Peter Coleman's (2011) Attractor Landscape Model (ALM) is a promising new framework for analysing and tackling intractable conflicts: conflicts that are highly destructive and highly resistant to conflict resolution. However, this thesis suggests that Coleman's ALM may be based on unreliable assumptions about homogenous group psychology. The aim is to test the reliability of the ALM from this perspective, and to suggest ways to successfully operationalise the ALM. The reliability of the ALM is tested using the case study of professional negotiators in the Israel- Palestine Track-I peace process 2007-2011. 12 interviews are conducted with negotiators from four key actors: the EU, the US, Israel and the Negotiation Support Unit (NSU). The transcripts of these interviews are coded for patterns of 'behaving' and 'thinking', and tested against five hypotheses derived from negotiation theories and the Conceptual Integrative Complexity Scoring Manual (Baker- Brown et al., 1992). It is concluded that the case study of the Israel-Palestine Track-I peace process 2007-2011 generally provides support for the attractor landscape model. However, negotiators from the NSU stood out as a significant exception. This suggests that future studies using the ALM should investigate potentially significant differences in...

National women in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries are highly educated yet their work participation remains low when compared to the rest of the world. This thesis aims to assess the impact of religion and family in the shaping of national women’s careers in the GCC workforce, in particular the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This aim is fulfilled by conducting three interlinked research projects; a systematic literature review, a qualitative study and finally, a quantitative study. The first research project comprises a systematic review of the literature that identifies the barriers and enablers to the participation and advancement of female national managers in the GCC workforce. The synthesis of articles reveals findings at the societal, organizational, family and individual levels. At the societal level, barriers and enablers are identified as those influenced by socio-cultural and religious norms and practices. These norms and practices influence how organizations (public and private) engage with their employees, and families engage with their individual members. In the second research project, I choose to narrow the scope of my research from six GCC countries to one country, the UAE. I explore the influence of family on the experiences of ten senior female UAE national managers at key work decision stages; I employ semi-structured interviews and, based on their experiences, the findings reveal that the family has influence at both the role entry and role participation stages. No data were available for the role exit stage. Furthermore, the experiences are different for women from extended versus nuclear families. In the third research project I choose to focus on the factors that support and impact on the experiences of UAE national women during their career life cycle. The findings indicate that overall there are no differences between the experiences of women from nuclear families versus extended; however, there are differences between the model and the UAE sample, both at the overall level and individual age stages. My second research project; a qualitative study provides three contributions to knowledge. Firstly, I extend the understanding of work related decisions, taking into account family influences. However, in the UAE, based on my research, the outcome will primarily be in favour of family due to the influence of socio-cultural and religious norms and practices. I propose that the conceptual framework be extended by adding the component of religion to it when considering the context of the UAE. Secondly, I propose a modification to the framework enabling it to be used in the UAE context. Thirdly, no previous empirical research has been conducted using this framework, with the result that the data from my research contribute empirically. With respect to contribution to practice, this qualitative study identifies the need for enhanced recruitment strategies for women and more gender friendly policies and practices to ensure the effectiveness of Emiratization within both the public and private sectors. The evidence from my third research project; a quantitative study contributes theoretically as my research demonstrates that the O’Neil and Bilimoria (2005) three phase women’s career development model does not fit in the UAE context. The research also contributes from a practical perspective as it identifies the need to improve the development of networking, communication and leadership skills for women and the implementation of comprehensive flexible working practices for women.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the outcomes of the 2011 Arab Spring from the perspective of regime types within the Middle East and North Africa. The intense year of protest that spread throughout the Arab world had disparate effects between countries which this paper investigates. Utilizing an institutional approach, I separate the Arab world into monarchic and republican systems relying on data provided by the Arab Barometer II and III. Theoretically, I suggest, and find evidence to support, that monarchies were more resistant to the Arab protests because desires for change were not as strong within these countries because of the historical arrangements within these countries.

In recent years political scientists have shown increasing interest in the relationship between international and intranational politics. One of the problems most frequently dealt with in this area is the relationship between foreign and domestic conflict behaviour. Some of the notions involved are quite venerable and are commonly used in explaining specific events. One such notion is scapegoating, the diversion of popular attention from domestic conflicts to foreign ones. Another such concept posits the strengthening of internal solidarity in the face of external conflict. However, attempts at scientific, systematic examinations of the issue have yielded evidence of only weak relationships at best. In this paper the problem is again approached, though from a different angle than in most other studies. The types of behaviour examined are interstate violence and intrastate political unrest. Measures for each of these variables are developed. Correlations between the measures are then computed for each of four Middle Eastern states: Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria. The calculations are made both with and without time lags. The results show no significant relationship between the variables for Israel. For Syria unrest predicts positively and with moderate strength to subsequent interstate violence, while interstate violence predicts moderately and negatively to subsequent unrest. For Egypt and Jordan the variables predict strongly and positively to each other. It is suggested that these differences among the states may be due to differing degrees of freedom of access to political channels in them. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

In the diploma thesis is described a term "security" within the context of actual world situation, it is also mapped water allocation in the world and made an analysis of the security situation in the Middle East in term of availability of water resources.

