Lo studio analizza la relazione tra la struttura del potere neo-patrimoniale (fondata sullo scambio tra distribuzione arbitraria di opportunità economiche e lealtà politica) e la debolezza del sistema inter-statale arabo. Combinando un approccio storico-istituzionalista e un approccio intermestic, lo studio considera il neo-patrimonialismo arabo prodotto della contraddizione irrisolta tra la cristallizzazione delle sovranità statali imposte dalle ex-potenze coloniali e il progetto politico mancato della ‘Grande Nazione Araba’. Questa dinamica ha prodotto l’illegittimità strutturale dell’ordine inter-statale arabo, che investe lo stato nella dimensione territoriale e nella dimensione del potere. A cavallo degli anni 70’, nei regimi arabi si osserva una transizione dall’autoritarismo populista ad un sistema neo-patrimoniale. Esaminando i casi-studio di Egitto e Siria, questa tesi si propone di analizzare il divario tra lo state-building ‘weberiano’(legale-razionale) e ‘neo-patrimoniale’: in quest’ultimo, la mancanza di istituzionalizzazione legale-razionale impedisce la formazione di un legame di cittadinanza e asseconda la persistenza di identificazioni sociali tradizionali. In riferimento all’Egitto e alla Siria ,l’analisi mira a mettere in evidenza la relazione tra l’indebolimento (o il crollo) del regime e il collasso istituzionale dello stato. Questo fenomeno in Siria, a differenza dell’Egitto, si accompagna ad una ibridazione della sovranità statale, in virtù della frammentazione politicizzata della società siriana. / This thesis investigates the relation between Arab neo-patrimonial power structures (based on the arbitrary distribution of economic opportunities in exchange of political loyalty) and the weakness of the Arab inter-state system. Combining a historic institutional and an intermestic approach, this study considers neo-patrimonialism as the outcome of the unsolved contradiction between the crystallization of western-imposed sovereignties and the missed political project of the ‘Greater Arab Nation’ (contesting colonial borders). This has, in turn, produced the structural illegitimacy of the inter-state order, affecting both the territorial and the authority dimensions of the state. In dealing with this ‘legitimacy problem’, post-1970 Arab regimes have tended to replace populist authoritarian (ideological-grounded) with neo-patrimonial (material-based) power strategies. Through the cases of Egypt and Syria, the study aims at analysing the gap between a ‘Weberian’ (legal-rational) and a ‘neo-patrimonial’ state-building: in the latter case, the missing legal-rational institutionalization hinders a social identification based on citizenship, seconding the persistence of traditional identities. By examining Egypt and Syria’s power structures, this study enlightens the relation between regime collapse and institutional collapse. Unlike Egypt, which enjoys a substantial societal homogeneity, in Syria we witness the hybridization of state’s sovereignty, stemming from the politicized fragmented character of Syria’s society.

<p> English language teaching and learning receive considerable attention in Saudi Arabian schools as seen in existing efforts of development. A primary purpose of this study is to participate in these efforts of development through the application of a modern constructivist instructional practice for English language teaching and learning on the intermediate school level. This study, in part, strives to determine whether or not the adoption of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) would be a more effective means of increasing the students' reading comprehension achievement scores when compared to the traditional teaching method of the English language that involves (among other things) prompting and drilling of students. This study also strives to gain issues and insights that accompany the application of TBLT through constant comparison and contrast with those that accompany the traditional teaching method. </p><p> This mixed-method study is quasi-experimental that uses a pretest and posttests for collecting quantitative data, and classroom observation and researcher log for collecting qualitative data. The study involved 122 participants divided into treatment and control groups. The treatment group has received ten weeks of English language instruction via the TBLT method while the control group has received ten weeks of English language instruction via the traditional teaching method. The independent variable is the use of TBLT in the classroom and the effect/dependent variable is the students' reading comprehension achievement scores. </p><p> A Two-Factor Split Plot analysis with the pretest as the covariate is used for analyzing the quantitative data. Analysis of qualitative data included synthesis, rich, and detailed description for classroom observation and grounded theory for researcher log data. The findings show that teaching via the TBLT method has significantly helped students increase their reading comprehension achievement scores more than that of the traditional teaching method of the English language. The findings also suggest that the TBLT method, as a constructivist practice, is a better way for English language teaching and has involved practices that are desired in a modern educational context when compared to the traditional teaching method of the English language.</p>

