11/10/2022

Research article from Koray Saglam: "The digital blender: conceptualizing the political economic nexus of digital technologies and authoritarian practices"

Published in the Special Issue of Globalizations "Authoritarian Power and Contestation beyond the State".

This article develops the concept of the digital blender to comprehensively address the extent to which digital technologies further authoritarian practices and power beyond the state. By focusing on the primarily commercial nature of digital technologies, and their reciprocal transformational political economic embeddedness, the digital blender allows to highlight the role of private companies in enabling practices that are detrimental to democratic values and processes, irrespective of the formal regime-type context of a given polity, and less confined by national borders. While previous discussions primarily focus on digital technologies as mere tools at the discretion of their master, this relational perspective allows for the incorporation of transnational non-state actors and dynamics in constituting and contesting manifestations of authoritarian power beyond the state. These dynamics will be illustrated and discussed in light of insights into recent incidents involving companies such as Cambridge Analytica, Meta Platforms Inc., and the NSO Group.

Access to the full article: The digital blender: conceptualizing the political economic nexus of digital technologies and authoritarian practices

Discussion paper from Oliver Schlumberger: Puzzels of Political Change in the Middle East: Political Liberalisation, Authoritarian Resilience and the Question of Systemic Change 

One decade after the Arab uprisings of 2010/11, the present discussion paper revisits processes of political change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with a focus on the question of systemic change. Core questions in this context are: How, among all possible varieties of political change, do we know when political change is systemic? When do we speak of “democratisation”, and when of “authoritarian upgrading” or “- re-consolidation”? Can we predict such processes? If not, can we at least tell when systemic transition is more or less likely to occur, and what influences its occurrence? The three parts of the discussion paper build on one another in order to address and answer these puzzles.

Schlumberger, Oliver
Discussion Paper 5/2021

Bonn: German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)

October 2020

Framing the Pandemic and the Rise of the Digital Surveillance State

Ahmed Maati, Žilvinas Švedkauskas in: Czech Journal of International Relations Vol 55 No 4 (2020): The Coronavirus and the Future of Liberalism

The pandemic caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus has provided a pretext for many countries of the world to extend executive powers, and their digital surveillance capacities in particular. Aiming to identify how different regimes frame digital surveillance, this paper employs qualitative content analysis to compare the government framing of digital surveillance in India, Israel and Singapore. Although due to their different working dynamics, one would expect democracies and autocracies to frame digital surveillance in different ways, our findings reveal an overlap between liberal and illiberal rhetoric across the cases and point to unexplored illiberal peculiarities within the category of ‘democratic backsliders.’ We conclude by cautiously speculating how heightened extents of digital surveillance and tracking may become the new normal across regime types, and how governments might exploit and recycle these same frames to justify digital surveillance after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

15/11/2010

EMHRN publishes Report on Freedom of Association in the Euro-Mediterranean Region

On the occasion of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network’s Freedom of Association Working Group meeting, held in Beirut, Lebanon last October, the EMHRN launched its 4th Annual Report, entitled Freedom of Association in the Euro-Mediterranean Region: A Threatened Civil Society which assesses the situation of NGOs in the 11 countries of the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean region.

Since the publication of the first EMHRN Report in 2007, some countries have amended their laws on NGOs (Jordan) or have announced changes (Egypt, Syria), while others have recast their legislation in ways that have a direct impact on NGO activities (Israel, Tunisia). A close examination of recent developments in the Euro-Mediterranean region reveals that freedom of association has experienced setbacks in the past few years and there has been very little positive development worth mentioning.
Our Research Unit for Comparative and Middle East Politics at the Institute of Political Science at Tübingen University was commissioned as a contributor of one out of three thematic chapters to the current report.
For detailed information, see here. The complete report is accessible free of charge here.

