This diploma thesis address the problem of Islam in Egypt's constitutional arrangements after the change of government caused by the Arab Spring. The main research question is whether Islam was used by political forces affect the new constitutional arrangement of Egypt and if so in what way. The task is to confront the idea that the influence of religion in Islamic society is disappearing . In addressing the research question was the method of analysis of the available literature and information. By performing analysis of the literature , we found that Islam has clearly still a significant impact on Egyptian society, it is used as a tool of political mobilization and mainly Islamic- oriented political parties push Islam into the state structures. The main finding of this work is that secularism as seen in the European sense, is applicable in Egypt only on condition separating Islam from politics and performing only the basic thought form within the state is built

It has been ten years since the 26-year-old fruit seller set himself on fire to protest corruption in Tunisia. The street vendor created a wave of protests in the Arab world, a campaign for civil resistance, better known as the "Arab Spring". The protests led to the removal of long-standing authoritarian regimes in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. The civil resistance was a result of an economic crisis, high unemployment and corruption. The citizens of the arab world were demanding freedom of expression and greater civil rights. Tunisia became a successful example, where the country today is a complete democracy. In Egypt, the revolution also led to democratization, but for a short period of time. Egypt became more authoritarian after a coup led by the military. The other states failed and the consequences have been devastating with results of civil wars in Libya and Yemen. The main purpose of this essay was to sort out and understand why Tunisia succeeded to become a democracy after the arab spring 2010, while Egypt failed. A qualitative analysis with a comparative democratization study, composed of a most different system-design. The theoretical framework is based on Samuel Huntington (1991) “third wave democratization” and the author’s criteria on democracy, which includes regime legitimacy, economical modernization, and religious change.

This thesis is dedicated to developing a concept that allows for predicting the magnitude of political instability periods. To that end existing literature is consulted to explore the most appropriate definitions and explanatory models for creating a elaborated approach to political instability. On the basis of this refined concept, that defines political instability as a latent condition rather than an occurrence, hypotheses are devised. These hypotheses are tested by employing a exploratory correlation analysis on a limited sample, which yields results that encourage confidence in the predictive potential of the developed concept. As suggested in the explanatory framework the analysis finds that the magnitude of conflict, resulting from political instability, is positively correlated with social fragmentation and individual deprivation, while being negatively correlated to military professionalism. A fourth explanatory component - viable alternatives to conflict - was not found to have any effect.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OFKimberly Noel Turner, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Political Science, presented on June 9, 2021, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EDUCATION BULGES AND MASS PROTEST: HOW HIGHER EDUCATION INFLUENCES PROTEST ONSET AND OUTCOMESMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Stephen BloomCan trends in higher education attainment explain protest onset and outcomes? Beneficial state development indicators, such as education attainment, may produce detrimental employment outcomes. Nonviolent protests spread throughout the developing world throughout the 2010s, often in countries previously immune to public agitation. At the forefront of these protests were well-educated professionals, often doctors and lawyers. Why did these protests emerge? Why did middle-class groups initiate and lead these protests? How successful were these protests? The education bulge theory provides a framework for explaining the onset and outcomes of nonviolent mass protests in repressive countries. The education bulge theory captures the formation of skilled labor grievance and the spillover that influence the emergence of nonviolent, large and diverse protests. Chapter Two details the education bulge theory. Education bulges occur when a country undergoes sharp increases in university enrollments exceeding global averages. As university graduates increases, so does the supply of skilled labor. An increasing percentage of the population is then impacted when demand for skilled labor wanes, i.e. skills downgrading. Skills downgrading worsens the relative position of university graduates to other educational attainment groups, increasing tertiary unemployment and underemployment. Skilled labor compensates by downshifting, seeking out and competing for positions within the semi-skilled job market. This increased competition for semi-skilled positions pushes other educational groups down and out of the labor market. The global forces of labor polarization, education bulges, and skills downgrading are examined for their roles in inducing downshifting behavior. The fomentation of grievance amongst skilled labor is detailed, as well as the spillover effects for semi and unskilled labor. Flattening supplies of knowledge-intensive positions within the private sector along with public sector hiring reductions in the post-recession period exacerbates the decline of skilled labor’s relative position. Chapter Three examines objective measures of skilled labor’s relative position to other education attainment groups. Alongside theories of economic development and inequality, the education bulge theory is tested for its relationship to protest onset. Governmental expenditures on education, relative unemployment amongst primary, secondary and tertiary education attainment groups, and average wage growth are evaluated for their relationship with education bulges and protest onset. Bivariate and multivariate regression analysis indicate that skills downgrading is significantly increases the odds of protests emerging in highly repressive countries. Under an education bulge, additional governmental spending on tertiary education is positively correlated to protest onset. Do education bulges contribute to the overall successfulness of protests? In Chapter Four, I develop a new cost-benefit approach to measuring protest success. Canonical binary measurement of protest success fails to capture the relative concessions demonstrators might extract from their regimes. I develop a 21-point scale capturing the dimensions of gains protests might achieve (in the form of regime concessions) and the costs they pay for those concessions (in the form of state reprisals). Using Mokken scale analysis, country success scores pinpoint a protest’s position along a unidimensional continuum of abject failure to transformative changes in the body politic is developed. My measure offers an improved method of capturing regime behavior in the form of ‘ignoring’ and active repression. My measure also captures instances where protests may be misclassified as failures and features a stronger correlation for crowd age diversity. However, the success scores and binary measures often share directionality and strength for key causal factors. Thus, I cannot claim a definitive victory for my measure. However, unlike binary measures, my measure is able to offer more accurate confidence intervals for interactive relationships evaluated in Chapter Five. Chapter Five evaluates the relationship between political contexts and protest features. Entrenched leadership and repressive state structures are traditional deterrents to protest success. Education bulges, leadership tenure, and state repressiveness are evaluated for their influence on protest successfulness. Education bulges are found to increase overall protest successfulness. Education bulges are also found to increase crowd size and crowd diversity. Interactive relationships between education bulges, crowd size, and class diversity are examined. Class diversity and education bulges are individual have a positive and significant influence upon protest success. Education bulges are found to moderate class diversity, shifting class diversity’s effect on protest success from positive to negative. Regime concessions and protest successfulness are also influenced by external factors, such as sanctions, defections, and audience sympathy. External actors are more likely to apply reputational, material or defection costs against regimes when protests occur within education bulges and feature class diversity. These costs act as mediators of regime responsiveness. Under a mediated moderation model, the direct and indirect effect of education bulges, crowd size, class diversity, and regime costs are evaluated for their effect on protest successfulness. Education bulges increase reputational costs for regimes while class diversity increases material costs. Crowd size increased both material costs and defections. Education bulge contexts producing diverse and large crowds are more successful than non-education bulge protests. This study offers an examination of the role of higher education attainment upon the emergence and successfulness of nonviolent mass protests in authoritarian states from 2005-2013. Despite data limitations, robust findings indicate that education bulges increase the odds of a stable repressive regime experiencing protest onset and protest success. Failure of central governments to ensure commiserate employment for their growing pools of skilled labor increases grievance, crowd sizes and diversity, and punitive action against governments seeking to repress demonstrators.

