Arab spring

This article aims to discuss and analyze the emergence and evolution of Turkey's role as a model in the international system in three different periods, 1991–93, 2003–05 and 2010–12. To this end, it methodologically uses the main concepts of role theory: role expectations, role conceptions and role performance. Focusing on K.J. Holsti's example national role conception category in particular, it seeks to reveal the major similarities and differences between the role expectations that have enacted the role conception known as the Turkish model, and compare the impact of these expectations on role performance in each of these three cases. The major argument of the article is that the sustainability of the model national role conception depends foremost on Turkey's political and economic capabilities that directly influence its role performance.

"Carthage Center for Research and Information (CCRI) of the Lebanese
Development Network (LDN) and the Lebanese Emigration Research
Center (LERC) of Notre Dame University (NDU) announce the publication
of a new study entitled “Refugees of the Arab Spring: The Syrian
Refugees in Lebanon April 2011 – April 2012” written by Sam Van
Vliet and Guita Hourani. The study is published by The Center for
Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) of the American University of
Cairo (CUA) in its new series 'Cairo Studies on Migration and Refugees'
with a preface by the Director of CMRS, Dr. Ibrahim Awad.

The study reviews the manifestations of the Syrian refugees’ crisis in
Lebanon during its first year. The paper analyzes the attitudes and policies
of the Lebanese state as well as the interaction of these attitudes with those
of the Lebanese society in its different components. As such, the paper may
be viewed as a study of the impact of the political and social environment
on refugee policy-making.

In his prologue, Dr. Awad wrote that “the humanitarian and political
importance of the subject, regionally as well as conceptually, and the
seriousness of the research undertaken by the two researchers have
prompted the CMRS to publish the paper in its new Cairo Studies on
Migration and Refugees series”."

Le tigre qui apparaît dans le titre de ce texte est une figure clé de la réflexion de Walter Benjamin sur l’histoire, figure qui apparaît autant dans les pages consacrées à la mode dans le Passagen-Werk, le grand Zibaldone sur Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle, que dans ses thèses Sur le concept d’histoire, écrites en 1940, peu de temps avant qu’il ne se donne la mort pour échapper aux nazis et aux polices espagnole et française leurs alliées. Je propose ce recours à la pensée benjaminienne de l’histoire comme détour pour aborder l’idée répétée comme un mantra d’un « réveil des peuples arabes ».

"The decades-long reactionary dictatorial regimes in the region of the Middle East are suddenly opposed by a massive popular revolution: the Arab Spring.

Is this a struggle for democracy, or will fundamentalists seize power for themselves? This book is about the perception of this crisis from the west, since the revolutions in the Middle East will have a global impact. Several experts shed light on this great historical event.

'Revolutions in the Middle East: Perception and Consequences' is the second book of Armand Sag and was released on May 22th, 2012."

"Asabiyya: Re-Interpreting Value Change in Globalized Societies

Almas Heshmati
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies (CESIS); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Arno Tausch
Innsbruck University - Faculty of Political Science and Sociology - Department of Political Science; Corvinus University Budapest - Department of Economics; Vienna University; University of Fribourg, Switzerland

September 1, 2009

IZA Discussion Paper No. 4459


Abstract:     
This article reflects the renewed interest of economics and the social science discipline in value systems and religion. The World Values Survey provided a data framework of global value change, whose quantitative results led members of the economic profession, most notably, Barro, 2004 to analyze the connections between some dimensions of recent sociological religious value research (like the strength of the belief in hell) with economic growth. The present essay starts from this methodological position, and, like Barro links value systems with economic performance. The belief in or the fear of hell is part and parcel of a larger set of traditional values. With the free available country-wide data from the World Values Survey, we re-interpret Barro’s thesis in a much wider and macro-sociological framework. We further develop the well-known Inglehart/Welzel, 2003, 2003 map of global values, and develop the idea of “Asabiyya” (“social cohesion”), inherent in classic Arab historiography, first described by Ibn Khaldun (1332 to 1406) in his work “Muqaddimah,” as a counter-model to both Barro and Inglehart/Welzel, 2003, 2003.

A frequently asked question is whether “modernization” without “spiritual values” in a globalized world economy and world society possible in the long run. Starting from our multivariate analysis of the World Values Survey data (principal component analysis), it is shown that rather two factors are decisive in understanding global value change: a continuum of “traditional versus secular,” and a continuum “cheating versus active society.” Asabiyya is defined then empirically by the residuals from the two factor scores. Asabiyya in the 21st Century, as a way out from the modernization trap of societies, characterized by large-scale social anomaly, is a high secularism combined with a high active society score, thus avoiding the “modernization trap” of an increasingly secular society, which accepts cheating on taxes; accepts government benefits fraud and taking bribes. This re-discovery of the “active society paradigm,” inherent in Etzioni’s sociological theory, for cross-national research on religion and economic growth also shows that the “active society” of volunteer organization work is the best societal medicine against this kind of value decay, which is so common, according to our study, in countries like France, Brazil, or most of East Central Europe and the former USSR.

An active form of religious or non-religious humanism, which provides a noble motivation for such activities as volunteer social services, is a very necessary precondition for social cohesion in the 21st Century. Finally, we show on the basis of these data and with very recent IMF data and prognoses (2009) about economic growth in the world system for 2009 and 2010 that economic growth in the current world crisis is far more connected with these dimensions than with the belief in hell, as stipulated by Barro. We also control for the negative effects of Kearney’s globalization index on current and future economic growth in our equations. We conclude that not a society based on fear is needed in the first place, but an active society of volunteer social work.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 42

Keywords: Index Numbers and Aggregation, International Relations and International Political Economy, Religion, Bureaucracy, Administrative Processes in Public Organizations, Corruption

JEL Classification: C43, F5, Z12, D73

working papers series



Download This Paper
Date posted: October 21, 2009 
Suggested Citation

Heshmati , Almas and Tausch, Arno , Asabiyya: Re-Interpreting Value Change in Globalized Societies (September 1, 2009). IZA Discussion Paper No. 4459. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1484630 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1484630"