22/07/2011

Article by Torsten Matzke on Egyptian Big Business in inamo

The spring edition of the journal inamo (issue No. 65) features an article by Torsten Matzke on “The Sudden Demise of Mubarak's Crony Capitalists. Egyptian Big Business and the Revolution” (in German). He therein explains the sudden downfall of those rich typo3/#_msocom_1big businessmen who held high government and party positions before the revolution and were close to Hosni Mubarak and his son Gamal. In contrast, through its ascent to power, the Egyptian military managed to safeguard its economic interests. It can therefore also be expected that Egypt’s future economic policies will be more state-centered in the future instead of supporting an urgently needed widespread, non-discriminatory promotion of the private sector.

Contribution by Prof. Schlumberger to: Middle East Critique 3-2010

In his article

"Opening Old Bottles in Search of New Wine: On Nondemocratic Legitimacy in the Middle East"

Prof. Schlumberger stresses the necessity of analyzing regime legitimacy in the countries of the Arab World, a topic which had been neglected for a long time. His contribution discusses four dimensions of studying (nondemocratic) legitimacy and then goes on to identify key components of legitimacy in the Arab Middle East.

Contribution by Maria Josua to "Bürger im Staat" 1-2010

In her article "Autoritäre Regime im Vorderen Orient: Herrschaftssicherung trotz Herrscherwechsel [Authoritarian Regimes in the Middle East and North Africa: Safeguarding Leadership Despite Changing Leaders]", Maria Josua examines the strategies employed by Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes in order to maintain stability after succession. It is available here for free.

Special Issue of Contemporary Politics (16:1)

Promoting Democracy - Promoting Autocracy? International Politics and National Political Regimes

Together with Prof. Dr. Peter Burnell (Warwick University, UK), Oliver Schlumberger has guest-edited a special issue for the international refereed journal Contemporary Politics which has been published in March 2010. This work goes back to two pre-organized panels at the World International Studies Conference held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2008 and includes the majority of the presentations given there, but also includes a number of additional articles.

The Contents

The special issue is entitled "Promoting Democracy-Promoting Autocracy? International Politics and National Political Regimes" and comes timely as political scientists are beginning to realize that instead of a unilinear trend towards global democracy, autocratic political rule is not some near-extinct dinosaur. This triggers new questions for research:

Has the last tide of democratization been replaced by a new wave of democratic reversal? Do two decades of international democracy promotion now have to compete with the promotion of authoritarian rule by powers that have resisted democratization internally? Are there more pressing grounds than ever to investigate international political influences on the prospects not just for transition to and consolidation of democracy but the persistence, resurgence and spread of more authoritarian regimes?

These are among the big issues raised in this special issue. It does not pretend to provide definitive responses, but rather makes a start over how to look for some answers. The Introduction spells out an agenda that should take a central place in future research into the influence of international politics on national political regimes. It gives a window onto how the multinational contributions in this issue add to our knowledge and takes that agenda further forwards.

The Contributors

Apart from the editors' substantial introductory article, other contributors include:

• Wolfgang Merkel, Wissenschaftszentrum and Humboldt University, both Berlin
• André Gerrits, Free University, Amsterdam
• Julia Leininger, German Development Institute, Bonn
• Siddharth Mallavarapu, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
• Julia Bader, Antje Kästner and Jörn Grävingholt, German Development Institute, Bonn
• Nicole Jackson, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

The Editors

Peter Burnell is one of Europe's most eminent political scientists. He has authored and edited many books and articles and is the founding joint editor of the international refereed journal Democratization which is today established as one of the leading journals in the field, and the accompanying book series Democratisation Studies, published by Routledge. He also is an invited member of the founding Executive Committee of the journal Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft. After having loosely cooperated for many years, the forthcoming special issue highlights Peter's and Oliver's joint desire to push forward the frontiers of what we know about the reasons for the emergence and decay of democracies and autocracies around the world.

Contribution by Prof. Oliver Schlumberger to Eberhard Kienle 2009 (ed.): Democracy Building – Democracy Erosion

Prof. Oliver Schlumberger contributed to Eberhard Kienle’s volume "Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion - Political Change North and South of the Mediterranean" with the article “Assessing Political Regimes: What Measurements and Typologies Tell Us – And What They Don’t”. The article focuses on conceptual problems in measuring and assessing democracy.