<p>How do political leaders strategically manage fiscal policy formation to enhance their political survival? What are the implications of the fiscal mechanics of survival for theories of redistribution and democratic transition? This dissertation examines the complex relationship between political regime types and fiscal information asymmetries. I focus on budgetary policies (taxation and public spending) as major strategic tools available to the executive for co-optation and punishment of opponents. I argue that allowing some degree of contestation and transparency on the fiscal contract in electoral authoritarian regimes helps the executive identify distributive claims and co-opt the opposition. Paradoxically, in new democracies, political survival depends more on lower levels of budget transparency than existent theories would have us expect. Chapters 1 and 2 present a general formal model from which I derive the major hypotheses of the study. Second, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 use new cross-national measures of fiscal transparency and test empirically the theoretical implications. The statistical models confirm the main theoretical intuitions. Finally, Chapter 6 compares in greater detail the evolution of fiscal transparency in Morocco, Turkey and Romania between 1950 and 2000. I argue that fiscal taboos closely followed the shifting political alliance and their distributional consequences for leader's survival.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis examines the way in which imponderable problems are mediated in the everyday work of commercial film production in Egypt. By 'imponderable problem', I mean a working problem encountered in an extended production process whereby the individual worker, in the present, cannot account for all courses of action leading onto the process's expected outcome. I argue that workers in film production can never entirely solve this kind of problem: they 'mediate' it. They rely on various assumptions and material mediators to break this overall imponderability into a series of contingent tasks, thereby modifying the expected outcome. I situate this mediation in the wider context of the contemporary Egyptian film industry, with its interpersonal mode of interaction, its labor hierarchy, its socio-technical process of production, and its technological implements. This thesis analyzes three imponderable problems in particular: how to coordinate a shooting day; how to visualize the film; and how to anticipate the audience's composition and reaction. The overall argument is situated within media anthropology, where media production tends to be examined as a 'social' phenomenon inscribed on an invisible technological substratum, without exploring the material implications of everyday technological objects in a temporally extended process of production. This literature, moreover, tends to be inattentive to the gap between the way in which the film unfolds and the way in which social agents involved in its making anticipate this unfolding. This thesis, by contrast, considers how Egyptian filmmakers try to anticipate the future of their activity. In addition to being an ethnographic account of the Egyptian film industry, this thesis contributes to the anthropological literature on media production by exploring how workers concretely mediate between the present and the near-/far-future.

abstract: This study is a feminist historiography of Al-Raida, a Lebanese feminist journal introduced in 1976 by the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University. This study recovers foundations of modern Lebanese feminist discourses as they are articulated in the journal by employing Foucauldian CDA as a means to trace discourse strands, or conversations, which include Family Planning, development, politics and narratives of the Lebanese civil war. This study explores, by situating each discourse strand within dominant and local historical contexts, the shifting rhetorical function of the journal through various historical moments. Tracing the dominant discourse strands within the first decade of the journal, this study rhetorically analyzes the ways in which arguments are positioned, research studies are presented, and methodologies are employed to forge viable solutions to Middle Eastern women's issues. First, the study traces the conversation on Family Planning in Lebanon and its relevance to the economic and social situation during the late 70s. Second, the study presents the shift in the early 80s towards a discourse on development and explores how Al-Raida presents the issue of development, attempts to define it, and in doing so outlines some of the concerns at this time, including illiteracy, access to health care, access to paid employment, and women's access to developmental opportunities. Third, the study presents the discourse in the mid-80s on the civil war in Lebanon and highlights Al-Raida's rhetorical function by documenting trauma and war narratives through personal interviews, testimonies, and ethnographies. The shift in the methodologies of the research articles published in the first decade, from quantitative studies towards qualitative studies, indicates the journal is rhetorically situated within both the dominant international discourse and within the local context, exhibiting an ability to respond to the nuances in the local Lebanese women's movement while simultaneously maintaining international visibility. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012