Shura council election in Qatar: Influences that shape how voters select candidates

Qatar, a small Gulf Arab nation with a de facto absolute monarchy, held its first general elections ever for 30 Shura Council seats on October 2, 2021. This marked the first time in Qatar's history that citizens played a more direct role in government, moving beyond symbolic elections. This study aimed to examine the factors likely to have influenced voters' selection of candidates, the key issues that are significant to Qatari citizens, and the possible characteristics of candidates that are deemed essential. While informal conversations are the main method of data collection for this study, social identity theory, specifically group-based models, was used to understand the influences that shape Qatari voters' choices of candidates. Findings indicate that tribe-related and family-connected attributes constitute important influences on voters' choice decisions. Moreover, voters were concerned about candidates' characteristics and the issues and policies candidates deemed important. Discussion and recommendations are provided.     

Effects of mothers’ deaths on children’s schooling in Matlab subdistrict,Bangladesh

This quantitative analysis examines evidence for the impacts of mothers’ death on the schooling of their left-behind children (ages 6–17 years) in the Matlab Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) area of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. The analysis compared the completed levels of primary and junior secondary schooling in 2005 (respectively Class 1 among ages 6–17, Class 5 among ages 12–17 and Class 7 among ages 15–17) of children whose mothers had died during 1982–2005 (from maternal and/or nonmaternal causes, and any cause) with the completed schooling of children of surviving mothers in 2005. The results, after controlling for selected socioeconomic variables, indicate that children whose mothers had died had lower completion of schooling levels, and that those children from poorer households fared worst.     

The Father's Success and the Son's Failure: Explaining the Growth of Lebanon's Resistance to Syria's Invisible Occupation

In the 15‐year period since the Syrian military entry into Lebanon on June 1, 1976, allegedly to put an end to the civil war that broke out there a year earlier, Syria firmly solidified its control of the country, as evidenced by the signing of the “Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination between Syria and Lebanon,” on May 22, 1991, which granted Syria a special status. Yet, 14 years later, on April 24, 2005, the Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon. This article seeks to explain this relatively rapid decline in Syria's standing in Lebanon by examining the strategies of the two Syrian rulers who indirectly controlled this country during those years. It examines what was right in Hafiz al‐Asad's strategy in Lebanon, and what did not work in Bashar's policy. In 2000, the year of Hafiz al‐Asad's death, Syria's status in Lebanon seemed unshakable: 1) Lebanon's president (Emile Lahoud) acted as Damascus's puppet; 2) Hezbollah, the Shi‘a militia Hezbollah largely accepted Syria's authority while it simultaneously tightened its control over southern Lebanon and also began gaining popularity in the rest of the country; and 3) finally the politics of the noble families, which had characterized Lebanon since its establishment, began to gradually give way to a politics where a political figure is measured by the level of his connections to the country's power base in Damascus. Yet, merely five years later, Syria was under immense pressure to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. This suggests that we must look at the difference between the strategies of Hafiz al‐Asad and his son Bashar for controlling Lebanon to better understand the rapid deterioration in Syria's standing in the country. We argue that the difference in the degree of anti‐Syrian pressures from Lebanon's society and political elements between the two tenures is largely rooted in the different strategies that the two Syrian presidents adopted for informally ruling Lebanon. We identify three main areas where Bashar al‐Asad made mistakes due to his failure to continue his father's methods. First, Bashar put all his cards on Hezbollah, thus antagonizing all the other groups which resented that Shi‘a dominance. Second, in stark contrast to his father, Bashar distanced himself from the regular management of Lebanon's ethnic politics. Hafiz al‐Asad made sure that all the leaders of the different ethnic groups would visit Damascus and update him on their inter‐ethnic conflicts, and then he would be the one who would either arbitrate between them or, for expediency reasons, exacerbate these feuds. Once the ethnic leaders had to manage without Damascus, they learned to get along, making him far less indispensable for the running of the country. Finally, Bashar, unlike his father, did not make a real effort to gain international and regional legitimacy (or at least de‐facto acceptance) for Syria's continued control over Lebanon. Most conspicuously, while Hafiz participated in the First Gulf War against Iraq, his son supported Sunni rebels who fought against the United States‐led coalition forces there. This foreign acquiescence was significant since the Lebanese felt they had a backing when they demanded Syria's withdrawal in 2005. These different strategic approaches of the two rulers meant that the father's policies wisely laid the ground for some of the most controversial measures which were needed as part of any attempt to monopolize control over another country, such as Lebanon (assassinating popular but too independent‐minded Lebanese presidents/prime ministers or extending tenures of loyalist ones), whereas the son's policies myopically failed to do so properly. Indeed, the article will show that while both the father and the son took these same controversial measures, the responses of the Lebanese were completely different. Admittedly, some historical developments increased the Lebanese propensity to rise up against Syria, and these meant that Bashar did in fact face a harder task than his father in maintaining Syria's informal occupation. The Israeli withdrawal from its so‐called “security zone” in south Lebanon meant that one justification for the Syrian presence was gone. More importantly, the risk of renewed eruption of the civil war (which in turn had meant for many years a greater willingness by the locals to tolerate the Syrian presence which prevented the war's resumption) declined significantly due to a variety of processes that could not have been halted even with better “management” of the interethnic strife from Damascus (i.e., making sure that the ethnic groups remained in deep conflict with each other). Nevertheless, as we will show, Bashar's mistakes played a crucial role in bringing the rival ethnic groups together by making Damascus their joint enemy.     

