian Current and Strong Egypt. They had acquired political knowledge, namely norms and values, in the context of a collective movement. Previous experiences of political activism also fostered and reinforced certain types of values and behaviour. This article analyses the impact of the norms of public service and cooperation among Islamist activists on the Egyptian political scene. A meaningful cultural repertoire shaped the scope and nature of reformist projects of popular change. In the recent past, the MB was involved in a variety of activities, from contesting elections in the 1980s to marhala amal ma‘a al-mujtama‘ during 2000s, in a demonstrable eschewal of the use of violence. Newly legalised political parties founded by Islamists after 2011 cooperated with different ideological groups and movements.

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This article seeks to contribute to an under-researched area of the Syrian conflict, namely, ongoing political change inaugurated by bottom-up forces and mediated by both Assad regime responses and international diplomatic-military maneuverings. It suggests that civic and violent modes and practices of resistance against authoritarianism in Syria interpenetrate and even cross geographic borders. Drawing on original interview data with Syrian activists and politicians, including local council members and the Etilaf (National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces), this article highlights sites of ‘democratic learning’ [Sadiki 2015a] and ‘un-learning’ to interrogate how they overlap, complement, and relate to one another. The first part traces the historical pedigree of civic praxis in modern Syria. Next, the article frames ‘democratic learning’ in the Syrian war context, stressing the non-mutually exclusive civic and violent manifestations of opposition to Assad. It then tentatively showcases the existence and development of the civic values of mobilization/engagement and inclusiveness among activists, local council members, and opposition politicians. Efforts at trust-building and an ethos of voluntarism appear rooted in a common revolutionary cause. The article concludes with a critical reflection on the challenges of investigating ‘democratic learning’ by Syrians as a national institutionalization of the revolutionary ideals of hurriyyah (freedom), karamah (dignity) seem far-off.

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The mass protests that swept Iraqi cities in November 2019 demonstrates that democracy in the country is in its transitional phase. Ordinary people have taken to the streets to show their frustration against the ruling political parties in Baghdād. The toppling of Ṣaddām’s regime in 2003 led to the establishment of a consociational democracy to solve the sectarian divisions in Iraq. Controlled by the main political parties, this system has become an obstacle in the way of consolidating Iraq’s democracy. Iraqi political parties have dominated and controlled democracy in the name of their sects and groups. Iraqi citizens feel excluded from political process though they participate in voting in regular elections. External factors, notably, rivalry between the Saudi Arabia and Iran has intensified the internal divisions in Iraq and created the ground for communal mutual mistrust. Other economic and social issues have also raised many questions about the credibility of Iraq’s democracy especially after the steady decline of oil prices. Civil society organizations and small splitting groups represented the backbone of recent demonstrations and will contribute to ‘learning democracy’ and developing the process of democratization in Iraq.

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This article adopts a multidimensional, capabilities approach [Sen 1993] to social exclusion to help extend the practical use of the concept. It explores the scope for the analysis of social exclusion across a range of existing indicators sets in order to examine the possibility of using the concept of social exclusion in contexts other than the European conditions in which it was originally developed, specifically in the Arab world. ­The article illustrates the applicability of this comprehensive approach to social exclusion through a case study of Assiut in Upper Egypt. Because social exclusion is not static but a dynamic process, the article turns to the interplays between social exclusion and attempts to practice and foster greater inclusiveness in society. The article thus contributes to research on social exclusion by examining struggles for greater inclusiveness, an important value for ‘democratic learning’ [Sadiki 2015] in youth activism in Egypt.

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