A reflective account of being Alone, Asian and Atheist in the Middle East
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The Middle East and North Africa region has been absent form stocktaking exercises on social accountability initiatives (SAI), an umbrella term to designate citizen-led tools aimed at socio-political change. We argue that this sidelining is unwarranted, given the proliferation of participatory governance initiatives, civic associations and popular mobilisation in Arab societies after 2011. Whereas the struggle for improved accountability in the Arab world remains under-researched, analysis of authoritarian regime tactics has proliferated. The fact is, however, that many Arab societies have experimented with mechanisms to apply political pressure on corrupt elites while international donors have launched diverse SAIs, including community score cards and participatory and gender-responsive budgeting initiatives. In this chapter, we first identify this double gap: not only has the literature on SAIs overlooked the MENA region but scholarship on the Middle East has largely failed to recognise initiatives launched across the region over the past decade as SAIs. Then, we aim to address the blind spot of Arab SAI’s as pathways towards improved governance. Finally, we present an overview of extant literature and introduce a set of four research questions to better understand what social accountability means for people on the ground. These questions focus on the various meanings of social accountability (musā’ala vs muhāsaba), its modes of mobilisation, the responses from authorities to such initiatives and their overall outcomes.
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With the rise of the knowledge-based economy in Asia, Western-dominated organizational literature is being exported to Asian countries. There is a huge interest from businesses and universities in China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and other countries in Asia and the Middle-East to learn about Western management ideas and techniques in the area of knowledge and intellectual capital management. There is, however, little insight into the success of management ideas and techniques that are based on Western conceptualizations of knowledge in an Asian context.
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The wide diffusion of the "Entrapped Suitors" story-type has often been observed: examples are found in a remarkable number of literatures, ranging from English, French and Greek in the West, to Persian, Arabic and Kashmiri in the East. However, a text of this type that is often overlooked is the Middle Dutch play Een Speel Van Drie Minners ("A Play of Three Suitors"). This is despite the fact that it represents a highly idiosyncratic variation on the story, as it replaces the central moral with something more scabrous. We offer here a comprehensive discussion of this singular text and its narrative form, with an English verse-translation appended.
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Executive Summary - Temperatures across the Middle East region are predicted to increase by 3°C by 2050 - Warming will be felt more in cities because of the urban heat island (UHI) effect, causing heat-related health problems - City planning and management regimes are often disconnected from disaster risk and resilience building and legislation is lacking - Lacking data and information sharing across multiple levels of governance hamper heatwave warning systems - Urban building projects lead to a soaring demand for cooling systems - Traditional adaptations such as street grid design, wind catchers and mashrabiya screens could be used more - Policy response should include national Heat Health Action Plans that are translated into Local Heat Plans, coordinated and implemented by local governments
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This paper addresses the following question: What is the current opinion and conception of ordinary Dutch people regarding the influx of refugees from the Middle East, and how can local government formulate a policy on this issue?
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In this chapter, we first summarise the findings from the country chapters on the multiple meanings of SA, documenting terms, translations and contrasting understandings between citizens and public officials. Second, we highlight how civil mobilisation tends to be cyclical over time and is often mediated by brokers. Strategies to spur stakeholders into action rely on a delicate balance of both collaboration and confrontation. Third, we examine the responses from authorities to SAIs, finding that reactions are uneven and that all civic innovators fear appropriation or co-optation by officials. Fourth, we assess overall outcomes of Arab SAIs and highlight that the transformative potential of SAIs exists especially at municipal level, if four conditions for success are present (trust, proximity, endorsement, evaluation). We also point out that the actual outcomes of SAIs in Arab societies have, so far, been limited due to design deficiencies (emphasising short-term objectives and limited context sensitivity) or because of officials’ resistance in active or passive forms. We characterise SAIs as a discursive action format that is best understood with a relational approach to power. In a final section, we formulate recommendations for activists, officials and donors on how to make SAIs more effective.
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The development of international relations and the implementation of the Bologna Process have been increasingly given attention by Higher Education Institutions in the Middle East region through the TEMPUS and Erasmus Mundus programmes. The project partners were keen to learn about elements of the Bologna Process that would their students, faculty and citizens to benefit from mutually enriched cooperation with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), such as the implementation and recog-nition of ECTS and diploma supplements. Through a series of workshops, seminars and pilot projects, the CORINTHIAM pro-ject has attempted to reinforce the understanding of the process of Internationalisation and Internationalisation at Home and strengthen the cooperation mechanisms to facil-itate the mobility of students and scholars between the EU and the Middle East region. The CORINTHIAM project has benefitted member institutions by facilitating the open access to information and knowledge about EHEA, a deeper appreciation for quality of services delivered by the departments of International Relations, and the training of specialists in EHEA and Bologna issues. These handbooks may be considered as a reflection of the sustainable structure that has been obtained through the outcomes of the above mentioned project. Each of the sections focuses on a distinctive pillar of the project: management of international relations, management of international projects, Internationalization at Home, quality of internationalisation and learning experiences of piloting ECTS at third-country in-stitutions. The lessons learned during the three years of the project will provide insti-tutions, teachers and students with a s better understanding of the EHEA as it concerns Israel and the Palestinian Territories, whereby strengthening cooperation between the Middle East region and the EHEA in the years to come.
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