Critique internationale - Content

No Abstract

[The Field Marshal and the Sheiks: The Regime’s Religious Strategies and Their Complications in al-Sissi’s Egypt]
This article examines the strategies that Field Marshal al-Sissi’s regime in Egypt has implemented to manage the religious field in the aftermath of the 2013 coup d’État that put an end to the “revolutionary parenthesis” of 2011-2013, a period marked by the electoral triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the regime follows a twofold strategy: consistent with the precedent set under Mubarak’s government, it seeks to establish the only Islamist actors that supported the coup d’État, the Salafist movement and its al-Nour party, as a legitimist substitute for the Muslim Brotherhood; in more “Nasserian” vein, it seeks to restore power to the institutions of a hegemonic, official Islam in order to regain control of the country’s mosques. This article examines the motivations of the religious actors involved in these strategies and considers the tensions that these strategies and their interrelations generate in the political and religious fields. This case study contributes to discussions regarding the sources of religious legitimization for Arab authoritarian regimes.

[The Syrian Rebels of Ahrar al-Sham: Contextual and Organizational Motors of Deradicalization in a Time of Civil War]
Originating in the jihadist movement, the Syrian rebel group Ahrar al-Sham has since its creation in 2011 pursued a path of ideological deradicalization. Reaching completion in 2017 when the group officially adopted the Syrian national flag, this transformation is reflected in its adoption of a “revisionist” stance that gradually distanced it from the most radical factions and drew it closer to the dominant revolutionary movement. This trajectory may be interpreted in the light of contextual factors – specifically, the influence wielded by state sponsors of the Syrian uprising and the 2011 emergence of a popular revolutionary project presenting a credible ideological alternative to that of the jihadists. Yet the response of Ahrar al-Sham to these external stimuli can only be understood by reference to its organizational dynamics – that is, its precocious decision to break with transnational jihadi networks and the establishment of a collegial decision-making structure that allowed the group’s reformist wing to consolidate itself at the expense of its doctrinaire rival. This study of the deradicalization process in a context of civil war seeks to contribute to discussions of the dynamics of moderation among Islamist groups, which have hitherto mainly been studied in peacetime or end-of-conflict contexts. It also contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms of ideological transformation among non-state armed groups, a question broadly neglected by theoretical work on civil wars.

[The Internet and Jihadist Propaganda: The Polycentric Regulation of Cyberspace]
In recent years, governments and civil society groups have blamed the Internet for spreading jihadist content. States, technology companies and civil society groups have established monitoring practices and solutions to address these concerns, which have assumed an international dimension. Taken as a whole, however, such efforts remain scattered and fragmented. The present article seeks to take stock of this complex system by adopting a polycentric governance approach. This approach contrasts with a state-centric vision to the degree that it favors establishing networks among centers for regulating global problems at several levels. The present article draws on a detailed cartography of the various measures that have been taken to regulate jihadist content. In addition to demonstrating the pluricentric and heterogenous nature of these measures, we present them as an “agonistic” system in which relations are simultaneously marked by conflict and mutual awareness. Yet conflict does not preclude action: over time, polycentric authority structures have given rise to a new architecture and new norms intended to facilitate control of information flows.

[The Tensions of Affirmative Action in Post-Apartheid South Africa: An Analysis of Labor Court Jurisprudence]
Since 1998, the South African government has established radical measures intended, not just to fight discrimination, but also to rectify the inequalities produced by the Apartheid regime. At the forefront of these measures is the Employment Equity Act (EEA), which was adopted in 1998. One might expect this law to strongly protect the beneficiaries of affirmative action, and courts to rarely rule in favor of whites when they sued for unjust racial discrimination. Yet it turns out that, in the majority of lawsuits in which a judge finds there has been unjust discrimination, it is on behalf of white plaintiffs. On the basis of this paradox, this article examines the nature of the arguments exchanged in labor courts, arguments that supply the basis for the judge’s distinction between just and unjust racial discrimination. These lawsuits cast new light on the victim of post-Apartheid discrimination, a figure whose contours no longer neatly coincide with a black-white line of division.

Edin Hajdarpašić. Whose Bosnia ? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans 1840-1914, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2015, XII-271 pages.