3 research outputs found
The âsubalternâ foreign policies of North African countries: old and new responses to economic dependence, regional insecurity and domestic political change
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis (Routledge)via the DOI in this record.This article introduces the special issue by explaining why researching change and continuity in the foreign policies of North African states is relevant in spite of these countriesâ peripheral and âsubalternâ position within the global system. It situates the special issueâs content in the context of the extant academic literature on the foreign policies of dependent/Third World/Global South countries, the foreign policies of MENA states and the consequences of the 2011 Arab uprisings in terms of international relations. It then moves on to discuss the case study selection by outlining key commonalities and differences between Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in terms of historical, political and economic foreign policy determinants. The country case studies each focus on a particular level of analysis, from the global â Tunisiaâs financial predicaments and foreign debt negotiations â through the (sub)regional â Egyptâs relationship of necessity with Saudi Arabia, Algeriaâs half-hearted policies towards the conflicts in Libya and Mali â to the domestic sphere â Moroccoâs power balance between the monarchy and the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) heading the government, Libyaâs extreme state weakness and internal power competition among proliferating private actors â, reaching also the deeper non-state societal level â Mauritaniaâs new forms of social activism questioning the official religious identity and the socio-political makeup of the state. The last part of the introduction critically relates the empirical findings of the special issue to theoretical debates on subalternity in International Relations and Mohammed Ayoobâs subaltern realism in particular.The research leading to this article was funded by the grant âThe International Dimension of Political Transformations in the Arab Worldâ (CSO2014-52998-C3-3-P), awarded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain to the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha