The purpose of this essay is to examine the level of democracy in Tunisia. I will research the challenges to consolidation that the country is facing. I will study between the period of 2001 and 2019. This is to examine how democracy has developed over the years. especially after the Arab Spring. This essay is based on Linz and Stepan's five consolidation arenas. This essay will examine civil society, political society, rule of law, state bureaucracy and an economic society in Tunisia. Zine el. Abadine Ben Ali had been in power since 1987. He was forced to move into exile after about 24 years in power. The governing party RCD controlled the political system in the country since independence in 1956. On 17 December 2010, theso-called Arab Spring began, which meant that Tunisians, for the first time in several decades, experienced a democratic leader based on free and fair elections. Based on the analysis of the thesis, it can be argued that Tunisia is on the way to a fully consolidated democracy, but that there are a number of important aspects in a number of arenas that must be met first before Tunisia can be described as a fully democratic country.

Protests have been important social phenomena for the wider Middle East, especially since the Arab Spring, with the potential to achieve dramatic change. Understanding the nature of uprisings in the region is important for our understanding of the present and the future. To this end, this thesis tried to make sense of the dynamics and processes that led to the emergence of three protests in the region, the 25th of January Revolution in Egypt, the Syrian Uprising, and the Gezi protest. It tried to analyze the different aspects in which they were comparable. Furthermore, it tried to analyze their representation in the media by uncovering the differences and similarities between the discourse of two Turkish newspapers, Sabah and Cumhuriyet, in their columns and news reports regarding these instances of protests. Critical discourse analysis was used alongside comparative case study to see the differences between social reality and the discourse of the newspapers. Also, the thesis tried to explain the discrepancies and commonalities between the discourse of the newspapers. When the protests were compared with the help of the existing literature, it was seen that the protests had some similarities in the aspects such as causes of protest, the performance of the protestors, and state reaction. Moreover,...

The topic of this thesis is on political instability and revolutionary war in the countries that were involved with the Arab Spring. As created by James. C Davies (1962), the J-curve hypothesis serves as the foundational theoretical framework, where revolutions are ignited after prolonged improvements in political and economic living conditions which become interrupted by a sharp reversal. Panel data with variables that measure quantitative factors are analysed by using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and logistic regression, to statistically test which factors have created political instability and ignited revolutionary war in the Arab Spring. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that political factors, rather than economic factors, such as political terror against the population and government corruption are the most relevant in explaining political instability and revolutionary war in the Arab Spring and the developments that followed.

The theme of this study will be the Arab Spring and democratization. The impact of the Arab Spring has, in one form or another, extended to almost all countries of the Arab region in the MENA. However, this paper will be limited to compare two countries, in particular, Tunisia and Egypt by analyzing their democratization and examining how two similar states achieved widely differing outcomes in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Tunisia and Egypt are both predominantly Muslim-majority, Arabic-speaking countries, and both of them were subject to authoritarian regimes (Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt) before the outbreak of the Arab Spring. After the first wave of uprisings, Tunisia made remarkable progress in the transition to democracy, but in Egypt, the situation altered when the army overthrew a democratically elected president, and then the country underwent a counter-revolution, bringing it back to square one (i.e. the yoke of tyranny). The four variables that this research will revolve around as an explanation and possible analysis of the secret of this difference in outcomes between these two countries are the role of the international and regional community, the position of the military and armed forces in the state, the role of religious political parties, and the effectiveness of civil society organizations across the country. After reviewing all four variables, the final result of the paper suggests that the military, religious, international, and civil society variables are the strongest indicators of the reason for the great difference in the democratic progress in both countries. This paper facilitates an understanding of democratization by identifying the critical factors in determining whether a nation's transition from dictatorship to democracy will be successful or not. Key Words: the Middle East and North Africa, Arab Spring, Democratization, Egypt, Tunisia.

Analyzing the various factors that strengthened the Hashemite regime's stability during the spread of chaos caused by the Arab Spring is deemed important; even though the wave of the Arab Spring has ended, Jordan's economy is still suffering and the public is still demanding reform nonetheless, the Hashemite regime is untouched. This research will analyze the regime-society bond in light of the Arab Uprising that has undoubtedly assisted in the survival of the kingdom by creating a framework by which protesters unconsciously adhered to that entailed calls for political and economic reform to be initiated by the existing regime. Furthermore, the Hashemite's most powerful allies made sure to provide military and financial assistance to ensure the regime and the kingdoms remain secure and stable. However, such aid did not come without a price; it was critical for the Hashemite regime to balance between maintaining its coordinated strategies with its allies to maintain the close relations and maintaining its sovereignty and the foreign policies that serve national interests.

