Theme: One International Relations or Many? Multiple Worlds, Multiple Crises
Wednesday 18 – Saturday 21 September 2013
Warsaw, Poland
Organised by the ECPR Standing Group on International Relations and EISA in cooperation with the Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw and the Polish Association for International Studies.
This panel shows general and/or case studies between International Relations and Islam.
Chair:
Prof. Dr. Rodolfo Ragionieri (University of Sassari, Italy)
Discussant:
Prof. Dr. Muhammad Zia Ul Haq (International Islamic University, Islamabad,
Pakistan)
Paper Presenters:
The
Islamist Discourse under Scrutiny in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring: An
Analysis of Key Islamist Conceptions of Political Life
Prof. Maria do Céu de Pinho Ferreira Pinto (University of
Minho, Portugal)
For many decades, political Islamists have benefited from
a privileged position, since they acted as the only option to the existing Arab
regimes, building on the rejection of the status quo without elaborating on
their alternative. They did not need to come up with specific policy
prescriptions and, in fact, could hardly provide a clear scenario for society
and the political process should they come to power. But once competing for elections
and taking on the responsibility to govern, they will be forced to explain
their political rationale. This paper offers a critical exploration of the
impact the new political and social conditions are having on Islamist political
concepts. The electoral success of Islamist parties will put pressure on them
to, at long last, define the relation between theory and practice. We will
reflect on the implications of the uprisings on the Islamist movements’
evolution, namely their concepts of democracy, the civil state, the separation
of powers, and the Sharia and human rights.
The
Impact of the Arabic-Islamic Spring on the GCC countries: The Case of Kuwait**
Dr. Haila Al-Mekaimi, Ph.D is the Head of Euro-Gulf
Research Unit and Assistant Professor at Department of Political Science in the
University of Kuwait.
Arab states across the region has been affected by the
event of the Arab spring, which turned to be "An Islamic Spring"
after the Islamist's domination of the political Scene. Depite the massive
Western Support for the Islamists in power, the Islamists particularly in Egypt
and Tunisia failed to achieve the goals of the revolutionaries in economic and
political reforms, which will have a great affect on the political future of
the Islamists in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This paper is an attempt
to evaluate the impact of the Arabic-Islamic Spring on the GCC countries, with
a focus on the case of Kuwait. This paper asks what kind of affect of these
political changes on the political movement in Kuwait? How the Kuwaiti
Islamists responded to the different cases of the Arab spring including in
Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain and how the Islamist political
mismanagement in these countries affect their counterparts in Kuwait.
**Withdrew her participation.
Modernity,
Secularism and ‘Islamic’ Conceptions of Democracy: The Case of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt
Prof. Dr. Katerina Dalacoura is a Senior Lecturer in
International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Is democracy a Western concept, inapplicable to other
cultures? Are conceptions of democracy across the globe incongruous with one
another? Such questions have long been debated but, more often than not, on
rather abstract ideational, theological or philosophical levels. This paper
complements these important discussions by focusing on concrete proposals by an
Islamist political actor on how the term ‘democracy’ is understood.
Specifically, the article draws material from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s
reaction to the Bush administration’s democracy promotion policies in the
Middle East in the post 9/11 period, and its 2007 political party platform, to
demonstrate that an ‘Islamic’ conception of democracy is shaped by history and
ideology in the modern and secular context of the nation-state.
Foreign
Policy Dynamics of Regime Change from the Arab Spring: Is there an Islamist
Threat?
Dr. Rolin Mainuddin is Associate Professor of political
science at North Carolina Central University, USA.
Without ruling out democracy in Muslim societies, Samuel
Huntington found “din wa-dawla”—the intermingling of religious and political
communities—a major challenge. Hrair Dekmejian and Judith Miller had expressed
fear, given the lack of a democratic tradition in the Middle East, that after
coming to office through elections Muslim political parties—“Islamists”—will
scuttle the democratic process itself to stay in power. Yet, the Justice and
Democratic Party (AKP) in Turkey did not end democratic institutions following
electoral victory in 2002. While denying the United States the use of its
territory for military operations against an Arab Muslim country, and being
assertive with Israel on regional issues, the government of Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has not changed the basic security structure of Turkey’s membership in
NATO. In spite of demonstrating pragmatism so far after winning the 2011
elections, will Mohamed Morsi and his Freedom and Justice Party—affiliated with
the Muslim Brotherhood—take Egypt on a divergent path? Is there any danger to
the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty? What about United States relations with
Turkey or the GCC countries? This paper will address the question of a
perceived “Islamist” threat to United States national security interest in the
MENA region.
Muslims
and Foreign Policy in France and Great-Britain
Dr. Imène Ajala (Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland)
A broad range of literature in the United States is
dedicated to ethnic lobbying and foreign policy. In Europe, though the range of
literature dedicated to Muslims is broad, it has never been looked at from this
angle. The basic question guiding this paper, based on my doctoral
dissertation, is thus: how have the presence and mobilization of Muslims in
Europe affected foreign-policy making? To this end, two countries standing for
two opposite models of integration, namely assimilation and multiculturalism,
constitute the case studies and allow for a comparative study: France and Great
Britain. A conceptual model based on basic game theoretical assumptions and
instruments of measure of political influence is used as a grid to
systematically analyze the case studies. A set of elements to be investigated
empirically are derived from the model to guide the exploration of the case
studies which constitute the focus of this paper. Empirical investigations look
at the presence of Muslims in each country and their characteristics, the model
of integration, the resources of the group in terms of electoral impact and
institutional organization. Four elements are then emphasized to understand
Muslim communities and their relation to foreign policy debates in both
countries: their preferences, their influence attempts, their access to the
decisions sphere and the reactions of decision-makers.
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