Do people in the Arab region tend to trust transparent and corruption-free institutions more than others? That is what you would expect, but the opposite appears to be the case. According to the Arab Barometer from 2018-2019, 49.4% of people in Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Kuwait, Sudan, Lebanon, Egypt and Yemen put a huge amount of trust in their…
Political Institutions
Why do Arabs trust the military?
Do people tend to trust non-corrupt and transparent institutions more than others in the Arab region? The logic says so, but the findings show the opposite. According to the Arab Barometer from 2018-2019, 49.4% of people in Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Kuwait, Sudan, Lebanon, Egypt and Yemen have a high level of trust in their armed forces, while…
Protests in North Africa: The Arab Spring Was Just the Beginning
2011 was not the end, but the beginning, and maybe it wasn’t even that. Perhaps the deep crisis of the traditional social contract that underpinned most of the MENA region’s ruling regimes since independence had begun even before. The first cracks could be already be heard by sensitive ears in the 2000s, when the liberal reforms introduced by several Arab…
Citizen Support for Democratic and Autocratic Regimes
Provides the first truly comprehensive account of regime support and its individual- and system-level sources in democracies and autocracies Uses an unprecedentedly rich data base that coves political attitudes and macro-level data for more than 100 countries across the globe Motivates theoretically as well as demonstrates empirically whether and how the effects of different individual- and system-level sources on regime…
In Egypt, the Coronavirus Poses a Political Threat
The pandemic has exposed the shortfalls of a government that has neglected the health sector for too long. n March 16, Egypt had 126 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. By mid-April, that figure had reached 2,700. A week later, cases had grown by more than a third. While the outbreak is just beginning, Egypt’s fragile health care system is…
A crisis on top of a crisis; the fragility of Arab states
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. In his 2014 book “The Butterfly Defect”, Oxford Martin School Professor Ian Goldin warned against the increase in systemic risks as a result of globalization,…
Can Morocco Effectively Handle the COVID-19 Crisis?
In Morocco, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased public trust in government, but people still have doubts about the effectiveness of the healthcare system. According to a recent study conducted by the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis (MIPA), the majority of Moroccans surveyed are generally satisfied with the measures taken by the government to battle the coronavirus. However, the same survey…
Can Morocco Effectively Handle the COVID-19 Crisis?
In Morocco, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased public trust in government, but people still have doubts about the effectiveness of the healthcare system. According to a recent study conducted by the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis (MIPA), the majority of Moroccans surveyed are generally satisfied with the measures taken by the government to battle the coronavirus. However, the same survey…
Grappling with a crisis like no other: the fragility of Arab countries in the face of COVID-19
In his 2014 book “The Butterfly Defect”, Oxford Martin School Professor Ian Goldin warned against the increase in systemic risks as a result of globalization. He borrowed the widely used term “butterfly effect” from chaos theory, replacing ‘effect’ by ‘defect’ to highlight the risks associated with a highly connected and integrated world. In a dedicated chapter on the systemic risk…
Could COVID-19 push Jordan to the edge?
… Heading into the unknown Despite the current positive reaction of the Jordanian people and their compliance with the restrictions aimed at saving lives, this momentary amity between the state and the people is unlikely to endure after the virus is contained. In the long run, the emerging economic challenges will likely result in further social unrest and greater popular…