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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Timo Kivimaki
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Politics, Languages & International Studies, University of Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
Interests: peace;peace research; territorial dispute

Dr. Rana Jawad
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Social & Policy Sciences, University of Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
Interests: development policy in the MENA region; welfare theory and ethics

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

This Special Issue looks at the conceptual, theoretical and causal/constitutive interaction between state fragility and conflict as well as between state fragility and lack of human development. It will focus on the MENA region, paying particular attention to the role of social policies and the political contexts that underpins them.

An introductory article of the Special Issue will show that state fragility in the MENA region predicts developmental grievances and violence as it does in the rest of the world. However, the MENA region is unique as its problems have become more internationalised and the region is intervened militarily by outsiders more than other regions. Conflict and developmental grievances in the MENA region are much more related to problems of political legitimacy than in the rest of the world. The impact of economic reliance on commodity and raw material trade is also much more complicated in the MENA region than in the rest of the world. This Special Issue will consist of articles focused on different aspects of these generic or MENA-specific factors in the fragility–grievance–conflict triangle.

The call for papers to this Special Issue aims at attracting theoretical and empirical studies that focus on the complex relationship between, on one hand, states’ institutional capacity and resources (including the felt social, economic and political injustices and lack of public services in the MENA) and, on the other, grievances and conflict. The aim is also to attract papers that focus on policies to remedy the social and political problems of the MENA region related to the triangle of fragility, grievance and conflict.

Prof. Dr. Timo Kivimaki
Dr. Rana Jawad
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

State fragility
Conflict
Human development
Social protection
Grievances
State Fragility Index
Human Development Index
Battle Deaths
Social policy
Social justice

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

Open AccessArticle

Determinants of the Arab Spring Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya: What Have We Learned?

Zahraa Barakat

and

Ali Fakih

Soc. Sci. 2021, 10(8), 282; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10080282 - 23 Jul 2021

Viewed by 1104

Abstract

This paper provides empirical evidence on the determinants of protest participation in Arab Spring countries that witnessed major uprisings and in which social unrest was most pronounced. Namely, this paper investigates the latter in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya using a micro-level data survey, the Arab Transformation Survey (2015). The findings of our probit regression analysis reveal that gender, trust in government, corruption concern, and social media usage have influenced the individual’s perception of protest activism. We find evidence that the role of economic factors was inconsistent, whereas political grievances were more clearly related to the motive to participate in the uprisings. We then control for country-specific effects whereby results show that citizens in each country showed different characteristics of participation. The findings of this research would set the ground for governments to better assess the health of their societies and be a model of governance in the Middle East. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Fragility-Grievances-Conflict Triangle in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA))

Open AccessArticle

Social Security Enrollment as an Indicator of State Fragility and Legitimacy: A Field Experiment in Maghreb Countries

Walid Merouani

Claire El Moudden

and

Nacer Eddine Hammouda

Soc. Sci. 2021, 10(7), 266; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10070266 - 09 Jul 2021

Viewed by 1152

Abstract

State legitimacy and effectiveness can be observed in the state’s approach to delivering welfare to citizens, thus mitigating social grievances and avoiding conflicts. Social security systems in the Maghreb countries are relatively similar in their architecture and aim to provide social insurance to all the workers in the labor market. However, they suffer from the same main problem: a low rate of enrollment of workers. Many workers (employees and self-employed) work informally without any social security coverage. The issue of whether informal jobs are chosen voluntarily by workers or as a strategy of last resort is controversial. Many authors recognize that the informal sector is heterogeneous and assume that it is made up of (1) workers who voluntarily choose it, and (2) others who are pushed into it because of entry barriers to the formal sector. The former assumption tells us much about state legitimacy/attractiveness, and the latter is used to inform state effectiveness in delivering welfare. Using the Sahwa survey and discrete choice models, this article confirms the heterogeneity of the informal labor market in three Maghreb countries: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Furthermore, this article highlights the profiles of workers who voluntarily choose informality, an aspect that is missing from previous studies. Finally, this article proposes policy recommendations in order to extend social security to informal workers and to include them in the formal labor market. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Fragility-Grievances-Conflict Triangle in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA))

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Open AccessArticle

The Fragility-Grievances-Conflict Triangle in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA): An Exploration of the Correlative Associations

Timo Kivimäki

Soc. Sci. 2021, 10(4), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10040120 - 27 Mar 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1517

Abstract

The intention of this special issue of Social Sciences is to study state fragility and its relationship with conflict and grievances in the post-Cold War Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This article will lay the foundation for such a study by offering a conceptual foundation, data and the identification of the correlative associations that are specific to the MENA region. This article suggests that the relationship between political legitimacy, factionalism of the state, and conflict needs special, MENA-specific emphasis, as this relationship seems more prominently different in the MENA region, compared to the rest of the world. While in the rest of the world, different aspects of state fragility all relate to grievances and conflict dynamics, in the MENA region political factionalism has a disproportionate role in the explanation of conflict grievances and violence. Moreover, the role of oil dependence, and the impact of external intervention requires attention of specialists of the region. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Fragility-Grievances-Conflict Triangle in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA))

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