Israel: Divided by Religion and Education

Israel is a democracy splintered by religion and education. Two of its fastest growing religious groups, ultra‐Orthodox and Muslim Israeli Arabs, are not learning democratic principles or marketable skills that enable them to assist in the economic development of the country. Even Israelis who are attending secular and religious Israeli government schools are academically behind in mathematics as measured on 2011 international achievement tests of PISA and TIMSS. The history of religion and education from 1928 to 1955 built the foundation for the current divisions. The impact of the Ottoman and British occupation on citizens is particularized thorough the experiences of Elias Tuma, who lived under British and Israeli government systems. Today's educational system in Israel reinforces religious and sectarian conflict among its citizens. Educational and religious structural suggestions are provided for readers to consider. The implications of this work for future research are provided.     

Developing a Collaborative Strategy to Manage and Preserve Cultural Heritage During the Libyan Conflict. The Case of the Gebel Nāfusa

The paper discusses the potential of a collaborative scheme for the development of a protocol for recording and managing the cultural heritage in Libya. The critical political situation in the country urges the development of cultural heritage management policies in order to protect it more thoroughly and consistently. Moving on from the numerous international initiatives and projects dealing with a mostly “remote” approach to the issue, the project here presented to engages with staff members of the Department of Antiquities (DoA) in the development of a joint strategy for the application of remote sensing and geographical information systems (GIS) to the preservation and monitoring of Libyan cultural heritage. A series of training courses resulted in an initial development of new ways of recording and analysing field data for a better awareness of the full range of threats that the archaeology of the country is subject to. Focussing on the case of the Jebel Nafusa, the training involved the assessment of site visibility on satellite imagery, the analysis of high-resolution satellite datasets for archaeological mapping, the creation of a GIS spatial database of field data, and the mapping of risks and threats to archaeology from remote sensing data. This led to the creation of of a risk map showing the areas that are affected by a number of threats, thus giving the DoA a tool to prioritise future fieldwork to keep the assessment of site damage up to date. Only a collaborative approach can lead to a sustainable strategy for the protection of the invaluable cultural heritage of Libya.     

Protecting Human Rights Through Constitutional Adjudication ‐ Jordan as a Case Study

This article aims at defining the role of constitutional courts in protecting the fundamental human rights of individuals, by relating the importance of constitutional judicial review and the established international standards related to the way it is performed. The study also provides an in‐depth analysis of the structure and working mechanism of the new constitutional court in Jordan with regard to its main functions described in the constitution of providing oversight of the constitutionality of laws and regulations in power, and interpreting provisions of the constitution. The study concludes that current statutory provisions with respect to the court proceedings and the method of undertaking its judicial work serve as safeguards that strengthen the role of the court in promoting individuals’ human rights. The study defines a vision of what is anticipated from the new constitutional court of Jordan and other courts in the field of defending human rights from the contemporary threats the world is facing, which only serve to increase fears among individuals that their basic rights are subject to serious attacks and violations.     

An International Constitutional Court: Future Roles & Challenges

This article comprehensively examines the 1999 recommendation of the Tunisian government to create an International Constitutional Court that is designed to enhance the principles of democracy and human rights and to strengthen the constitutional doctrine which states that the people are the source of authority in a given country. This proposal, which was strongly advocated by former Tunisian President Mohamed Moncef Marzouki during his term in office, aims to underscore the importance of establishing an international judicial entity and analysing its bylaws with respect to its terms and conditions, formation, jurisdiction, and selection of judges. The article traces the trajectory of the movement, from the proposal stage to the latest developments in formally establishing the international judicial entity. Finally, the article identifies various possible difficulties and challenges that are likely to stand in the way of implementing the proposal.     

Overpressure in the Malay Basin and prediction methods

Predrill overpressure prediction is important for well planning and migration modeling for prospect evaluation. The Eaton (Journal of Petroleum Technology, 24 , 1972, 929) and Bowers (SPE Drilling & Completion, 10 , 1995, 89) methods are used worldwide for postdrill overpressure prediction using sonic log and predrill overpressure prediction using seismic interval velocity. In this research, these two methods were used for overpressure prediction using 3D anisotropic prestack depth‐migrated seismic interval velocity in a field of the Malay Basin. In the shallow overpressured zone, where the mechanism of overpressure is undercompaction, the onset of overpressure was predicted reasonably well using the Eaton and Bowers methods with their standard parameters (i.e., Eaton exponent 3 and Bowers loading curve) for seismic velocity. However, in the deep overpressured zone, where fluid expansion is the cause of overpressure generation, these methods underpredicted the high overpressure. In the deep overpressured zone, the overpressures were better predicted by applying a correction to the Eaton method. On the other hand, the Bowers unloading parameters for the fluid expansion mechanisms did not show any significant effect on overpressure prediction. Hence, in the study area, the Bowers method is not effective for 3D overpressure prediction using seismic velocity, whereas the Eaton method is more robust and can be used for 3D overpressure prediction from seismic velocity.