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Yes / It is believed that financial markets are integrated and sensitive to news – including political conflicts in some regions of the world. Furthermore, financial markets seem to react differently to information flows from one region to another. The purpose of this research is to discern the effects of the recent Middle East and North Africa (MENA) conflicts – commonly referred to as the Arab Spring – on the volatility of risks and returns of global and regional stock markets as well as Gold and Oil markets. To be more specific, we consider the main uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and their impact on financial markets – as measured by the volatility of their risks and returns. In sum, we cluster 53 stock markets into 6 regions; namely, developed, developing, MENA, Asia, Europe, and Latin America countries, and use T-GARCH to assess the reaction of these regions to each uprising event independently. In addition, we use GARCH-M to assess the reaction of these regions stock markets as well as Gold and Oil markets to the uprisings of MENA as a whole. Our empirical findings suggest that the uprising events of MENA have more impact on the volatility of risks and returns of developed, developing, and Europe regions than MENA itself. In addition, although the results show that the volatility of both risks and returns of both developed and MENA regions are significantly affected by general conflicts in MENA, the volatility of MENA is affected during all intervals and with higher significance level. Furthermore, while MENA uprisings as a whole impact on the volatility of risk of oil (after 5 days) and gold (immediately after entering news) significantly, the returns of these markets are not affected by conflicts.

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Saudi Arabia is being challenged by increasing demands for democratic reform. Although many Saudi citizens desire such change, in order to maintain stability, dramatic and rapid reform is not considered prudent. Nor is the adoption of a Western model of democracy seen as a way forward. Indeed, such a shift would be counterproductive for most Islamic nations. A more measured approach, introducing reforms that build on traditional Islamic democratic ideals, would help to maintain stability and legitimacy for the various stakeholders involved. Consequently, attention has been turned to the ‘Majlis Al Shura’ or the Al-Shura Council, an Islamic Advisory Council that ensures policies and laws follow the principles of Islam. Shura, developed from the Holy Quran, is an ancient practice that has profound significance in Arab culture and history. It provides a framework which ensures scholars and experts from a variety of backgrounds are consulted on issues related to governance. Currently, the role the members play in governance of the Saudi State is decided by the King, who appoints individuals to the Council according to their perceived suitability. However, the Saudi Arabian Al-Shura Council is a highly respected institution. Allowing citizens to elect members, rather than having the King holding the authority to appoint them, would not only be well received, but would create a more effective check on governmental power, help satisfy the demand for more citizen input into public affairs, and pave the way for future, more substantial reform, if desired by Saudi society.

This dissertation explores the role of Internet censorship and circumvention in the Arab world as well as Arabs’ views on the limits to free speech on the Internet. The project involves the creation of an Internet censorship circumvention tool named Alkasir that allows users to report and access certain types of censored websites. The study covers the Arab world at large with special focus on Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. This work is of interdisciplinary nature and draws on the disciplines of media and communication studies and computer science. It uses a pioneering experimental approach by placing Alkasir in the hands of willing users who automatically feed a server with data about usage patterns without storing any of their personal information. In addition to the analysis of Alkasir usage data, Web surveys were used to learn about any technical and nontechnical Internet censorship practices that Arab users and content producers may have been exposed to. The study also aims at learning about users’ experiences with circumvention tools and how such tools could be improved. The study found that users have successfully reported and accessed hundreds of censored social networking, news, dissident, multimedia and other websites. The survey results show that while most Arab informants disapprove censoring online anti-government political content, the majority support the censoring of other types of content such as pornography, hate speech, and anti-religion material. Most informants indicated that circumvention tools should be free of charge, fast and reliable. An increase in awareness among survey respondents of the need for privacy and anonymity features in circumvention solutions was observed.