Main point of my thesis is to analyse the possible variants and plans of solutions the conflict between Israel and Palestine and also the main reasons why both sides are not able to achieve agreement and why niether of plans were not implemented. I do not try to decide which side is right but to provide objective view of conflict and its solutions.

At present time, actual role and political activity of Arab countries have a more significant impact on the political development and strategic plans of global politics that the political, geographic and demographic ambitions of Arabs themselves are. The main goal of this study is to describe current development in the region related to global interests and regional influences, especially focused on Syria and Lebanon.

This diploma thesis works with the hypothesis that the existence of oil, which is a non-renewable resource of energy with limited availability (geographically as well as in terms of the available amount)influenced internal formation and international relations of the Middle Eastern states, which are the primary world oil exporters. The main goal of this thesis is to analyse this assumption based on the history of oil industry and determine to what extent has the oil contributed to the current position of the Middle East in the international relations.

This study aims to examine the degree of influence that societal and organizational cultures, as specified by the GLOBE project, have on employment equity in the Omani public sector. Therefore, a theoretical framework has been built and developed in two main areas, which are culture and employment equity. In addition, the methodology of the study has been designed to use both quantitative and qualitative research approaches for triangulation. Quantitative data was collected from a sample of 290 Omani civil servants representing several public organizations, while qualitative data was collected in a single case study of Oman’s Royal Court Affairs (RCA) organization, 12 general managers from which were interviewed. The independent variables were dimensions of societal and organizational culture, and the dependent variables were employment equity in general, which includes seven critical success factors behind employment equity. The analysis for the quantitative data was carried out using SPSS software, while interviews were analysed manually due to the small number of participants. The results of the study confirm that societal and organizational cultures have significant influence on employment equity (EE). However, not all cultural dimensions have the same direction or degree of influence on employment equity. In fact, some of these dimensions have no significant correlation with EE. Also, the study found that there were no differences between managers’ and employees’ responses with regard to 34 cultural dimensions out of 36. The two dimensions in which the results differed between these groups were Human Orientation and Future Orientation for organizational culture value. Additionally, the results show that participants believe that there is a real need for higher EE in the Omani public sector as there were clear differences between current practices of EE and how it should be. Moreover, there were significant positive correlations between all seven critical success factors behind effective EE. This result indicates that these factors are interacting between each other in a positive way. Also, a suggested framework was developed to show how government and other organizations could positively use and benefit from the influences of cultural dimensions to enhance EE among employees. Researchers also could benefit from such a framework as well as the overall findings of this thesis by using them as a starting point for further research to fill the observed knowledge gap in this area.

In its approach to the Palestinian-Jordanians’ issue, this dissertation employs a security-based theory and technique, which deal with the issue as a securitization case-study. It employs a modified version of the securitization theory offered by the Copenhagen School to evaluate the classical Jordanian national security strategy toward Palestinian-Jordanians. It addresses, reviews, weighs and evaluates the four strategies and tools of the Jordanian securitization model toward Palestinian-Jordanians: exclusionism, tribalism, cooptation and ideologization, which present the independent variables of this study. This evaluation process is based on a multi-standard strategy, which discusses the goals, the evidence, the outputs and the structure of the Jordanian securitization model since Black September 1970. In terms of methodology, the dissertation adopted a multi-method strategy, which used field research, participant observation and elite interviewing as primary methods for data acquisition. In its security-based re-reading of the modern Jordanian history and its evaluation of the Jordanian national security strategy, the dissertation concludes that the Jordanian securitization model has led to a number of dangerous adverse reactions and hazards, which threaten Jordanian national security. The awakening of the extreme versions of nationalism, the rise of social/tribal violence and the emergence of the radical Islamist Salafi-Jihadi movement are examples of the hazardous outputs of the classical Jordanian national security strategy. Although the classical strategy has succeeded in maintaining the physical survival of the state/regime in Jordan since 1921, it has failed to cure the structural crises of statehood and nationhood, which the Jordanian state suffers from. Also, the classical strategy has failed to decisively answer the strategic questions of "what is Jordan?" and "who are Jordanians?". This strategic failure of the classical Jordanian national security strategy toward Palestinian-Jordanians rings alarm bells about the strategic and urgent need for an alternative national security strategy based on egalitarianism, modernism, populism and democratization.