Democracy, Citizenship & Civic Rights

Extended Arenas of “Hirak”: Anti-Sectarian Electoral Contestation in Students and Syndicates’ Elections

Introduction

With the culmination of the “October Revolution” in 2019, Lebanon witnessed the rise of anti-sectarian independent groups competing in (university) students and syndicates elections against the traditional political parties. Their electoral victories brought about hope in the challenging of the entrenched sectarian political system, but more significantly, was utilized as a predictor to power shifts in the May 2022 parliamentary elections.

CSR issue 5: Challenging Power: Gender and Social Justice in the Middle East - Introduction

The present issue is the culmination of more than two years of work. During this time, our editorial team and our writers living in Lebanon faced countless disruptions to our normal working environments, beginning with the October 2019 Thawra; the COVID-19 pandemic and the government-enforced lockdowns beginning in early 2020; and the crippling economic and political crisis that has left Lebanon a shell of its former self.

Possibilities and Challenges: Social Protection and COVID-19 Crisis in Jordan

Introduction

The social protection system is an indispensable institution that delivers support to disadvantaged groups in any society. It is an essential process that keeps the community viable and has the capacity to bridge social inequalities. A modern social protection system includes removing barriers to high-quality healthcare, income protection (including for informal workers), job protection, and, finally, preventing vulnerable groups from falling into poverty.

Tunisia’s “Al-Ahyaa Al-Sha’Biya”: Socioeconomic Grievances, Mobilisation, and Repression

In 2021, Tunisia witnessed several political and socio-economic crises, which were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The country had already been facing an acute economic contraction – described by the International Monetary Fund as the worst crisis since Tunisia’s independence in 1956 (IMF, 2021). In 2020, Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi indicated that the country had a negative growth rate of 6.5 percent and a public debt amounting to 86 percent of GDP (Chomiak, 2021).

Crafting the good citizen, streaming the good king: Notes on press freedom, hegemony and social contention in King Abdallah II’s Jordan

Introduction 

In recent years, press freedom in Jordan has undergone a significant contraction (Alnajjar 2021). The repressive shift arrived concurrently with the steady rise in contentious mobilizations that the country has been experiencing since 2011, as a result of the progressive degradation of the average living conditions and the state reiteration of tight IMF-backed neoliberal reforms.

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