Across public sectors in the Arab world, international consultancy firms already play a pivotal role and are further expanding their operations. Among other projects, con­sultancies have (co-)designed such high-profile strategies as Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" and Morocco's "Green Agenda"....

Across public sectors in the Arab world, international consultancy firms already play a pivotal role and are further expanding their operations. Among other projects, con­sultancies have (co-)designed such high-profile strategies as Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" and Morocco’s "Green Agenda"....

This study analyses the economic developments in Yemen from the 1970s to today in the context of the resource curse hypothesis. After a brief survey of the resource curse literature, using empirical data, historical accounts, and political (economic) analyses, I confirm that post-reunification...

In the space of just nine months, Tunisia's President Kais Saied has centralised power and dismantled the institutions established by the young democracy since the revolution of 2011. His new constitution establishing a "New Republic" will be put to a referendum on 25 July 2022. Saied's plans...

For decades, Maghrebi decision-makers have instrumentalised friend and foe narratives with regard to Israel and Iran, two of the most controversial regional actors in the MENA region. Only Morocco has official relations with Israel, only Algeria and Tunisia with Iran. A systematic analysis of...

NATO's 2023 summit in Vilnius was dominated by Russia's war against Ukraine. The summit in Washington, D.C., in July 2024 will be influenced by an additional major conflict in NATO's neighbourhood: the war in Gaza and the related heightened tensions in the Middle East. These have also negatively...

Islamist parties have, in Western public opinion, long been seen as an obstacle to democratization in the Arab world. This perspective is strongly qualified, however, by evidence from Arab states in which Islamist parties have been given a chance to participate in political processes.This study...

When Libya's international isolation ended in 2004, Western leaders expressed their hope that political liberalization would follow. However, Qadhafi's repressive regime has so far turned out to be stable and resistant to reforms. Diplomatic normalization reduced the danger of regime change from...

The idea of generating solar electricity in the Sahara Desert and exporting it to Europe is captivating, both from the climate and energy perspective and with an eye to Europe's goal of intensifying cooperation with its southern neighbours. Correspondingly great has been the political and media...

During the course of the so-called Arab Spring, observers were quick to refer to the uprisings as "Facebook revolutions" or "Twitter revolutions". Although the important role of social media in the 2011 upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is widely acknowledged, its impact on...