Illegal immigration is one of the current problems that occupy the European agenda. With the beginning of the revolutionary movements called 'the Arab Spring' in the Middle East and North Africa, Europe has faced massive uncontrolled migration waves. In this period, the asylum applications in European countries have broken a record in the history of the EU. This situation has impelled the European Union and its member states to take certain measures. However, political disagreements were observed over some of the measures taken by the EU. In light of these developments, this thesis will focus on illegal immigration movements from the Middle East and North Africa region to Europe right after the beginning of the Arab Spring (in other words from at the end of 2010 to now). In this context, this master's thesis aims to give the immigration and asylum policies of the European Union aiming to prevent these illegal immigration waves and to evaluate the political positions of the Visegrad countries during this period.

The purpose of this thesis is to try to understand the moderation process of the Tunisian Islamic political party Ennahda between the years of 2011-2016. This case is studied within the context of the democratisation process that took place in Tunisia, in the five years after the Arab spring and the idea that political Islam might provide a path to democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The theoretical framework chosen for understanding this process was in form of a theory about under which circumstances religious political parties politically moderate. The method used was a qualitative content analysis. The analysis was conducted by dividing the chapters into thematic topics that emerged out of the material with the framework then being applied to those themes. The research found that the theory provided theoretical understanding for why the Ennahda Movement became more moderate, especially when looking at factors regarding political entrepreneurship. However, other factors such as a dedication to democratic values, non-violence, and a willingness to change throughout its history, also proved important in the case of moderation within the Ennahda Movement.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and describe the effects of the Middle East policies of Turkey and the European Union on mutual relations between the two actors with particular focus on the Arab Spring and its repercussions on regional stability and international relations. The key components of Turkey's foreign policy are analyzed from the perspectives of EU-Turkey relations and political stances of Turkey and the European Union towards the Middle East. Analysis of Turkey's and the EU's responses to the uprisings and their impact on the situation in the region is an important part of the study. The conclusions of this study confirm that the strategic cooperation between the EU and Turkey and the necessity of compensating each other's relative weaknesses in order to achieve similar foreign policy goals in the concerned region after the Arab Spring led to a rapprochement between the two actors. However, a direct influence of this rapprochement on the negotiation process regarding the future Turkish membership in the EU has not yet been observed. Key words Turkey, the European Union, Turkey-EU relations, negotiation process, the Middle East, MENA, foreign politics, the Arab Spring…

This thesis paper set out to investigate the research puzzle of why some nonviolent conflicts lead to democratisation while others do not, as well as what explains this variation. A time series, cross-case comparison between the Arab Spring revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt was conducted exploring the link between organisational structure of prominent organisations participating in the movement and the success or failure of the countries’ later democratisation efforts. The hypothesis formulated claims that formal organisational structures are more likely to lead to successful democratisation. After the empirical material was collected, the results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that there is a link between organisational structure and successful or failed democratisation via the mediating variables of clear leadership and the presence of durable organisations. Afterwards, the limitations of the study are discussed. To strengthen the existing body of literature, potential avenues for future research are presented.

In the context of debates about the causal role that new media technologies did or didn’t play in the 2011 Arab uprisings, my dissertation conversely examines some of the diverse and contradictory ways new media technologies have been used and their power envisaged during revolution and war in Syria since 2011. Exploring various contexts of use, I consider how the same technologies have been understood to ground divergent political projects, to produce contradictory affective responses, and to mint antithetical epistemic values. I ask how technologies come to be seen as answers to social and political problems; and I give an account of the social and political questions asked of a technology as it moves through geographies, institutional settings, or historical moments. By investigating the infrastructural, epistemological, and affective dimensions of the Syrian revolution and war and the work of its media activists I develop a conceptual analysis of political possibilities and their foreclosure in Syria over the past decade. My dissertation draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, Lebanon, France and Germany (2018-2020) among communities of humanitarian, media and digital forensic activists involving two different but connected things. First, following activists as they move, across borders, in and out of organizations, and in and out of activism. Second, following images as they move, also across borders, in and out of contexts of use, and in and out of use. These two movements happen at different intensities and speeds, and with different levels of friction, marked by the politics of access to Syria. Based on interviews with a range of actors invested in the use of new media technologies, I give an account of how and why Syrian activists persevered with their political projects and technological practices despite having little hope of success. Second, amidst widespread scholarly interest in humanitarian intervention, I argue that the governmental practice of stabilisation, despite congruences with the practices of human rights video and forms of humanitarian intervention, has served as a distinct form of intervention in the wake of the ‘War on Terror’. Third, amidst widespread arguments that the Syrian uprising was a failed democratic revolution, I argue that the uprising should be considered on the basis of its central demand for dignity, while tracing the career of the concept in a debate amongst Syrian intellectuals over the “right to a dignified image”. Finally, by participating in a digital forensic investigation, I give an account of the legal, technical and political hurdles that would have to be overcome to turn open source content into legally felicitous evidence in a possible future war crimes tribunal.